Categories: Enterteiment

Ecological disaster: the world's fourth largest lake is now an arid desert

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© Ivars Krutainis/Pexels

In the 1960s, its sparkling waters stretched across 68,000 km², making it the fourth-largest inland body of water in the world. The Aral Sea provided the rhythm of life for thousands of families, feeding local populations with its abundant fish and regulating the regional climate.

Today, this aquatic jewel is nothing more than a memory, replaced by a lunar landscape where the rusty skeletons of fishing boats pile up. Of its original surface, only a meager expanse of 8,000 km² remains, while the rest of its dried-up bed has given birth to a new desert on the border between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan: the Aralkum.

The Aralkum Desert extends over approximately 50,000 km². © Screenshot/Google Maps

A toxic desert

The Aralkum is not a desert like any other. Each gust of wind that sweeps across its expanse stirs up a deadly cocktail of toxic particles, the result of an unscrupulous industrial past. Between 1984 and 2015, these emissions nearly doubled, from 14 million to 27 million metric tons annually. This dust carries a lethal mix of Soviet chemical weapons residues, agricultural pesticides, and industrial fertilizers.

This is what remains of the main bed of the Aral Sea. © upyernoz/Flickr

These particles also travel enormous distances, up to 800 km from their source of emission. When sandstorms arise, they destroy crops, contaminate groundwater and infiltrate the lungs of the inhabitants. Because of their chemical composition, they also accelerate the melting of the surrounding glaciers. The worst part of all this is that this desert did not form naturally; it is of human origin, which makes this story even more tragic.

Intensive agriculture: the price of white cotton

Why the Aral Sea has retreated so quickly? Indeed, on a geological scale, it is simply unthinkable that this could happen due to environmental factors alone. To understand this phenomenon, we must go back to the 1960s. A period when the Soviet Union, in its quest for agricultural power, undertook a titanic project: the transformation of Central Asia into a cotton kingdom. The Amu Darya (which has its source in Tajikistan) and Syr Darya (Kyrgyzstan) rivers, age-old arteries that fed the Aral Sea, have been diverted to irrigate 7 million hectares of cotton fields.

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The diversion of these nourishing rivers set off a chain reaction with devastating consequences for the Aral Sea ecosystem. Deprived of their freshwater supply, the residual waters turned into a brine hostile to life. The salinity intensified year after year, until it reached concentrations higher than those of the saltiest oceans on the planet. In these waters that had become toxic, life gradually died out, just as if a flame were deprived of its oxygen.

The plankton disappeared, which led to the disappearance of the fish that lived in these waters. Sturgeons, carp or bream, all these endemic species gradually disappeared. This local extinction also led to the disappearance of migratory birds that found refuge on these fish-filled banks. This vital crossroads of biodiversity thus disappeared in a few decades (see the Google Earth timelapse video below).

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For the riverside communities, who depended mainly on fishing for their livelihood, this ecological disaster has led them straight into the wall. Harbors have become ship graveyards, canneries have closed, and fish markets have emptied. The way of life of an entire population has evaporated as surely as the waters of the sea itself.

A Warning to Humanity

The health repercussions of this disappearance are still relevant. Doctors are observing an alarming increase in congenital malformations in newborns and an increase in respiratory diseases in adults. Faced with this situation, regional governments, supported by the European Union and USAID (United States Agency for International Development), are trying to stabilize this toxic desert by revegetation.

Local scientists are racing against time to identify and cultivate plant species capable of surviving in these extreme conditions. Their mission: to create a natural plant barrier to contain the spread of toxic dust.

The disappearance of the Aral Sea represents “one of the world's greatest environmental disasters” according to the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. The warning is all the more powerful given that similar scenarios are emerging around the world. Lakes and water systems are drying up in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Australia and the United States, victims of the same deadly combination: intensive industrial agriculture and climate change. Mother Nature certainly does not always forgive us for our mistakes, and even 60 years later, it is more than likely that a tragedy of the same magnitude will occur again.

  • The drying up of the Aral Sea has transformed an oasis of life into a toxic wasteland of human origin.
  • The diversion of rivers for cotton cultivation has destroyed the ecosystem and local livelihoods.
  • The health and environmental consequences of this project dating back to the USSR continue to this day.

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Teilor Stone

Teilor Stone has been a reporter on the news desk since 2013. Before that she wrote about young adolescence and family dynamics for Styles and was the legal affairs correspondent for the Metro desk. Before joining Thesaxon , Teilor Stone worked as a staff writer at the Village Voice and a freelancer for Newsday, The Wall Street Journal, GQ and Mirabella. To get in touch, contact me through my teilor@nizhtimes.com 1-800-268-7116

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