[A-List] Kazakhstan: Aral Sea disaster

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Kazakh dam condemns most of the shrunken Aral Sea to oblivion

Desperate step after water row with Uzbeks

Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Wednesday October 29, 2003
The Guardian

A seven-mile dam is being built across a small northern section of the
shrunken Aral Sea in Central Asia, which is described as the world's worst
environmental disaster.

The saline inland sea, divided between the former Soviet states of
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, has been drying out for 25 years, since the USSR
began a vast irrigation scheme drawing water from its two tributary rivers
to grow cotton and rice in the desert.

Rescue schemes tried in the past decade have failed and one of the two
rivers has ceased to flow. In some places the depth of water has fallen from
54 metres (177ft) to 28 metres and the retreat has left the hulks of ships
marooned in a desert wasteland.

Now Kazakhstan, which relied on the sea for fish, has decided to abandon
most of the sea by building a dam to impound the waters of the second main
river. It is part of a water battle with Uzbekistan, which itself stopped
the flow into the south of the Aral from the Amu-Daria.

Tension between the two countries has been increased by a number of border
incidents, and Uzbekistan has barred the whole of its part of the sea to
visitors and aid agencies. The last outsider to visit the area said people
who used to be fishermen and farmers now survived only on food aid in a salt
desert.

Cancer and liver and kidney failure are commonplace in adults and children.
Protesters in Uzbekistan have been jailed.

Kazakhstan says its river, the Syr-Daria, cannot by itself keep the whole
sea alive. The water is in effect being wasted in the southern "dead zone".

It is spending £50m of its newly acquired oil wealth on reducing losses to
the Syr-Daria from irrigation and winter flooding. And by building a dam
across what is now a narrow neck of dry land it hopes to restore the fishery
and reduce dust storms.The World Bank is helping to fund the dam.

Five countries - Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and
Kazakhstan - use the two rivers for irriga tion and have done so for
centuries. But the area irrigated was expanded from 6m hectares (15m acres)
in the 1960s to 8m and the sea began to shrink. It is reduced to three
separate parts, and is still evaporating.
A British diplomat in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, said "There is tension now over
water, within 10 years if nothing changes there will be armed conflict."

Sirodjidin Aslow, chairman of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea
who has an office in Dushanbe, is trying to solve the problem.

"Soviet planning and the competition for water between these five states has
turned the Aral Sea into trash," he said. "To restore the sea we need 1,000
cubic kilometres of inflow a year, but we have barely one tenth of that -
110 cubic kilometres - and all that is from the north.

"The south gets only a trickle, if that. The shore line has receded on
average by 250 kilometres ... The level of salination has increased
dramatically and the waters leave behind a salt paste containing pesticides
and other minerals."

The northern part was in better condition because there was still some river
inflow and three fish species survived, but the south was virtually dead.
All five states contribute to the fund and have signed more than a dozen
action plans.

Mr Aslow said: "We have a new 14-point action plan with a total of 58
projects which involve growing less thirsty crops and we believe we can cut
the water use by half with modern irrigation methods. We have to persuade
the countries involved not to use the water saved for yet more irrigation."

An aid worker who was one of the last to visit the southern Aral region
said: "The people are in a terrible state, drinking out of muddy ditches,
which is all that remains of a once mighty river. We had a plan to relocate
the people but Uzbekistan refused to agree and threw us out. No one has any
idea what happened to the people we were trying to help."