Modern history of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea and prospects for further regional cooperation

After the collapse of the former Soviet and getting the independence, the Central Asian countries experienced huge environmental problem of global scale inherited from the former Soviet era – the Aral Sea disaster. New geopolitical and economic challenges faced by the region and their understanding served as a predetermined factor for establishing the joint cooperation in solving various water, environmental and socio-economic issues by the Central Asian states.

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On 23rd of June, 1990 in Almaty the leaders of the Central Asian countries addressed to the peoples of Central Asia and issued their first Joint Statement which said:

“The ecological disaster of the Aral Sea is a critical issue for the region. In order to unite efforts aimed at restoring ecological balance in the Aral Sea basin, we have agreed to establish an inter-state commission and set the Aid Fund for the people of Aral Sea region…“.

“We appeal to the President of the USSR, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR with a request to declare the Aral Sea region as a zone of a national disaster and to make a decision on the development and implementation of the State Program for the restoration of the ecological fund, involving specialized agencies of the United Nations and other international organizations to solve the problem…”.

On the 10-12th of October, 1991 in Tashkent the Heads of water management organizations of Central Asia made a Statement on necessity to unite and jointly solve the problems of the Aral Sea.

On 18th of February, 1992 in Almaty the Heads of water management organizations signed an Agreement on cooperation in the field of joint management of the use and protection of trans- boundary water resources and established the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination.

The International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea established in 1993, played a huge role in acquiring the first experience and formation of international relations between newly emerged independent countries, and to this day it serves as a regional platform for cooperation between Central Asian countries including all stakeholders from experts to decision-makers.

Since the very beginning of IFAS operation, its President Mr. Nazarbayev N.A. paid his efforts attracting donor countries, UN structural organizations and international agencies to the Aral problem.

On 29th of June, 1993, Mr. Nazarbayev N.A., the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, fulfilling the role of the IFAS President sent appeal to the heads of 33 foreign states, while the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan addressed to the ambassadors of 25 foreign countries, to 130 major foreign firms and companies and the world’s leading financial institutions with a request to respond on Aral issue.

Such activity successfully resulted in Donor Conference in Paris on 23rd -24th of

June, 1994 organized with the financial support of the World Bank.
Thanks to the countries’ desire for mutual cooperation IFAS successfully
implemented three programs of the Aral Sea Basin (ASBP) during the 25 years of its operation and has become a reliable partner to the United Nations in achieving sustainable development goals within 2015-2030.
Within the framework of the first and second programs of the Aral Sea Basin (ASBP-1, ASBP-2) as well as complex national programs Kazakhstan
implemented the first phase of the large scale Project “Syrdarya Control and Northern Aral Sea (SYNAS-1 )1”.

Through the implementation of the project Kazakhstan managed to preserve the northern part of the Aral Sea (Table 1), significantly improving the water management conditions in the middle and lower reaches of the Syrdarya river, toincrease the safety of hydraulic structures, reduce the number of emergencies caused by climate change and extreme hydrological runoff during the low flow period, and improving wetlands in Syrdarya downstream.

Table 1 Bathographical Data of Aral sea

бати

Notes: BS – Baltic sea, LAS – Larger Southern Aral sea; NAS – Northern Aral sea; MCM – million cubic meter The Kokaral dam was commissioned on August 8, 2005, H – 40.24 m BS
* Data of the Institute of Oceanology, P.P. Shirshov, Russian Academy of Sciences. // The Aral Sea in the beginning of the XXI century. Physics, Biology, Chemistry. Moscow, 2011

1 The Project was adopted on 11 th of January, 1994 in Nukus while the implemented within 2002-2010

Water management improvement in Kazakhstani part of the Syrdarya river has triggered a multiplicative effect resulting in improvement of ecological and socioeconomic conditions in both Kyzylorda and Turkestan provinces (former South Kazakhstan oblast).

The below are shown direct natural indicators of the successful implementation of SYNAS-1:

• revival of the traditional fish industry and export of about 8 thousand ton
of fish to the European Union, Russia, China and other countries;

• revival of 19 lakes of which 8 are of fishery importance;

• restoration of some 50 thousand hectares of pasture lands.

Simultaneously with the implementation of the SYNAS-1 project, Kazakhstani Government launched and implemented State Sector-wised Programme “2002-2010 Drinking Water” to ensure access of the population to high-quality drinking water.

