Speaker A
Welcome to FactSpark. In this video, we will take a closer look at one of the worst environmental catastrophes that ever happened on planet Earth.
Explore the Aral Sea environmental disaster, its causes, impacts, and ongoing restoration efforts by local and global communities.
Key Takeaways
- The Aral Sea disaster is one of the worst human-caused environmental catastrophes in history.
- Soviet water diversion for cotton farming caused severe ecological and social damage.
- Increased salinity and pollution devastated marine life and human health.
- International cooperation and targeted programs have begun to mitigate the crisis.
- Sustainable recovery focuses on community health and environmental restoration rather than full sea refilling.
Summary
- The Aral Sea, located between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, has shrunk by over 80% since the 1960s due to Soviet-era water diversion for cotton farming.
- This human-caused catastrophe resulted in the loss of 54,000 sq km of freshwater, devastating local ecosystems and communities.
- The diversion of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers drastically increased salinity, leading to extinction of native marine life and collapse of the food chain.
- Pollution from industrial runoff, pesticides, and a former weapons testing site further harmed the environment and human health.
- Health issues such as respiratory diseases, kidney problems, cancer, and eye damage have increased due to toxic dust from the dried seabed.
- The disaster was intentional, driven by Soviet plans to boost cotton production, which succeeded short-term but caused long-term damage.
- Since 1997, affected countries have collaborated with UNESCO and international organizations to address the crisis through scientific and financial support.
- The Aral Sea Basin Program (ASBP) has undergone three phases, with early efforts failing but recent initiatives like the Kok Aral Dam showing progress.
- International funding and cooperation focus on improving water quality, reducing child mortality, and increasing life expectancy in the region.
- Efforts distinguish between the North and South Aral Sea, with more success seen in the northern part due to targeted water management.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
We will see how the depletion of the Aral Sea affected people, flora, and fauna in the decades following the disastrous decision, and how a combined human effort with help from all around the globe attempts to rectify the horrendous situation of the Aral Sea Basin.
Speaker A
The numbers: The depletion of the Aral Sea between the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan may be the most dramatic human-caused environmental catastrophe in history.
Speaker A
Between the 1960s and 2010, the surface area of the Aral Sea has decreased by over 80%.
Speaker A
Fifty-four thousand square kilometers of fertile freshwater, around the area of the European country Croatia, which gave a home to millions of fish and people, turned into barren, toxic, and inhospitable desert.
Speaker A
In other words, just by the depletion of the Aral Sea, the world has lost 1% of its surface area of fresh water.
Speaker A
The volume even decreased from 1,100 cubic kilometers in 1960 to less than 100 cubic kilometers in 2010, and it is expected that by the year 2031, a mere 75 km³ of fresh water will be left.
Speaker A
It might be incomprehensible to us today, but this environmental catastrophe was NOT a mistake.
Speaker A
The depletion of the Aral Sea was fully intended by Soviet leaders, and they were actually surprised by how long the Aral Sea managed to survive.
Speaker A
How and why? It was the early 1960s when the central government of the Soviet Union proposed a 5-year plan to initiate water-intensive cotton farming in the desert of today’s Uzbekistan.
Speaker A
The plan was to divert the rivers Amu Darya and the Syr Darya away from feeding into the Aral Sea, and into the desert of northern Uzbekistan, to be almost entirely used for irrigation purposes.
Speaker A
At this time, the existence of the Aral Sea was considered to be a mistake of nature by the Soviet leaders, and among many other irrigation canals built during the Soviet times which were part of Stalin’s “Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature,” this decision
Speaker A
had detrimental effects on the ecology, economy, and social life of the entire region. The irrigation channels themselves were of such low engineering quality that at peak moments, 70% of the river’s content did not even reach the plantations and instead evaporated
Speaker A
or leaked into the desert floor. The greed that led to the diversion of the two large rivers did pay out in the short term since Uzbekistan did in fact turn into the largest cotton producer in the world during
Speaker A
the late 1980s, but the toll that this entire project took on the environment and the 3.5 million people living around the Aral Sea severely outweighs the benefits.
Speaker A
The consequences: Since the Aral Sea is an endorheic lake, meaning that it has no natural outflow into an ocean, the depletion of water drastically increased the salinity levels since the salt remaining after evaporation had nowhere to escape.
Speaker A
The salt levels increased from 10 grams per liter to a toxic 370 grams per liter during peak measurements.
Speaker A
As a comparison, the average salinity of the world’s oceans only hovers around 35 grams of salt per liter, and the famous Dead Sea, which is known for its extremely salty water, only contains around 340 grams of salt per liter.
Speaker A
This increased level of salinity in the water firstly brought the larger native marine life to extinction, but in a second step, it deprived the entire food chain of the ecosystem.
Speaker A
Increased salinity levels allowed salt-tolerant fish to migrate into the waters, which happened to be the first planktivorous fish.
Speaker A
Planktivorous means that these fish are feeding off of zooplankton and phytoplankton, and these microscopic life forms, which live suspended in the water, are the foundation of the marine food chain.
Speaker A
The introduction of additional predators gave the final death blow to life in the Aral Sea.
Speaker A
Unfortunately, the 3.5 million humans living around the Aral Sea are not spared from the detrimental effect of the retreating shoreline.
