Holy Shrunken Sea, Batman!

[Not A Real Picture]

Seriously?  The Head of the UN is shocked, SHOCKED, that the Aral has disappeared!  This is news?

For the last time, people.  This is not only an ecological problem – this is a political problem.  Unless the UN wants to repeat the idiocies of the international community of the 1990s, pouring millions of Western tax dollars into the coffers of exceedingly corrupt political systems, they need to watch out.  And I understand that this lake might indeed be a “shocker for Ki-moon” as the story relates, but whose fault is that?  It would be similarly not-news-worthy if Glenn Beck dropped a reference to the disappearing Aral Sea – “this just in, folks – Socialism Kills Nature!  I found these pictures on the internet!”

I’m not sure if this means I have a future in photoshop ahead of me.  No, no, this is not a real picture – I just imagined Glenn Beck in front of his Blackboard, and then it was one step to have him turn into my 10th grade “Global Issues” teacher, ranting about the undeveloped world’s burden on the back of the West in front of maps of Asia and Africa.  Kindred spirits all.  [Shudder]

Below the jump you’ll see a little piece of text I produced per request of some folks working in the Indiana school system.  With all the talk of Texas School Board stupidity and loss of education funding across the country, I thought Registan readers might be slightly heartened to hear that Indiana has included some “Central Asian” talking points in their Social Studies educational standards.  The problem is that there’s very little written in current text books – which is where the university system is asked to step in and offer some help.

I wrote the following “narrative” about the Aral Sea at the request of a teacher resource group – the folks with pedagogical experience – in order that they might create some lesson plans and focused one-day, one-week, and longer term lessons for teachers of 9th and 10th grade Social Studies classes.  For those unfamiliar with the US’s educational system, our national standards are only one part of the puzzle.  There are also state standards, and sometimes even more specified district standards.  We generally do not have “History” and “Geography” and “Civics” classes like I witnessed in Europe and Asia, but more integrated subjects considering the relationships between Geography and History, etc.  What this means is that most American citizens cannot tell you how much ocean front property Arizona has [trick question] but probably can spout off a couple reasons for the redrawing of maps before and after wars in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Don’t worry – they aren’t taking my word alone on this matter, and this narrative was written using quite a bit of scholarship.  This is merely the “narrative” form, not the scholarship form.  Your comments and cuss words are, as always, welcome.

The Aral Sea: Need To Know

_The desiccation and disappearance of the Aral Sea is one of the greatest ecological disasters ever attributed to human error.  However, the truth of the situation defies a simple explanation.  There were many players involved, none of whom easily characterized by single driving motivations.  The purpose of this narrative will be to give a brief overview of the primary factors acting on the Aral Sea, including a brief introduction to the long-term history of the Aral Sea.  This should allow the reader to gain some perspective of both the severity of the situation and its relative place in history.  In other words, instead of serving as a simple yet terrifying cautionary tale, the Aral Sea’s current situation can teach students of the wide-ranging effects caused by ignoring the consequences of actions seeking to alter the balances already existing in nature.

Where is the Aral Sea?

The Aral Sea, or the large dry seabed where the Aral Sea used to be, can be found in Central Asia.  It lies is a large depression, not far from the lowest point in Central Asia – the depression near the Caspian Sea.  These two seas – the Caspian and the Aral – were joined in antiquity, both being originally connected with the Black Sea and the World Ocean through the Mediterranean Sea.  The climate in Central Asia is severely continental due to its distance from the oceans, separated from the tropical floodplains of India by the mountains of the Roof of the World, including the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan and the Himalayan Mountains of northern India and Nepal.  Central Asia is separated from the heavily populated agricultural lands of eastern China by the deserts of western China and the Tien Shan and Altay mountains.  The Mediterranean climate is blocked from entering Central Asia by the Caucasus ranges and the lower Elburz Mountains of northern Iran.  The only clear elevation from Central Asia lies to the north, the great steppe stretching from Mongolia to Hungary, broken up by the Ural Mountains and the mighty Volga river of European Russia.  North of steppe lies the taiga, and beyond that the inhospitable permafrost of the Siberian tundra.  The political and cultural isolation of Central Asia, then, can be interpreted as a consequence of its geographic isolation, lying inside a horseshoe of mountainous and desert terrain stretching thousands of miles from China to Russia, dipping down to northern India and Iran in a gigantic letter “U.”

The isolation of the Aral Sea is compounded by its landlocked status.  Central Asia is like a giant bowl in many ways.  In most places in the United States, for example, rain water and runoff from agriculture eventually flows through streams, lakes, and rivers to the Atlantic, Pacific, or Arctic Oceans.  In the case of Central Asia, only in north and east of Kazakhstan do rivers flow to the Ocean across thousands of icy miles of taiga and tundra to the frozen Arctic.  In most of Central Asia, the only exit for water is through evaporation, as water will only flow into deserts to disappear beneath the sands or into one of several salty lakes, the largest of which is the Caspian Sea, the world’s largest lake.  All of the area’s lakes that lack outlets are salty, though to various degrees.  The Aral Sea at its 1960 level was fresh enough to support various species of fresh and salt water fish, though today only brine shrimp can survive in the southern remaining sections.  Lake Balkhash, in eastern Kazakhstan, is half fresh and half salty.  In the half closest to the Ili River, the source of the majority of its inflowing water, the lake’s water is fresh enough for drinking.  In the northeastern half, however, the rate of evaporation and lack of outflow have resulted in much saltier water, supporting a very different ecosystem.

