In Muinak, Uzbekistan, the original waters have disappeared, and the bottom of the bare riverbed is only sand and salt sediments. A middle-aged local man named Araquato's father said he last swam here when he was five or six years old.
Less than 100 years ago, it was the world's fourth largest lake with an area of nearly 70,000 square kilometers and supporting 70 million people. What happened to make it so shocking?
(Muinak on the shores of the Aral Sea, where the original waters have become deserts)
Water, agricultural areas, irrigation
Whether it is Aralsk or Muinak, the two places face the same body of water - the Aral Sea.
However, the waters of the Aral Sea in the Aralsk region are slowly recovering, and in the area where Muinak is located, all water has completely disappeared.
Aral Sea, a name that most Chinese know from geography textbooks. It is considered to be one of the largest inland lakes in the world.
With an area of about 67,000 square kilometers, the Aral Sea has not changed, at least as far as we know. Over the past few decades, however, the Aral Sea has been shrinking and has all but disappeared this century. Behind everything, there is a human factor.
The Aral Sea is an inland lake that flows only into the water but not out of it, and it has two main rivers. One is the Amu Darya River in the southern Aral Sea region, and the other is the Syr Darya River in the northern region.
The basin of the Amu Darya River covers an area of more than 460,000 square kilometers, and the basin of the Syr Darya River covers an area of almost 220,000 square kilometers. The two rivers not only inject water into the Aral Sea, but also serve as the greatest source of life for the people on both sides of the river.
The Aral Sea is located in an area with plenty of sun, which is ideal for growing cotton, grapes and even rice. From a socio-historical point of view, until the 90s of the last century, the region where the Aral Sea is located belonged to the Soviet Union, and this region became the area of vigorous development of irrigated agriculture during the Soviet period.
In the middle of the 20th century, the Soviet Union launched the "Silver Plan", which turned the Aral Sea region into an important base for the cultivation of cotton, vegetables, melons and fruits.
Since then, the area has been heavily constructed with water conservancy facilities. On the main streams and tributaries of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, a series of reservoirs and canals were built.
Larger reservoirs include the Rogon and Nurek reservoirs on the Vakhsh River (a tributary of the Amu Darya River). The large irrigation canal is the Karakum Canal.
On the Syr Darya River, there are the Toktogul Reservoir, the Kailakumsk Reservoir, the Çardalin Reservoir, and a number of other large irrigation networks scattered throughout the country.
The advent of these water conservancy facilities, from the beginning of the 50s to the 80s, led to an increase in the area of irrigation in the region. By 1987, 86.7 per cent of the total area of irrigated arable land was in the region. Among them, cotton accounts for 50.8% of irrigated arable land.
(Aral Sea in the 80s)
Uzbekistan has become the largest cotton producer in Central Asia, accounting for 60.3% of the country's total arable land. In addition, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, during this period, more than 50 per cent of cotton was planted.
Large areas of cultivation have appeared, robbing the water that would otherwise flow into the Aral Sea. The Karakum Canal, for example, intercepts a third of the water flowing into the Aral Sea. Across the Amu Darya Basin, at least 80 per cent of the river's runoff has been cut off due to the continuous extraction of the irrigation network.
At the beginning of the construction of water conservancy and the development of agriculture, the local people did not realize the seriousness of the problem. With the increasing production of cotton, melons and rice, the population of the Karakum Canal basin has increased, and the population and urbanization of the entire Aral Sea region have begun.
However, as the water source has been cut off for many years, less and less water has flowed into the Aral Sea, and the deterioration of the ecological environment has begun to appear.
Lowered water levels and disappearing fisheries
Muinak, Uzbekistan, was a thriving fishing base when there was still water in the Aral Sea, with more than 30,000 local people working in the fishing industry at its peak.
However, with the use of water for irrigation, population growth, urbanization, industrialization, etc., the water in the Aral Sea has begun to decline at a rate that is visible to the naked eye.
Data show that in the 28 years from 1959 to 1987, the population of the area around the Aral Sea increased by 1.3 times. A large number of new populations are distributed in the form of beads along the river.
With the rapid increase in population, the speed of industrialization is also accelerating, and the industrial output value of this region has increased by 4.5 times compared to the past.
As there are more people, the demand for food increases, which in turn further motivates people to irrigate and farm. Accelerating industrialization is also increasing the pressure on water resources. The environment is overwhelmed by multiple factors.
You can see this by comparing the data. At the beginning of the 20th century, less than 7% of the Amu Darya River was diverted from people, but by the mid-50s it had increased to 15% and by the 70s it had soared to 70%.
The situation is even more serious in the Syr Darya River, where since the mid-70s of the 20th century there has been no water for the entire river to flow into the Aral Sea.
By the 80s, there was no stable inflow of water into the Aral Sea. In fact, the water level in the Aral Sea has been declining since the 60s.
In 1960, the water level in the Aral Sea was 53 meters, but in 1987 it had dropped to 40.3 meters. The continuous decline in the water level has not only caused some shallow water areas to be the first to run out of water, but also further increased the salinity of the water due to the continuous evaporation of water.
The Aral Sea is a saltwater lake because there is no outflow of water or evaporation, but in the past, the salinity of the water was maintained at a relatively low level.
Since the 60s of the last century, the salinity balance has been broken. Over the past 20 years, the salinity has increased from 10‰ to 24‰. In some areas where the deterioration is severe, it even reaches 28 to 30 per thousand.
