by MUYNAK, Uzbekistan (AP) — Toxic dust storms, anti-government protests, the fall of the Soviet Union — for generations, none of that has stopped Nafisa Bayniyazova and her family from growing melons, pumpkins and tomatoes on farms across the country. Aral Sea.
Bayniyazova, 50, spent most of her life near Muynak, in northwestern Uzbekistan, tending the land. Farm life was sometimes difficult but generally reliable and productive. Even as the world around them changed dramatically due to political upheaval since the fall of the Soviet Union, the family’s farmland yielded crops, with water flowing steadily through canals coming from the Aral and surrounding rivers.
Now, Bayniyazova and other residents say they are facing a disaster they cannot recover from: climate change, which is accelerating the decline of the Aral, which for decades was the heartland of thousands who live around it. .
The Aral is almost gone. Twenty years ago, deep blue and filled with fish, it was one of the largest bodies of inland water in the world. It has shrunk to less than a quarter of its former size.
Much of their early demise is due to failed human engineering and agricultural projects, now combined with climate change. Summers are hotter and longer; winter, shorter and sharper cold. Water is harder to come by, experts and residents like Bayniyazova say the salinity is too high for plants to grow properly.
“Everyone goes further in search of water,” said Bayniyazova. “Without water, there is no life.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second piece in an AP series on the massive Aral Sea, the lives of people who lived and worked on its shores, and the effects of climate change and restoration efforts in the region. The AP visited both sides of the Aral, in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, to document the changing landscape.
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HISTORY AND DEMISE
For years, the Aral — fed by rivers that depended heavily on glacial melt, and crossing the landlocked countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — held meter-long fish, were arrested and sent across the Soviet Union.
The region prospered, and thousands of migrants from across Asia and Europe moved to the shores of the Aral, for jobs springing up everywhere from canning factories to luxury resorts.
Today, the remaining small towns sit quietly along the former seabed of the Aral – which is technically classified as a lake, due to its lack of a direct outlet to the ocean, although residents and officials call it the sea . Dust storms blow through, and rusty ships sit in the desert.
In the 1920s, the Soviet government began draining the sea for the irrigation of cotton and other cash crops. By the 1960s, it had halved; those crops flourished. By 1987, the level of the Aral was so low that it split into two bodies of water: the northern and southern seas, in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, respectively.
The United Nations Development Program calls the destruction of the Aral Sea “the most significant disaster of the 20th century”. He points out that the decline of the Aral is causing land and desert degradation, drinking water shortages, malnutrition and worsening health conditions.
National governments, international aid organizations and local groups have tried — with varying degrees of effort and success — to save the sea. Efforts range from planting bush to slow down the adjacent dunes to building multi-million dollar dams.
But experts say that climate change has only accelerated the death of the Aral, and will continue to add to the suffering of the residents.
“ONLY LOCAL”
Without the moderate influence of large amounts of water to regulate the climate, dust storms began to blow through towns. They pumped toxic chemicals from a closed Soviet weapons testing facility and fertilizer from farms into residents’ lungs and eyes, contributing to increased rates of respiratory disease and cancer, according to the UN.
Fierce winds caused the sand dunes to swallow whole towns, and abandoned buildings were left full of sand. Residents fled. A dozen species of fish became extinct, and businesses closed.
Madi Zhasekenov, 64, said he watched as the homogenous population of his town dwindled.
“The fish factories closed, the ships were stuck in the harbor, and all the workers left,” said Zhasekenov, former director of the Aral Sea Fishermen’s Museum in Aralsk, Kazakhstan. “It just came to us as locals.”
Dust storms, global warming, and wind erosion are destroying the glaciers on which the ocean’s rivers depend, according to a United Nations report. The remaining water is becoming saltier and evaporating faster.
Melting ice and changing river flows could further destabilize drinking water supplies and food security, according to the report, and hydropower plants could suffer.
During a recent summer in the small desert village of Tastubek, Kazakhstan, farmer Akerke Molzhigitova, 33, watched as the grass her horses were feeding dried up from the extreme heat. To try to save them – a major source of income and food – she moved them 200 kilometers (125 miles) away.
Still, thousands died. Her neighbors, fearing the same fate, sold their animals.
CONTRAST WITH THE ARAL
Near Lake Sudochye in Uzbekistan, Adilbay and his friends fish in the remaining pockets of water in the Aral. Their catch is tiny.
He holds his hands wide, the size of fish years ago. “There is nothing now,” said Adilbay, 62, who goes by only one name.
As the water receded, a nearby fish processing warehouse was closed. Adilbay’s friends and relatives moved to Kazakhstan, looking for a new job.
Fisherman Serzhan Seitbenbetov, 36, and others are thriving. Sitting in a boat swaying in a gentle wave, he drew his net. In an hour, he pulled in a hundred fish, about 2 meters (6.5 feet) long. He will make 5000 Kazakhstani Tenge ($10.50), he said – five times his previous daily wage as a taxi driver in a neighboring city.
“Now all the villagers make good money as fishermen,” he said.
That’s the result of an $86 million flood project led by Kazakhstan, with assistance from the World Bank, which was completed in 2005.
Known as the Kokaral Dam, the dike cuts across a narrow stretch of sea, conserving and collecting water from the Syr Darya River. The dike exceeded expectations, causing water levels to rise by over 10 feet after seven months.
That helped restore local fisheries and disrupted the microclimate, increasing clouds and rainstorms, according to the World Bank. The population grew.
But life could not replicate before the water began to dry up, said Sarah Cameron, an associate professor at the University of Maryland who is writing a book about the Aral.
“It doesn’t support the same number of people and the fishing industry in the same way,” Cameron said.
The construction of the dike in Kazakhstan cut off the southern part of the sea in Uzbekistan from its vital source of water.
Uzbekistan has been less successful in its reform efforts. The government did not undertake big projects like the Kokaral. Instead, the country planted saxaul trees and other drought-tolerant plants to help prevent erosion and slow dust storms.
Agriculture, especially the export of water-intensive cotton, has always been a mainstay of the economy. Millions of people – for years in forced labor campaigns – worked in the cotton picking industry, which further depleted water resources.
The discovery of oil and natural gas in the bottom of the former Aral sea has led to the construction of gas production facilities – and it shows that Uzbekistan has little interest in reform, experts said.
“Although there has been some restoration,” said Kate Shields, assistant professor of environmental studies at Rhodes College, “it was kind of assumed that the sea was not coming back.”
Government officials from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan did not respond to AP emailed questions about reform efforts, water shortages and the effects of climate change.
“Barely living”
On their farm in Uzbekistan, the Bayniyazova family has dug an earthen well in the hope of conserving the precious little water that remains.
“If there is no water, it will be very difficult for people to survive,” said Bayniyazova. “People barely survive now.”
She doesn’t intend to leave her farm just yet but she knows there will be more hardships ahead. Her family will dig deeper wells, see a smaller harvest. They will do whatever it takes to make the only life they know.
“We will do everything we can,” she said. “Because what else can we do?”
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