Origins of the Aral Sea

The Caspian, Black, and Aral Seas were once interconnected, at some point in the distant past.  They are all fossils, the remnants of a vast shallow sea covering much of Western Asia.  The Tethys Ocean existed for millions of years, until shrinking into two parts about 90 million years ago.  These seas separated Eurasia from Africa – the Tethys Sea and Para-Tethys Sea.  The Tethys see connected the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, flowing through and covering much of modern-day Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and Syria.  The Para-Tethys lay to the north, connecting the Caspian, Aral, and Black Seas by covering southern Ukraine and Russia, and the Caucasus.  Both the Tethys and Para-Tethys were connected to the World Ocean, which meant they had salty water and many ocean-specific species of fish.

At what point the Aral Sea finally separated from the Caspian is unknown.  The Caucasus Mountains separated the Caspian-Aral from the World Ocean.  From that point onward the two seas became increasingly salty, though the Caspian has retained a steady level thanks to the inflow of the Volga River, the largest river in Europe.  The Aral Sea similarly maintained a relatively low level salt thanks to the inflow of the two largest rivers in Central Asia – the Amu and the Syr.

Lifeblood of Central Asia

The Aral Sea, once separated from the Caspian Sea, was completely dependent on inflow from its two major feeder rivers.  Most of Central Asia is exceedingly dry, and the area around the Aral Sea is no different, receiving less than 4 inches of rainfall every year.  The two rivers of Central Asia both rise from the mountains of the Roof of the World before snaking across the deserts towards the Aral Sea.  They have been known to scholars throughout history, and Alexander the Great famously crossed the Amu on his march of conquest towards India.  At that time, the rivers were called the Jaxartes and Oxus by the Greeks.  For this reason, some historians still refer to Central Asia as Transoxiana, meaning “land beyond the River Oxus.” After the Arab Conquest and the rise of Islam in Central Asia, the two rivers were named Sayhoun and Jayhoun, two of the four rivers flowing from Paradise.  Today the rivers are known by their Persian names Syr Darya and Amu Darya.  “Darya” means “river” or “lake” in Persian.  The Amu Darya has been referred to as the “River Ocean,” because of the vast amount of water that it carries.  In short, it is the lack of water reaching the ends of their course, especially from the Amu Darya, that has caused the disappearance of the Aral Sea.

Aral Sea throughout History

Due to its reliance on the inflow of glacial melt-water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, the Aral Sea has changed shape more or less continuously through history.  Another factor to consider is the appearance and disappearance of rivers connecting the Aral Sea to the Caspian Sea.  One such river existed recently enough to be mentioned in historical sources, and it can be found on satellite images.  The Uzboy River flowed across the desert between the Aral and Caspian Seas, allowing navigation by small boat between cities on the Caspian and the large caravan cities of Central Asia.  This loss of inflow, as the Uzboy was a branch of the Amu Darya, caused the Aral Sea to shrink significantly.  Contrariwise, when the Uzboy dried up, there was a significant increase that flooded the lowlands and wetlands around the shore of Aral Sea.  This gives rise to the reason for the Aral Sea’s name, as ‘aral’ means “island.”  The shallow areas of the sea were a patchwork quilt of thousands of low islands, many large enough to be used as pasturage for sheep and other livestock.

There is evidence of the changing sea shore on the dry lake bed today.  Remains of cities and mausoleums (burial places) have been found in areas that in 1960 were under 60 feet (18 meters) of water.

The Aral Sea 1960 – 2010

Beginning in 1960, the loss of water to the Aral Sea from over-cultivation of the desert became noticeable to scientists working in the Soviet Union.  The Aral Sea at that time was located entirely inside one country (the USSR), though on the border between two of its Union Republics: the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic.  Both were run by local Communist Party members loyal to Moscow.  From 1960 to 1970, the level of the Aral Sea fell by an average of 7 inches (20 cm) each year.  However, the rate increased dramatically from 1970 to 1979, when the water fell by an average of 22 inches (55 cm) each year.  In the 1980s, the final decade of the Soviet Union, the Aral Sea continued to flee its shores at the unbelievable rate of 33 inches (85 cm) per year.  Part of the reason for the increased shrinkage was the increased rate of evaporation as the water became increasingly shallow and warm.

The loss of the Aral Sea was not a surprise to Soviet scientists and development planners, who considered it a doomed sea.  The water was to be used for productive purposes, though the local people were not educated about this official opinion.

What, then, was lost with the Aral Sea?  For beginners, a thriving fishing industry and two major port towns left without their businesses –  Moynoq in the south and Aralsk in the north.  Today they are in two different countries, but when the Aral Sea still reached their shores, they were both important towns in the Soviet Union.  They are now broken ghost towns in the independent Republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, respectively.

