The Town of the XXI Century
Series of reports on ecological situation in Central Asia

ARAL SEA: TODAY, TOMORROW AND IN THE FUTURE:

THE ARAL SEA PROBLEM: THE SEARCH FOR ITS SOLUTIONS

In 1998, a collection of articles written by scientists from central Asia, Kazakhstan and Russia, was published in Tashkent. It was called "The Aral Sea Problems". Scientists from various countries viewed the Aral Sea region, so to say, from all stand points, tried to predict its future and to find the ways for its salvation.

THE LARGE TROYBLES OF THE SMALL REPUBLIC

Karakalpakia is situated in the Amudaria delta, on Usturt plateau, and on the southern shore of Aral Sea. People living in Karakalpakia has also suffered from all of the consequences of the ecological catastrophe, which has happened at Aral Sea. Here is what, for example, a doctor of economic sciences from Uzbekistan, Mr. Kurbaniyazov, writes about Karakalpakia in the collection of scientific articles about Aral Sea.

"Sometime ago the birth rate in Karakalpakia was much higher than in other Republics of the Soviet Union. The fall pf the birth rate is a result of the influence of many factors. One of them - worsening health conditions of young women, high levels of various diseases. For example, in 1990-1995 the number of people who died from tuberculosis grew up 1,7 times, the death rate among young mothers reached its peak and became twice higher than in Uzbekistan.

The overall level of people suffering from various diseases continues to grow. The numbers of people suffering from diseases in northern regions - Muinaksk, Chimabi, Karauzyak - are 1.4-2.1 times higher than the nation-wide average".

THESE POOR WEALTHY NATIONS

"The effective exploitation of water resources and stable economic development" - that is the name of the article developed by three authors from Tashkent: candidate of economic sciences M. Ahundi, doctor of economic sciences E. Rahimov, doctor of economic sciences I. Trushin, who represented the Institute of macroeconomic and social research. Here is what they noted.

Central Asia is experiencing a paradoxical situation: there is enough water, but at the same time there is a significant lack of water. In comparison with Middle Eastern countries, Egypt, considering resources and consumption we have sufficient supply of water, which in some cases is twice or three times higher than the per capita supply of compared countries. But we use the water too generously, do not paying enough attention to the economy and to our future. Some farms of the region use 200-250% more water on their crop lands, than their more conserving counterparts. However, even the latter ones use 40-60% more water than their foreign colleagues, for example, in Israel.

Having 2 rivers for 5 countries equipped with excellent hydro technical, irrigation installations with high levels of regulation and control over water supply, having highly educated technical water specialists in each of the five countries, - we still exist in conditions of astonishingly low level of economic and legal relations in the sphere of distribution, consumption and exploitation of water resources. For example, it often happens that a particular republic, suffering from a severe fuel crisis in winter, throws tons of water from a large water reserve on the territories of neighboring countries. Of course, they do not need it at all, moreover it causes losses, disturbs the ecological situation. At the same time, this happens to be the same water, which has been many times declared the national property and the "commodity". None of those issuing the declarations do not notice that the non-sanctioned drain of billions of tons of the "commodity" on the territory of neighboring states legally represents a case of gross international "commodity" smuggling.

The international practice has developed multiple flexible ways of international cooperation and water resource management, which take into consideration the interests of hydro power plants, irrigation facilities, fishing industry, transportation, which also help to prevent floods and provide opportunities to monitor the overall ecological conditions. It is possible to establish a state-commercial union, which can be responsible for management of the systems of installations, water divisioning in accordance with the established quotas, supplying sufficient quantities of water to hydro power plants. It could have been great if construction of the currently building power plants had been finished and construction of the new ones had been started (for example, Rogun, Shamaldysai, Kambarota-2). Also, it can be great to increase the square of watered crop lands in southern Kyrgyzstan, Tadjikistan, and Kazakhstan. It is necessary to consider that current natural and economic conditions (current price levels - 3-4 cents per one kilowatt/hour) the return on investments into high pressure water stations is much higher than the returns on investments into oil extraction. However, construction of mountainous hydro power plants requires significant initial investments, which can not be borne by a single state, but which can be accumulated and managed by five countries.

Just interstate water divisioning based on international agreements represents an external task. The most important is to develop and implement national systems of actions aimed at total conservation of water. Water specialists consider that not the whole lot of time has been left before industrial and household water consumption will force us to reduce the territory of watered crop lands - the foundation of our national wealth. Programmatic actions to save water are not cheap. They will be scattered over a large territory and this will make the task more difficult and will require totally new technologies of process and financial management because the operation will involve interests of tens of thousands owners, officials, specialists, large and small investors, many banks and their branches.

There are water supply reserves. Uzbek scientists estimate that if all irrigation losses of water are taken as 100%, then it is possible to calculate that up to one third of the water is lost because of organizational (subjective) reasons, the rest of the water is lost because of technical reasons (filtration and evaporation). It is very expensive to lower the technical losses of water, however, it can be much less expensive to reduce the organizational losses".