After 2010 the drinking water programme has been continued through a new “Ak Bulak” programme launched in 2011 aimed at achieving by a year 2020 the coverage by centralized water supply system of 100% and 80% of urban and rural population, respectively.

During these years more than 195 km of water supply network have been
rehabilitated and newly built only in Kazakhstani part of the Aral Sea region. Major water supply projects were implemented in Kazakhstani part of Syrdarya river basin such as construction of Aral-Sarybulak group water supply pipeline (4th phase) with laying of 22 km of cast iron pipes, Zhidelinsky, Kentau-Turkestan and other systems of group and local water supply system.

It shall be noted that water supply projects are implementing under other state programmes as well. For example under “Nurly Zhol” State Program 72 km of water supply and 4.5 km of sewer networks will be rehabilitated while by the State Program “2020 Development of Regions” 16.7 km of water supply networks will be rehabilitated in 2018 in Kyzylorda province.

In 2018 the water supple and sewerage projects have been undertaken on the new development area of Kyzylorda city – on the left bank of Syrdarya river.

However in spite of the ongoing projects there are a number of problems in the water supply and sanitation sector in Kyzylorda province. As of the first half of 2018, the share of decentralized water supply system still remains significant and reaches 33.8%, about 12% of tap water supplied to the population does not meet sanitary and chemical standards and 3.9% – microbiological standards.

Even a quarter of a century later, the problem of the Aral Sea does not disappear from the agenda. There are new works that cover various aspects of saving the “life” of the shrinking sea. The problem actively discussed in various countries has acquired a global character.

According to the data of the National Center for Occupational Health and
Occupational Diseases of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the amount of salt from the bottom of the dried-up sea reached 114 billion tons2. And now, with strong storms, which are observed here quite often, about 150 million tons of salty and poisonous fine dust are spread each year, the particles of which are found in various parts of our planet.

The tragic drying up of the Aral Sea has aggravated the disturbance of the
ecosystem. With abrupt shallowing, the sea loses its main functions: purifying, climate-forming and thermo- regulating. The frequency of dust-salt storms has increased 10 times, forming acid rains and sharply reducing the yield of agricultural crops3.

In recent years, due to global climate change, this trend has become even stronger. So, for example, only in the current year of 2018, on May 26-29 and July 17-18, two catastrophic salt storms in the Aral Sea have already taken place, covering the territory of the Kyzylorda region (Republic of Kazakhstan), the Autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan (Republic of Uzbekistan) and the Dashoguz velayat (Turkmenistan), causing huge damage to agriculture and public health.

In 2017 and 2018, at bilateral and multilateral meetings, the Presidents of the Central Asian countries unanimously noted the importance of developing constructive cooperation within the framework of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea and agreed to hold the next 12th Summit of the Heads of States of the founders of the International Fund for saving the Aral sea on 24th of August, 2018 in Turkmenbashi city.
It is expected that the “Aral Summit -2018” will be focused at the issues of further regional cooperation aiming at improving of the environmental, social and economic conditions of the population in the Aral Sea basin as well as possibilities for future collaboration in the integrated use of water resources in Central Asia.

2 Sakiyev K.Z., et al. Modern Health issues of the people of Aral sea region. National Center of Occupational Health
and Occupational Diseases, Ministry of Health of RK// News Magazine of the Kazakh National Medical University,
#3(3)- 2014
3 Omarov E.O., Shek D.M., Tuleutayev K.T. Ecological and medical issues: population health of the Aral sea
region//Medical, social and ecological issues of Aral sea region. –Almaty, “Galym”, 1994.-p.57-59

In addition to the traditional questions, the Agenda shall also include the issue of capacity building and further improving the performance of the Fund in order to increase its effectiveness and deepen interaction with international and financial institutions which has been on the agenda since 2009.

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ARAL SEA DISPATCH How a Disappearing Sea Became a Town’s Main Attraction

By Neil MacFarquhar

 

 

By Neil MacFarquhar

MUYNAK, Uzbekistan — The fierce windstorm that walloped this small defunct port in late spring stunned even a local ecologist long resigned to the devastation wrought by the disappearance of the once ample Aral Sea.

A thick, stinging haze greeted the ecologist, Gileyboi Zhyemuratov, as he stepped outside that day in May. “When you opened the door, everything was white like snow,” said Mr. Zhyemuratov, 57, a descendant of generations of fishermen in a place where there are no longer any fish.