With the loss of the Aral Sea, the climate in the region has become markedly more severe, with winter temperatures commonly dipping below negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit and Celsius, and summer temperatures nearing 130 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius).  The winds that used to bring cooled air from the sea now carry dust and salt from the dried up lake bed, and even carry some other poisonous chemicals.  The reason is that as the water dried up, it exposed all the chemicals that had flowed in the Aral Sea from the agricultural run-off; pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides, and other chemicals used to grow more cotton in increasingly salty and infertile soil.  This poisonous dust is thought by doctors to be the primary cause for the human cost of the Aral Sea’s disappearance: the highest rates for lung disease in the entire world are found near the vanished Aral Sea.

Moreover, the Eastern shore of the Aral Sea between the Syr Darya and Amu Darya deltas used to be home to a unique ecosystem of jungle-like forested lands, home to deer and large carnivores, including a species of tiger.  The tigers were hunted to extinction, and the deer and other creatures have lost 100% of their habitat as the area became desert.  Naturally, all species of fish and other wildlife native to the Aral Sea have disappeared, though some river fish have been reintroduced in areas where dams have created small lakes on the Aral Sea’s bed.

What killed the Aral Sea?

We have seen how the Aral Sea has changed over time because of shifting river beds and geologic changes on the Earth’s surface.  But what made the sea disappear altogether?  Even though it seems different, it is essentially caused by the same factors – not enough water from the rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, is reaching the Aral Sea.  The short answer to the question above is water management and irrigation, though many people prefer to blame simpler ideas like Cotton or the Soviet Union.  They also played a part.

Central Asia’s population depends on, and has always depended on, irrigation for almost all of its agriculture, as most of the land receives insufficient rainfall to grow food crops.  For this reason, irrigation in the region dates back to prehistoric times.  Archaeologists have found the remnants of complex piping systems in the older towns and cities, including indoor plumbing and mass-produced clay pipes for small farm irrigation.  In other words, irrigation itself is a part of the history of the region, and should not be considered the sole cause of the loss of the Aral Sea.

The problem, then, is one of degree, of severity.  Irrigation to grow food crops pulled very little water from the region’s rivers, and increased cultivation of the desert land actually improved the climate as more trees and green cover helped to stop the extreme temperature shifts often found in deserts.  Two other ingredients were added, though, which spelled the doom of the Aral Sea: Cotton and the Soviet Union.

Cotton has long been grown in the region, but it was the worldwide cotton shortage of the mid-19^th century caused by the American Civil War which caused the Russian Empire to consider planting more cotton in the area of Central Asia that had recently been conquered.  Cotton requires a lot of sun and a lot of water to grow well.  With irrigation, Central Asia was the perfect place for cotton cultivation.  It remains so today, with Uzbekistan still in the top three cotton exporters – though it is far behind in overall cotton production.  In fact, its high export rate also reflects the fact that it sells only the raw materials, forcing Uzbekistan to import finished products like clothing when it could be producing them itself.

The Soviet Union arose from the ashes of the Russian Empire early in the 20^th century.  In the 1930s, collectivization reached Central Asia from Moscow.  Collectivization was the centralizing and gathering of all privately-owned land, especially farms and factories, into humongous state-owned, state-controlled farms and factories.  Instead of a patchwork of food and cotton farms run by private individuals with carefully maintained irrigation networks, the Soviet Union built gigantic farms with nothing but cotton, supported by large unlined and poorly maintained irrigation canals.  These canals lost as much as half of their water before reaching the crops and were sometimes so large that ships could use them to navigate, adding to the pollution from agricultural chemicals.

This change was not popular with the farmers, but it could not be stopped.  The central government in Moscow made a lot of money, and rewarded the local governments that controlled the farmers.  This system is largely still in place today, especially in Uzbekistan, which is why the Aral Sea has continued to shrink.  The government continues to be the sole benefactor of this system, paying pennies for each pound of cotton that it sells to foreign factories at very high profits.  Although Uzbekistan proclaimed itself a democracy at its independence in 1991, there is no separation of powers, and President Karimov has been in power since before the fall of the Soviet Union.  In other words, his transition from First Secretary of the Communist Party to President of independent Uzbekistan was not a difficult one, as little changed in the country.

Finally, it should be said that the international community has attempted reforms and conservation plans in the region.  These, too, have served to enrich Karimov’s regime, as corruption and embezzling have funneled these international aid funds into government pockets.  Change in the Aral Sea is unlikely to precede change in Uzbekistan.

This post was written by...

Michael Hancock-Parmer – author of 158 posts on Registan.net.

Michael earned an MA in Central Eurasian Studies in 2011 and remains a student at Indiana University pursuing a dual PhD in Russian History and Central Eurasian Studies. He served 6 months in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan in 2005. After the events in Andijan and the subsequent closure of the program, he served 2 years in southern Kazakhstan, returning to the Midwest in 2007. His general area of interest is on post-Timur Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, centered on the Syr Darya river valley.

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