The Blue Eye of the Yellow Desert: The Aral Sea

Water is a resource that has no alternative for human life. Throughout history, civilization has not been established where there is no water. Contrary to popular belief, the Aral Sea began to dry up not because of global warming, but because of Soviet agriculture and irrigation policies. Over the course of 40 years, the vast sea, in which all kinds of fish swim and people travel by ships, has turned into a barren desert. It left behind people who missed the sea and grew up in the desert, as evidenced by the rusted remains of ships.

The Aral Sea is a salt lake located in the south of Kazakhstan and north of Uzbekistan, and until about 50 years ago it was one of the four largest lakes in the world. The rivers that feed the sea originate in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The presence of salty water in the south and fresh water in the north allowed sea creatures to be seen, which would normally be impossible to coexist. Although it is located between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, its basin has a width of more than 690,000 km² and a large part of the population of the region lives in this basin. In 1960, the Aral Lake, which had a surface area of 68,900 square kilometers and a water volume of 1083 cubic kilometers, was 426 kilometers long, 284 kilometers wide, and the deepest point was 68 meters. The Aral Sea, where various kinds of creatures live and where many people fish, was a basin where dozens of ports were active and commercial ships passed through. The drying up of the Aral Sea, which is the blue eye of the yellow deserts of Central Asia, has gone down in history as one of the greatest environmental disasters caused by humanity. About 100 million tons of salty sand dust blown by the wind also creates major environmental problems in the region. The Aral Sea is one of the most valuable pearls in Central Asia. This situation causes Central Asian countries to come face to face from time to time.

The story begins with the efforts of the Soviet Union to increase the irrigated agricultural lands from 4.5 million hectares to 7 million hectares in order to increase cotton production in Central Asia between 1960 and 1990. When all the seas were blocked by the Nazis in World War II, the Aral Sea became 'the only resource that could solve the famine' for the Soviets. During the time the USSR dominated Central Asia, it saw this geography as a raw material and grain warehouse and always tried to make more use of it. Instead of establishing industrial facilities in these regions, they established simple enterprises to be used in the production of grain and raw materials. In the first decades of the USSR, fishing activities were supported and efforts were made to increase employment. During this period, various fish were processed and canned in canned food factories around the sea. However, nuclear tests carried out in this process also caused ecological damage to the Aral Sea. In order to increase cotton production within the framework of the USSR economic development plans, the waters of the rivers feeding the Aral Sea were used to irrigate the cotton fields through the canals made by the USSR during the Cold War period and the dams built on the rivers, the resources feeding the Aral Sea decreased and the lake started to dry out from year to year. While the water channels were being built, the flow directions of the rivers were changed, and the lakes fed by these rivers started to dry up with the cessation of the flow of water. Uzbekistan would be the third-largest cotton-producing country at that time, but the drying up of the lake was inevitable. As the area of the sea shrank, insects and microbes began to nest here. The fish population declined. With the drying of the Aral, the climate in the region changed, there were seasonal imbalances, the rains decreased, the green areas became dry, the animals in the region either migrated or died, the freshwater ponds dried up, and the air temperature increased and the humidity decreased. When the drying of the lake could not be stopped, pesticides and toxic chemicals poured into the lake remained in the lake bed. With the decrease in the water in the sea, sand and salt came to the surface and spread over very large areas with the effect of the wind. Fishing, the most important source of livelihood in the region, has come to an end. The surrounding towns disappeared over time as their inhabitants migrated. The fact that the Aral lake is disappearing day by day has also affected the people living around the lake. Residents of the area faced health problems because they breathed the polluted air. Growth problems decreased fertility, heart and liver diseases increased, while new types of cancer emerged. When the people living in the region started to migrate, the demographic structure deteriorated. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Aral Sea environmental problem 5 Central Asian states; has become a political problem between Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, making regional security fragile, but Moscow has no responsibility for this region. Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan established the Aral lake rescue and protection committee and the Aral Foundation. Practices have been started to increase the water level. Countries such as New Zealand, Japan, Kuwait, and Italy also contributed to this foundation. Today, the Aral Sea is divided into North Aral and South Aral. In 2014, the Southern Aral began to dry out due to the drought. Strategies developed by the United Nations, the European Union, America, and Russia to restore the Aral Sea have caused the problem to deepen rather than solve it. The conflict of interest between regional and global powers has manifested itself, and a solution to the problem has not been produced so far.

With the collapse of the USSR, border problems arose in the region. Control of the Ceyhun and Seyhun rivers passed to water-rich Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. On the other hand, although Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan are dependent on water, oil and natural gas are rich. This situation is complex for the five Central Asian countries and sometimes pits them against each other. The inability of countries to come together and solve the problem deepens the crisis in the region. With the support of the World Bank, an investment of $85 million was made for the Kokaral Dam, and fishing activities started slowly. The official policy of the Kazakh government is to enlarge the Small Aral until it reaches the former surface of the sea. However, this dam, which is planned to save the Small Aral, is a threat to the Great Aral within the borders of Uzbekistan, because, with the dam, the only water supply to the Great Aral was cut off. In addition, oil and natural gas reserves were found in the Great Aral. It is both much more affordable and easier to extract the found underground resources from dry soil. However, Uzbekistan is not interested it that much.

Eventually, the policy of unplanned utilization of underground and surface resources resulted in a natural disaster. The unplanned use of water has brought some environmental and social disasters. The deserted water bed is home to the rotten ships, people longing to swim in the sea, and dead fish that are eyewitnesses of this disaster. Fishing was sacrificed to cotton farming, but it was decided to plant a Saksaul tree in the region in order to eliminate the damage to the dried lake. The Kazakhstan government plans to plant trees on 1 million hectares of the dried-up area by 2030.