The riverbasin of the Aralsea report, by Marcel Klootwijk
Due to a great ecological disaster that toke place in the late fifties, the inflow into the Aralsea is decreased from a historical inflow of 56 m3 per year to an inflow of 2 km3 per year and the water level is decreased from 53 m to 32 m.. Conceived and badly managed farming methods have devastated the economy, health and ecology of the Aral Sea Basin, affecting millions of people.
The Aral-bassin
Characteristics
Surface area: 25.000 square km (used to be 65.00 square km)
Global position: 60° East, 42° North
Feeding rivers: Syr Darya and Amu Darya
Flow rate: Syr Darya: 40 billion m3, Amu Darya: 80 billion m3
Actually flow rate reaching the lake: 20 billion m3
Problems
• Due to extensive irrigation projects and cotton farming a loss of water from sixty percent
• Due to the use of many pesticides in cotton farming, the dust and salt in a great area is polluted.
• Unemployment of fishermen due to the salinization of the lake
• Loss of endemic bird- and mammal.
• The feeding rivers do not reach the lake anymore, so there is no new incoming water.
Due to a great ecological disaster that toke place in the late fifties, the inflow into the Aralsea is decreased from a historical inflow of 56 m3 per year to an inflow of 2 km3 per year and the water level is decreased from 53 m to 32 m.. Conceived and badly managed farming methods have devastated the economy, health and ecology of the Aral Sea Basin, affecting millions of people.
Abstract
The Aral lake is situated between Uzbekistan and Kazachstan and is one of the largest inland bodies of water from the world. The lake is fed by two major rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya. Due to a great ecological disaster that took place in the late fifties, the inflow into the Aralsea is decreased from a historical inflow of 56 cubic meter per year to an inflow of 2 cubic meter per year and the water level is decreased from 53 m to 32 m.. Poor managed farming methods have devastated the economy, health and ecology of the Aral Sea Basin, affecting millions of people. It all began to go drastically wrong when planners decided to intensify cotton production in the 1950s. By 1987, a vast network of irrigation channels stretched into deserts to quench cotton’s need for water across 7.6 million hectares, mainly in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
The water was diverted from the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya rivers which are the feeding rivers of the lake. Salinization became widespread leading to acute soil degradation, and the Aral began to shrink rapidly leaving fishing boats and their community behind.The majority of the people became unemployed. The fishery collapsed totally in the early 1980’s. These days half of the land in Uzbekistan is salinized, that’s about 18000 square km. With the salinization and the drying out of the Aralsea came also a lot of health problems. The strong winds in the area blow the with pesticides contaminated dust over an area as big as the half of Uzbekistan. Studies show that of the 700.000 woman in Karalpakstan, a semi-independent republic of Uzbekistan, some 97 percent are anaemic with hemoglobin levels in their blood well below the World Health Organization’s standard. Five times the percentage of women affected a decade ago, it is probably the highest rate in the world. The drinking water available to most people is polluted drainage water laden with salts and concentrated chemicals from the cotton fields. Because of the many health problems with women there is a high level of maternity death: about 120 women per 10.000 birth. Also diseases such as TB, infections and parasites, typhus, hepatitis, paratyphoid accompany the health problems.
Today there is a fund raised to rehabilitate the region and to find solutions for the health problems and the salinization of the Aralsea. The aid program to the Aralsea is a long-lasting process, covering numerous interlaced problems, with the financial objective of sustainable care for the environment. The funds are raised mainly by contributions from the five Central Asian states suffering from a difficult situation in economy and finance. After meetings in the 1990’s the fund found more sponsors all around the world.
Links
http://www.resource.nl/Projecten/projectdetail.asp?projectID=63
http://www.aral-sea.org
http://www.grida.no/aral
http://www.aral.uz/doc/ad/index.html
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