Environment:
WITH ARAL SEA FACING EXTINCTION, CENTRAL ASIAN LEADERS FALL BACK ON WORDS RATHER THAN ACTION
10/10/02

The shrinking Aral Sea, bordering Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, has developed into a symbol of Central Asian governments’ inability to cooperate on vital regional issues. By 2020, according to United Nations experts, the symbol will likely no longer exist.

UN Environmental Programme specialists estimate the Aral’s surface area is now just 25 percent of that which existed before Soviet central planners began diverting the rivers that feed the sea for ill-conceived agricultural irrigation schemes. Thousands of tons of salt and sand from the dried up seabed are being scattered by winds every day across a 300-mile radius, according to an October 9 report on Kazakh Commercial Television. There is little that can be done at this stage to save the sea from extinction, the UN experts say.

The announcement, which seems to confirm environmentalists’ worst fears, overshadowed a meeting three days earlier of Central Asian heads of state in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. At that meeting, the presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan met under two rubrics, as the Central Asian Cooperation Organization and as the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea. Though the meeting produced declarations and a call for a United Nations commission on the sea, observers say the gathering did little to foster a cooperative spirit. Predictably, say experts, Central Asian leaders asserted their own geopolitical interests, rather than working towards a joint solution.

Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Tajik President Emomali Rahmonov both told reporters how keenly they want to rescue the sea from drying, but the conference produced only promises of further discussion and a call for a United Nations commission.

Security issues dominated the summit. Uzbek President Islam Karimov strenuously endorsed a sustained American military presence in neighboring Afghanistan; Tajikistan, aligning itself with Russia, praised the Kremlin’s support for Afghan military training. All presidents pledged to fight terrorism and urged other countries to fund Afghan reconstruction. This sort of posturing has overwhelmed discussion of other regional issues, including more efficient water management strategies.

Also at the summit, Karimov and Rahmonov reached agreement on delimiting the Tajik-Uzbek border. As Karimov told reporters, the document defines 86 percent of the border. Four disputed areas remain in the Sughd Region of Tajikistan, but Karimov added, “We are in no hurry there.”

Tajik television declared that rehabilitating the depleted sea would be “practically impossible” without “the international community's support.” Tajikistan chairs the Aral Sea fund for 2002 and 2003. Nazarbayev, for his part, called the sea’s shrinkage a “global disaster,” noting that salt and sand from the irrigated sea complicates the environment as far away as the Arctic Ocean. If four countries cannot develop a plan that other countries or lenders would fund for the sea’s restoration, though, it is hard to see how a broader body of nations could implement such a plan.

Meanwhile, UN experts reportedly are urging the Kazakhstani government to stop “spending money on the restoration of the Aral Sea and should spend it on evacuating people from ecological disaster area,” the October 9 televison report said.

The summit did produce some decisions that may prove important, say experts. All four presidents committed to preparing to develop a water and energy consortium for the transference of natural resources across country lines. If such a consortium develops, it would represent a big step forward in regional cooperation. Kyrgyzstan has fought protracted battles with Uzbekistan over water policy; in February, when Kazakhstan stopped supplying electricity to parts of Kyrgyzstan, the Kyrgyz prime minister threatened to leave parts of Kazakhstan without water for irrigation. A consortium would create an arbiter for such disputes, though it is unclear how or when it would take effect.