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Kara Kum Desert - 1989

Kara Kum Desert - 1989

Jacek Pałkiewicz
2006-06-17 15:47:14

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BETWEEN PAST AND PRESENT IN TURKMENISTAN

A message scrawled in peeling white paint on the rusting side of one of the many fishing boats stranded on the sand summed up the situation : "Godd-bye Aral!"
I looked upon the tragid death of Lake Aral, one of the Soviet Union's greatest ecological disasters, with some bitterness. We in the west know almost nothing of this environmental catastrophe. In just twenty years the lake's water level has fallen by 14 meters and its waters have retreated as much as 150 kilometers from its former banks.

This drastic alteration is due to man. More particularly, it is the fault of there having been dug a 1350-kilometer long irrigation canal from the river Amu Daria, Aral's main tributary, to the southernmost part of the Kara Kum desert, which has been dry for centuries. When the immense project was planned no-one could have imagined that it would create such serious ecological problems, but these problems nevertheless now exist. Besides, the scheme has not even made as much use of the Amu Daria's waters as was once expected. The canal runs between tow sandy banks and thus loses 30% of its flow to drainage and evaporation.

The fishermen have had to invent new forms of work for themselves. The massive fish-processing plant on Aral's shores, which employs 1550 workers, continues to work only as a result of the transportation of 7000 tons offish from the Pacific Ocean every year. Meanwhile, the whole of Amu Daria basin is dying, its water and plant life are disappearing inexorably and the salt content of the river has risen from 4 parts per thousand to 23 parts per thousand.
The whole region is rapidly becoming desert. Salt carried from the dried up area of the lake has rendered land uncultivable as far as 300 kilometers away and has been blown 1000 kilometers to India.

Professor Sirbay Bazarbay often perfaces his remarks with the statement ...