THE GREEN ARAL SEA

Back in 1960, the Aral Sea held the title of the world’s fourth-largest inland body of water, covering an expanse similar in size to Sri Lanka. It was the lifeblood of a bustling fishing industry that provided jobs for more than 60,000 people and facilitated maritime transport between the ports of Aralsk in Kazakhstan and Muynaq in Karakalpakstan. However, starting in 1961, the sea experienced a drastic decline, with its levels plummeting by as much as ninety centimetres each year. By the early 2010s, the Aral Sea had lost an astonishing 90% of its original volume.

This environmental disaster can be traced back to Stalin’s ambitious “Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature”, which swept across the Soviet Union in the 1940s. Intended to boost agricultural output through a series of hydrological projects and to create forested areas on the steppe to tackle drought and soil erosion, the plan spelled doom for the Aral Sea. Its lifeline, the freshwater supplied by the Syr Darya and Amu Darya Rivers, was rerouted into an intricate canal system to irrigate the colossal cotton fields of the Soviet Union. From the 1960s to today, the Aral Sea has lost twenty metres of depth, causing it to split into separate water bodies: the North and South Aral Seas, and the smaller Barsakelmes between them. By 2014, the eastern side of the South Aral Sea dried up entirely, leading to the formation of the Aralkum, the world’s newest desert.

Spanning over 40,000 square kilometres, the Aralkum is a desolate expanse of sand dunes, salt flats, and hardened saline soil embedded with fertilisers and pesticides from agricultural runoff. Strong winds occasionally sweep across the desert, stirring up clouds of toxic salty dust that infiltrate farmlands and heighten the risk of respiratory illnesses and cancers among the local population.

While the loss of the Aral Sea and the birth of the Aralkum sounds like a hopeless situation, the good news is NGOs and researchers are working hard to improve the region’s ecology and turn the crisis into an opportunity for positive change. The UNDP’s Green Aral Sea campaign is one such example. Launched in 2020, their aim is to prevent the spread of sand and salt from the Aralkum by planting saxaul plants. The project is financed via public crowdfunding, with each tree costing less than US$1. So far, they’ve planted more than 100,000 saplings.