Speaker A
Toxic run-off from industrial plants which feed into the Aral Sea’s tributary rivers, pesticides from nearby cotton farms, and a former weapons testing facility on an island of the Aral Sea additionally polluted the waters, and the concentration of these pollutants
Speaker A
only increases with a decrease of the water volume. These pollutants are then not just fed back into the human food chain by the polluted water, but also by the barren desert ground, which was left behind by the retreating shoreline,
Speaker A
which gets picked up by winds and blown right into the communities near the former shore.
Speaker A
Respiratory disease, kidney issues, cancer, and eye damage are some of the most common side effects of constantly having toxic dust blown in your face, and it will be an act of strength by the local, national, and international community to turn the odds of the region
Speaker A
to favor the environment and people of the Aral Sea, or Aral Desert, depending on when you look at it.
Speaker A
The rebuilding process: While the disaster seems to have taken such extreme extent that it may seem impossible to act against it, not all hope is lost just yet.
Speaker A
In 1997, the five states which have territory in the Aral Sea Basin, namely Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, asked UNESCO for advice on how to deal with the crisis, and several initiatives have been taken since then.
Speaker A
The goal of UNESCO’s newly formed SABAS, the Scientific Advisory Board of the Aral Sea Basin, was to strengthen the local community of scientists working on the problem and to foster cooperation between the five affected states.
Speaker A
Financially supported by 1% of the annual budget of the member states, the World Bank, the German Federal Ministry of Research and Technology, and the European Investment Bank, several possibilities have been explored to stop and reverse the environmental catastrophe.
Speaker A
Instead of focusing on simply filling up the Aral Sea, however, the performance indicators of the measures focused on increasing the health of the local communities.
Speaker A
The goals here included the decrease of child mortality and water usage, as well as increase the life expectancy and water quality in urban and rural areas alike.
Speaker A
The Aral Sea Basin programs: When looking at the overall and hands-on efforts to save the Aral Sea, a distinction between the North and South Aral Sea has to be made.
Speaker A
In 1988, a land bridge formed to separate a minor part in the north of the Aral Sea in Kazakh territory, and this is where most of the efforts apply at the moment.
Speaker A
The specific program which is supposed to save the Aral Sea is called the Aral Sea Basin Program, or ASBP in short, and it went through three distinct attempts.
Speaker A
The first program was subdivided into three phases where the first phase ran between 1992 and 1997 and is widely regarded as a failure due to the negligence of the real issue at hand.
Speaker A
It focused on revitalizing the new shoreline but failed to address the root cause of the diversion of the tributary rivers and therefore brought little to no success.
Speaker A
Phase two was equally unsuccessful as it largely relied on creating public awareness in the region, which did not actually provide any alternatives to the local communities.
Speaker A
Just because the fishermen and farmers are made aware of the overlying issue, they still need to put food on the table and keep their plantations alive.
Speaker A
The third phase showed the first signs of success with the construction of the Kok Aral Dam, which separated the northern and southern Aral Sea from each other to more accurately manage the now independent water systems.
Speaker A
The second program picked up in 2002 and addressed a vast amount of environmental, socioeconomic, and water management issues.
Speaker A
It was backed with around 2 billion USD from the World Bank, the United States Agency for International Development, the Asian Development Bank, as well as many Western governments.
Speaker A
The third program, which started in 2009, however, was the real game changer. The four different di
Speaker A
Firstly, the data collection system for several sub-systems such as the water and pollution cycle have been greatly improved, to give scientists and engineers a proper baseline to fully understand the intricate system of the basin.
Speaker A
Direct improvements of the irrigation systems from the tributaries have significantly increased the flow of water to the Aral Sea without harming the productivity of the agriculture in the region and maybe most importantly, the Program established a transparent platform
Speaker A
for all stakeholders of the region to communicate and archive beneficial solutions for everybody. Further steps included the improvement of drinking water and general medical supplies in the area, to tackle some of the consequences of the decades of pollution.
Speaker A
These hands-on actions have shown immediate effects, specifically for the north Aral Sea and the after years of retreating water levels, it has finally risen to around 10 meters above the lowest recorded level.
Speaker A
With the increased water levels, control of the salinity has been regained as well, and some freshwater fish have recently returned to the ecosystem.
Speaker A
It is important to say however, that these measures were only successful for the northern lake, while the southern one is still considered to be abandoned and left to its fate.
Speaker A
Kazakhstan has taken big sacrifices to improve its share of the former Aral Sea but Uzbekistan, which is where the rest of the former Sea is located, shows little to no intentions of improving its part.
Speaker A
Uzbekistan shows no sign of looking away from its cotton farming and instead, extensive oil explorations have been undertaken by the Uzbek government in the newly deserted area.
Speaker A
Any attempts of Kazakhstan and the international community to restore the majority of the Aral Sea have been met with deaf ears.
Speaker A
Final thoughts This environmental catastrophe is a perfect example of the fragility of ecosystems on our plant.
Speaker A
While we often assume that nature as we know it is a robust system which humans can exploit for their economic gains, this is a perfect example of how one bad decision can lead to millions of destroyed life’s and a completely collapsed ecosystem with uncountable casualties.
Speaker A
On the other hand, it is a good example of how international cooperation, and sufficient allocation of funds can actually have a big impact on the environment we live in.
Speaker A
Let us hope, that we as humanity have learned from our mistakes and that history won’t repeat itself.
Speaker A
If you enjoyed this video, I would be happy to have you as a subscriber.
Speaker A
Thanks for watching, cheers
Topics:Aral Seaenvironmental catastrophewater diversioncotton farmingSoviet Unionsalinitypollutionecosystem collapseAral Sea Basin Programenvironmental restoration
