What are the lessons to be learned from Aral sea?

Answer 1

The Aral Sea of Central Asia is a well-known example of the unforeseen impacts of development. In the driest climate in central Asia, the Aral Sea was revered for its wealth in water, fish and for buffering the region's harsh climate extremes. The Soviet Union praised its great potential as a water resource, as the world's fourth largest lake (2). The Soviets desired to maximally develop the Sea for one purpose, irrigation. However, this ambition overlooked the water needs of other sectors, and of the water requirements of the environment. In 1932, the Soviets built the Dneprostroi, a major dam, and diverted the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, the two feeder rivers to the Aral Sea, in order to provide irrigation water for cotton and rice. "The irrigation canal, the world's longest, stretches over 1,300 kilometers (800 miles)-- equivalent to one-third the width of the continental US" (3). This massive water diversion was in line with popular opinion of the day, and with Stalin's belief that "'water which is allowed to enter the sea is wasted'" (4).

With canals and infrastructure in place, the Soviets continued to divert more and more water from the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya. "Until the 1960s, the Aral Sea covered an area the size of Belgium and the Netherlands combined and contained more than 800 million acre-feet of water" (5). "Between 1965 and 1980, the area of irrigated land more than doubled. Central Asia became one of the largest irrigated areas on the planet, with some 20 million acres of fields crisscrossed by canals that could stretch to the moon three times over... [b]y the 1980s, 85 percent of all the fields in the Aral Sea basin were growing cotton." As a result of the Soviet's large scale water transfer projects, the "sea's salinity has tripled, its surface area has decreased by 58%, and it has lost 83% of its water... [and] about 85% of the area's wetlands have been eliminated" (6). Due to the disappearance of wetlands and other habitat, approximately half of the bird and animal species have died or migrated (7).

Unanticipated impacts of the water diversion from the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya were extensive. Fishing villages collapsed as the increased salt concentration resulted in the "extinction of 20 of the area's 24 native fish species" (8). The salt that now lines the Aral Sea bed is picked up by the wind and swept as far away as the Himalayas, causing glaciers to melt at faster rates (9). Additionally, with reduced water supply, farmers began to increase the use of fertilizers and pesticides, which now threaten to contaminate groundwater aquifers, and imperil the health of the 58 million people that live in the Aral Sea basin (10).

These, and other consequences, are the enduring impacts of the Soviet's water management of the region from the 1930s to the 1980s. Today, the five countries that surround the Aral Sea are committed to its health and are working to increase the lake's water volume by protecting the watershed and encouraging sustainable use of its water resources.

Although the story of the Aral Sea is one of devastation, its legacy serves as a reminder of what can result from ambitious development for a single purpose, and how government's must try and consider the true environmental repercussions their actions.