When the balance of water and salt is broken, the original plankton, organic matter and even various nutrients in the Aral Sea continue to decrease. When fish run out of food, they begin to decline gradually.
And that's just one of them, because the presence of a large number of reservoirs disrupts the migratory routes of fish, which in turn seriously affects the spawning and reproduction of fish. When fish breed each year, they need to migrate upstream through rivers to spawn, and reservoirs block the route of fish, which makes fish stocks decline faster.
Data show that before the 60s of the last century, there were at least 20 species of economic fish in the Aral Sea, and the annual catch exceeded 35,000 tons, making it the second largest inland fishing base in Central Asia.
By the end of the 70s, the annual catch in the area had fallen to 10,000 tons. In the 80s, it was not even 3,000 tons. Fishermen lost their jobs, the old fishing ports were deserted, and the shipping industry on the Aral Sea ceased to exist.
And that's just the case of the Aral Sea, where the environment of the irrigated areas and the estuarine delta has been rebuffed as the ecology has deteriorated.
Swamps, forests, cultivated land turned into saline land
Before the 60s of the last century, there were still large swamps, that is, wetland landscapes, along the Amu Darya Estuary Delta. As the flow of water into the Aral Sea decreases, wetlands are degrading and coastlines are receding.
The rate of retreat of the coastline is more than 50 meters per year, and in some years it can even reach more than 80 meters. The delta has disappeared, and many of the small lakes that connect it have dried up. A large amount of vegetation in the wetland area has also died and disappeared due to lack of water.
Eventually, the newly exposed coastline gradually became salinized and desertified. By the end of the 70s, the area of desertification had continued to increase, eventually affecting pastures farther from the Aral Sea.
Of course, the final backlash will reach humans. The flow of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers continues to decrease, and large amounts of pesticide residues are deposited in the middle and lower reaches of the riverbed.
In the 20th century, more toxic pesticides such as DDT and defoliant were still in use, and residues deposited in the riverbed seriously polluted the drinking water along the river.
For example, Nukus, located in the Amu Darya Delta region, has drinking water that exceeds sanitary standards due to salinity and contamination. As a result, infant mortality rates are much higher in this region than in other regions.
In addition to premature death, the probability of child malformations has been increasing since the 80s of the last century. By the 90s of the last century, the incidence of kidney disease in the region increased 9 times, and the incidence of cancer increased 4 times.
The proud cotton farming industry no longer exists, and the dust weather is getting bigger and bigger, and it is still salt and dust. Every year, severe sandstorms affect not only the area around the Aral Sea, but also people within a radius of 100 kilometers, and even more than 700 kilometers away.
For example, some people on the southern shore of the Aral Sea have a high incidence of respiratory diseases and eye diseases due to the impact of sand and dust. The land that can be cultivated is also gradually becoming salinized.
Is there a solution
Originally, people just wanted to intercept a little water to farm the land, but the backlash of nature has been so powerful in a few decades.
While the environment around the Aral Sea is deteriorating, the waters of the Aral Sea itself are shrinking. As a result, the waters of the Aral Sea have shrunk by more than 90 per cent. That is, the Aral Sea has de facto disappeared.
However, since the 90s of the last century, people have gradually begun to pay attention to this issue. With the intervention of the World Bank, $87 million was provided to support Kazakhstan's efforts to clean up the Aral Sea.
After years of governance, the water level in the northern part of the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan began to rise slowly, and the coastline that had receded by 75 kilometers was advanced by 58 kilometers in 2015.
However, the situation in the southern Aral Sea is different, with no results being achieved and the trend of drying up the waters continues. Muinak, mentioned at the beginning of the article, is located in the region of the South Aral Sea.
Although in recent years the Central Asian countries have reached a broad consensus on the governance of the Aral Sea, due to the further scarcity of water resources, the countries involved in the Aral Sea are not consistent in their pace and concept when faced with the problem of how to govern the Aral Sea.
For example, the Rogon reservoir on the Vakhsh River, which is now on the territory of Tajikistan. During the Soviet era, the reservoir was under construction, and now Tajikistan wants to build it completely to relieve the pressure on domestic electricity.
However, Uzbekistan, which is located downstream, is reluctant to do so. The deterioration of the Aral Sea has reduced Uzbekistan's water supply, and if the upstream reservoirs continue to operate, not only will the environment be irreversible, but the country's agriculture will be further damaged.
Therefore, the contradiction between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan has deepened in recent years over the question of whether to build the reservoir. Under these circumstances, the governance of the Aral Sea is not optimistic.
epilogue
Historically, humanity has been on the path of destruction before governance for many years, and has almost never learned from the mistakes of others.
The deterioration of the ecological environment of the Aral Sea is a prime example. Previously, as the president of Uzbekistan, Karimov had said pessimistically that it was no longer possible to restore the Aral Sea to its original appearance, and the next thing to do was to minimize the impact of the deteriorating environment on millions of people along the coast.
How to alleviate the situation depends on what measures will be taken by the countries surrounding the Aral Sea. The resulting salt dust has not only continued to wreak havoc in Central Asia, but has also spread throughout the world, even across the ocean to the Americas. It can be seen that the future of the Aral Sea will affect not only the people on the coast, but also the whole world.
Resources:
"The Causes and Solutions of the Aral Sea Crisis", Geographical Research, June 1991