Fishing at the Sudochye Lake, which was once part of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Fishing at the Sudochye Lake, which was once part of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Salt kicked up in a recent windstorm stuck to people’s skin. “You could barely wash it off with water,” said Vladimir Zuev, a tour operator in Muynak. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Salt kicked up in a recent windstorm stuck to people’s skin. “You could barely wash it off with water,” said Vladimir Zuev, a tour operator in Muynak. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Gas drilling pipes by an old Russian cemetery near Muynak. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Gas drilling pipes by an old Russian cemetery near Muynak. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

For three days, the tempest hurled silt off the former seabed of what was once the planet’s fourth-largest inland body of water. It blotted out the sky and left the residents of the former port, Muynak, in western Uzbekistan, chewing salty grit. Even the rain turned brackish, sending panicked farmers scrambling to rescue crops.

As the storm blew in, Vladimir Zuev, a retired Russian pilot turned tour operator, was sitting beneath his shady pergola, where the garden gnomes consist of a bust of Lenin and other Soviet icons.

“It was impossible to see,” he said. “The salt was dry, yet it adhered to the skin and was difficult to wipe off. You could barely wash it off with water.” The flowers in his garden withered.

Paradoxically, the man-made disaster strangling the town has become its main attraction in recent years. Tourism is booming.

The ruins of a Soviet military garrison town outside Aralsk, Kazakhstan. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
The ruins of a Soviet military garrison town outside Aralsk, Kazakhstan. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Karamalan, 82, an elder and herb healer, surrounded by locals at a cemetery in Amzin-Ata village, Kazakhstan. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Karamalan, 82, an elder and herb healer, surrounded by locals at a cemetery in Amzin-Ata village, Kazakhstan. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Tourists enjoying the hot water from a spring that emerged on the former Aral seabed near the village of Akespe, Kazakhstan. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Tourists enjoying the hot water from a spring that emerged on the former Aral seabed near the village of Akespe, Kazakhstan. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

“A lot of people want to see an ecological crisis,” said Vadim Sokolov, the head of the Uzbek branch of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea.

Where waves once lapped at the harbor’s lighthouse, rusting trawlers now sit abandoned on the sandy seabed far below, like dinosaur bones bleaching in the sunshine.

A selfie from the ship cemetery has become a must-have for the Instagram crowd.

Ali and Poline Belhout, a Parisian couple in their 30s, stopped in Muynak on their yearlong around-the-world tour. “It is sad to see that some years ago there was a sea, and now it is only a graveyard for ships,” Ms. Belhout said. “To see boats docked like that is a little freaky.”

Once lacking a hotel, Muynak now has three, along with an internet cafe, and the government is organizing an electronic music festival here on Sept. 14.

The sea, which vanished from Muynak around 1986, is now more than 75 miles away. The only water view is in the modest local museum, with its tattered photographs and nostalgic oil paintings of the once blue horizon.

That unprecedented storm last May confirmed a grim prognosis: The environmental fallout from the loss of the Aral Sea is intensifying.

The sea’s disappearance “is not just a tragedy, as many people have said, it is an active hazard unfolding before our eyes,” said Helena Fraser, the head of the United Nations Development Program in Uzbekistan.

The Aral Sea problem is not new. The five states of Central Asia first established the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea, or IFAS, 25 years ago, though they refuse to cooperate on key problems like water distribution.

That has long stymied any solution, along with dubious, Soviet-style agricultural methods and the quixotic quest for a mega-project that will magically restore the sea.

Antique central planning determines what crops are cultivated, said Yusup Kamalov, the chairman of the Union for the Protection of the Aral Sea and the Amu Darya, one of two rivers that feed the sea. Instead of drip irrigation, mostly outdated techniques consume 80 percent of the available water.

“We are still in Soviet times in terms of farming,” Mr. Kamalov said. “That is why I am not expecting changes.”

Tourists on stranded, rusted ships in Muynak. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Tourists on stranded, rusted ships in Muynak. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
The market in Muynak. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
The market in Muynak. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Making mud bricks to build a house in Muynak. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Making mud bricks to build a house in Muynak. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

The roots of the problem go back around 60 years, when the Soviet premier, Nikita S. Khrushchev, decided to industrialize agriculture across Central Asia despite its aridity. The Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers were diverted into thirsty irrigation canals that fed wheat and cotton fields.

By the time the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Aral Sea was already retreating. Even though the existing water distribution numbers were strangling it, the countries of Central Asia signed an agreement to lock them in place.

