Aral: The Sea That Died and Haunts Us

The dried up Aral Sea

The Aral Sea was Killed by an Engineering Mistake

It is difficult to imagine a waterbody 67,300 square kilometres in size drying up completely and shapeshifting into a desert. This was exactly what happened with the Aral Sea. In an age when we talk about how human-induced global warming is destroying the planet, those who see exaggeration in such narratives must read and study the fate of the Aral Sea.

Before the 1950s, the Aral Sea was a vast blue expanse of water fed by two large rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya. The death of that sea, situated between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, was entirely caused by human activity that altered the geographies of this region.

The familiar picture of the Aral Sea nowadays is the skeletons of fishing vessels protruding from its exposed sandy bottom like ghosts of another world. The place reminds us of apocalyptic mythologies.

The Soviet Union, in its zealous and overconfident efforts to increase agricultural production and prove to the world the might of the new communist nation, diverted the two major rivers that fed the Aral Sea into its pastures. Forgetting the organic nature of a landscape and its geography, believing unrealistically in human power over nature, they saw the river water only as a raw material that could help Uzbekistan grow manifold quantities of cotton and rice than it had produced earlier.

As the cotton fields flourished, the Aral and millions of people's livelihoods were completely decimated. By the 1960s, the sea was shrinking and retreating, eventually becoming a muddy cesspool. A few more years and the water entirely disappeared. Even before that, the sea had partitioned into two separate tiny water bodies- the North Aral Sea and the South Aral Sea.

Reviving Aral: Hopes and Challenges

Until the 1990s, there was no hope for the two ghost lakes. The North Aral Sea in Kazakhstan was partially rejuvenated under a multi-million dollar World Bank project. The South Aral Sea in Uzbekistan did not have such luck. It still looks like a desert.

The 5 million people living around the Aral Sea have experienced the rarest of environmental disasters and remain the victims of them. The millions of fishermen who depended on the sea for their livelihood have lost their jobs and income security.

Even if the world has the means and technology to bring back the Aral Sea, that might not happen. Natural gas companies have already started digging on the seabed for gas. They would not want this golden opportunity of accessing huge natural gas resources to slip from their hands in the name of bringing water to the communities of the Aral.

A Human Tragedy Still Unfolding

What is it like to see a sea disappear as one grows up on its shores, playing in the water, dining every day on the variety of fish caught from its depths, and sleeping to the lullaby of the waves every night? Only the people of Aral could understand wholly the level of anxiety and trauma that such a phenomenon would have evoked. In the Aral region, the climate has become hotter, rainfall sparse, and the flora and fauna have changed irrevocably. How does one calculate the accumulated social and economic value of this scale of a colossal loss?

Many people fled the region in search of better livelihood options. The sand is salty and full of toxic chemicals. Abandoned and stuck-in-sand fishing vessels can be spotted across the shores of ‘the sea that was; they give an eerie look to the entire place. Dust storms have become very common. The health impact on the people from all the above is huge and remains unassessed while the air quality has turned pathetic.

Ian Small, J van der Meer, and R E G Upshur, in their research paper about the health disaster that ensued in the Aral, cite a popular saying they picked up from the local lore- “If every specialist brought with them a bucket of water, the Sea would be filled again.” This sea has been studied by scientists to the point of exhaustion of multiple aspects of its drying up.

The middle-aged people of the region vaguely remember seeing ships in the sea. They might be dreaming, in their sleep, of the breams, catfish, pike-perches, and asps that brimmed the fishermen’s boats arriving from the sea.

The Uzbek people's dependence on irrigated cotton for income complicates the possibility of re-diverting the Amu Darya River and rejuvenating the Aral Sea. If the river is diverted back, cotton farmers and labourers will lose their livelihood. Also, cotton is a major export product of Uzbekistan. The situation reminds everyone of how certain missteps turn irreversible over time.

Hopes for Future

Hopefully, the future of the Aral region might not be as bleak as it looks. Many international NGOs and UN organisations have joined forces to improve the region's ecology and living conditions. The United Nations also ratified a resolution in 2021 to declare the Aral Sea as a zone for environmental innovations and technologies. If these efforts of the international community succeed, Aral will become a beacon of optimism for the world struggling to cope with climate change.

The first step for the people of Aral will be to attain water self-sufficiency. Worldwide, the negative impact of agricultural irrigation, which includes dams, on the health of major rivers and riverine systems cannot be overlooked. When more than 90% of a river's water is diverted into agriculture, as happened in the cases of Amu Darya and Syr Darya, it is not surprising that the rivers stop flowing somewhere downstream. By the example of Aral, the world also stands warned- meddling with the geography of rivers has an environmental and human cost which is quite unaffordable for our sustenance.

References

Ian Small, J van der Meer, and R E G Upshur, Acting on an Environmental Health Disaster: The Case of the Aral Sea, jstor.org

The Country that Brought a Sea Back to Life, Dene-Hern Chen, 23 July 2018, bbc.com

The Ghostly Fishing Fleet Stranded in a Desert, Stephen Dowling, 15 September 2016, bbc.com

The Aral Sea Disaster: History, Current Issues, and Future, The Brussels Times, 4 June 2021.

This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualised advice from a qualified professional.