Quiet Chernobyl
The drying of the Aral Sea is widely regarded as one of the worst human induced environmental disasters in history. However due to the slow moving nature of the disaster it is often the people of the Aral Sea and the issues they face who are the forgotten. Unlike earthquakes, fires, and tsunamis there is no immediate death toll or number of people left homeless. Nonetheless the drying of the Aral Sea has had a catastrophic affect on the people that relied on it for their water, jobs, food, and health. This is perhaps why it is referred to by some as a ‘Quiet Chernobyl’1. This essay will detail how people’s lives have changed since 1960 around the Aral Sea and analyse the reasons why they have failed to show any real resilience against the
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At its height the Aral Sea covered 66,000 km2 and was the worlds fourth largest inland sea in the world 2. For thousands of years the role of the Aral Sea was central to the development of human society in the region. The Aral Sea acted as an Oasis in the dry Central Asian desert. The people living by the sea were Nomadic tribes before the arrival of Imperial Russia but both would build communities that would depend on the sea for everything making them vulnerable to any changes3. These changes occurred in 1960 when the Soviet Union decided to use the fresh water from the two rivers that fed the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, to irrigate cotton plantations in Uzbekistan. By 1980 the irrigated area in the Aral Sea basin was 6.5 million hectares which required all the water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. These rivers in 1961 provided 55 km3 in fresh water every year to the Aral Sea. However by 1987 once all the cotton irrigation canals were constructed the amount of water was nothing4. This meant that Sea levels dropped by 12.9m and the volume of water fell by 66%5. This left ports like Aralsk and Moynaq vast distances from the sea. Armadas of rusting ships fill their sandy, dusty, dry docks with no water to sail on. The livelihood and entire assets for many families were attached to these boats and now they were left to rust. Aralsk alone had a
At its height the Aral Sea covered 66,000 km2 and was the worlds fourth largest inland sea in the world 2. For thousands of years the role of the Aral Sea was central to the development of human society in the region. The Aral Sea acted as an Oasis in the dry Central Asian desert. The people living by the sea were Nomadic tribes before the arrival of Imperial Russia but both would build communities that would depend on the sea for everything making them vulnerable to any changes3. These changes occurred in 1960 when the Soviet Union decided to use the fresh water from the two rivers that fed the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, to irrigate cotton plantations in Uzbekistan. By 1980 the irrigated area in the Aral Sea basin was 6.5 million hectares which required all the water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. These rivers in 1961 provided 55 km3 in fresh water every year to the Aral Sea. However by 1987 once all the cotton irrigation canals were constructed the amount of water was nothing4. This meant that Sea levels dropped by 12.9m and the volume of water fell by 66%5. This left ports like Aralsk and Moynaq vast distances from the sea. Armadas of rusting ships fill their sandy, dusty, dry docks with no water to sail on. The livelihood and entire assets for many families were attached to these boats and now they were left to rust. Aralsk alone had a