Both Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan still grow cotton, even as a push against forced labor to harvest the crop in Uzbekistan and the shrinking water supply have led to a reduction in cultivation.

Climate change has also intensified the scarcity of water. The glaciers in the mountains of Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan that feed the two rivers are shrinking.

Of all the water that flows into the Amu Darya from the Pamir Mountains, less than 10 percent reaches the Aral Sea. The parched sea, now shrunk to around 10 percent of its original surface area, is 95 feet shallower and so brackish that it no longer supports fish or much life.

On a recent trip to Muynak, some international experts gasped as their bus crossed a bridge over the Amu Darya river because only a thin, weary stream struggled through the wide, sandy riverbed.

Yet along the road, rice fields were flooded with water despite a government directive to grow other crops.

In the almost abandoned village of Akespe, Kazakhstan, residents must remove the sand brought by the wind each day. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
In the almost abandoned village of Akespe, Kazakhstan, residents must remove the sand brought by the wind each day. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
An aerial view of irrigation channels for the cotton and rice fields that take water from Syr Darya river in Kazakhstan. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
An aerial view of irrigation channels for the cotton and rice fields that take water from Syr Darya river in Kazakhstan. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Horses galloping on the former seabed in Kazakhstan. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Horses galloping on the former seabed in Kazakhstan. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

“We can see the problem right in front of our eyes — it is absurd, completely absurd, that they are growing rice here,” said François Brikké of the Global Water Partnership, a water management organization in Stockholm.

Local governments and farmers tend to disregard the conservation efforts, Mr. Sokolov said. When the price of rice doubled on reports that cultivation would be limited, some areas rushed to plant.

Further grumbling erupted at lunch when waiters delivered heaping platters of locally grown rice along with meat — a Central Asian specialty called plov.

Boriy B. Alikhanov, the host and the leader of the Uzbek parliamentary faction from the country’s Ecological Movement, suggested that trying to reform water consumption patterns was as much about changing tradition as agricultural techniques. “It is a cultural problem,” he said.

Before the sea disappeared, Muynak was a thriving port of 25,000 people. Most worked on trawlers or in the bustling cannery. About 20 percent of all the fish consumed in the Soviet Union came from the roughly 30 species in the Aral Sea.

Aside from killing the fishing industry, the sea’s disappearance spawned a grim array of health problems like lung and kidney diseases and increased child mortality. In addition, without the mitigating effect of the wind blowing across the water, summers are hotter and winters colder throughout the region.

Bugun, Kazakhstan, a village founded on the shore of the Aral Sea, is now about nine miles away from it.CreditSergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Bugun, Kazakhstan, a village founded on the shore of the Aral Sea, is now about nine miles away from it.CreditSergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
A mosaic in the Aralsk train station depicting how in 1921 the Kazakh town provided fish for starving people in Russia. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
A mosaic in the Aralsk train station depicting how in 1921 the Kazakh town provided fish for starving people in Russia. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Fishermen in Kazakhstan. By building a dam, the country rejuvenated what is sometimes called the Small or North Aral Sea, with 100 feet of water in places. Fish, having once vanished, now flourish. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Fishermen in Kazakhstan. By building a dam, the country rejuvenated what is sometimes called the Small or North Aral Sea, with 100 feet of water in places. Fish, having once vanished, now flourish. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Neighboring Kazakhstan pulled off the one significant feat toward restoring the sea. It built a large earthen dam in 2005 to contain the waters of the Syr Darya river within a smaller basin.

The dam rejuvenated what is sometimes called the Small or North Aral Sea, with 100 feet of water in places. Fish, having once vanished, now flourish, along with eight processing plants, said Marat T. Narbayev, the deputy director of IFAS in Kazakhstan.

The Kazakh town of Aralsk, at the opposite end of the Aral Sea and devastated like Muynak, might revive as a fishing port with the sea now only about 10 miles away.

If the dream of restoring the full sea has been largely abandoned, experts want to see less water siphoned off the rivers. For that, officials said, the countries of Central Asia must engage in the delicate process of renegotiating water distribution and coordinating aid programs, including the proceeds from a United Nations trust fund that is expected to open soon.

“The main goal today is to mitigate the consequences of the Aral disaster,” said Mr. Alikhanov of the Ecological Movement. “In the modern history of humanity, it has never happened that an entire sea perished in front of the eyes of one generation.”

 

Follow Neil MacFarquhar on Twitter: @NeilMacFarquhar

Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com

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