Quiet Chernobyl
The drying of the Aral Sea is widely regarded as one of the worst human induced environmental disasters in history. However due to the slow moving nature of the disaster it is often the people of the Aral Sea and the issues they face who are the forgotten. Unlike earthquakes, fires, and tsunamis there is no immediate death toll or number of people left homeless. Nonetheless the drying of the Aral Sea has had a catastrophic affect on the people that relied on it for their water, jobs, food, and health. This is perhaps why it is referred to by some as a ‘Quiet Chernobyl’1. This essay will detail how people’s lives have changed since 1960 around the Aral Sea and analyse the reasons why they have failed to show any real resilience against the
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disaster which has dominated their lives and the space in which they live.
The most obvious area of change in the lives of the people living on the Aral Sea is the massive drop in water levels.
At its height the Aral Sea covered 66,000 km2 and was the worlds fourth largest inland sea in the world 2. For thousands of years the role of the Aral Sea was central to the development of human society in the region. The Aral Sea acted as an Oasis in the dry Central Asian desert. The people living by the sea were Nomadic tribes before the arrival of Imperial Russia but both would build communities that would depend on the sea for everything making them vulnerable to any changes3. These changes occurred in 1960 when the Soviet Union decided to use the fresh water from the two rivers that fed the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, to irrigate cotton plantations in Uzbekistan. By 1980 the irrigated area in the Aral Sea basin was 6.5 million hectares which required all the water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. These rivers in 1961 provided 55 km3 in fresh water every year to the Aral Sea. However by 1987 once all the cotton irrigation canals were constructed the amount of water was nothing4. This meant that Sea levels dropped by 12.9m and the volume of water fell by 66%5. This left ports like Aralsk and Moynaq vast distances from the sea. Armadas of rusting ships fill their sandy, dusty, dry docks with no water to sail on. The livelihood and entire assets for many families were attached to these boats and now they were left to rust. Aralsk alone had a
fishing industry that accounted for 10% of the entire Soviet Union fish catch and now its just a town in the middle of an arid, dry, lifeless desert 6. There were over 40,000 people who worked in the fishing industry on the Aral Sea and when it disappeared in 1982 it left massive unemployment. The multicultural population at the time was made up of workers from all over the Soviet Union and native Kazakhs only made up a small percentage of it. When the waters dried everyone other than Kazakhs was able to move back to their homeland and new industries7. Native Kazakhs weren't so resilient. Their lands were now worthless making selling and moving elsewhere extremely difficult and risky. In order to improve employment the Soviet Union shipped in frozen fish from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans for processing in the existing fishing facilities8. This supply stopped when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 and the jobs were gone again leaving the community alienated. On the South shores Moynaq had been a thriving spa tourist destination. As with everything, when the water receded, it was lost, along with all the associated jobs. All the reasons that there were to visit or invest in the area were gone. It has been estimated that the loss of the Aral Sea has a cost of 1.5 to 2 million rubles a year9. The drying of the sea saw complete destruction of all successful industries in the area and left the native people with nothing. Many fishing villages were completely abandoned as they weren't economically diverse enough to handle such an event. Lack of industrial diversification meant that the local people did not have the capacity to contend with the difficulties and were extremely vulnerable to any changes to the Aral Sea.
The loss of jobs made native fisherman look elsewhere for work. Men would travel over two thousand miles to other fishing grounds to make money to support their families. They would spend half the year there in awful conditions with no access to sanitation or cleaning facilities to provide for their families back by the Aral Sea10. The fact that men were willing to do this shows how desperate conditions were in fishing towns like Aralsk. This movement away of working age men perhaps can explain why the population of the Aral sea is so young. Children under 15 comprise 42.5% of the population in the region. This is staggering considering the same age demographic only makes up 26.8% of the population in the rest of the former USSR11. This decline in the working population shows the lack of work prospects in the area. When these people leave to find better work all that will be left are the young, old and sick. This means the community that stayed were extremely vulnerable to common environmental hazards in the area such as droughts and disease. This can be seen as a factor that contributes to the poor quality of health in the area when compared to the rest of the former USSR.
disaster which has dominated their lives and the space in which they live.
The most obvious area of change in the lives of the people living on the Aral Sea is the massive drop in water levels.
At its height the Aral Sea covered 66,000 km2 and was the worlds fourth largest inland sea in the world 2. For thousands of years the role of the Aral Sea was central to the development of human society in the region. The Aral Sea acted as an Oasis in the dry Central Asian desert. The people living by the sea were Nomadic tribes before the arrival of Imperial Russia but both would build communities that would depend on the sea for everything making them vulnerable to any changes3. These changes occurred in 1960 when the Soviet Union decided to use the fresh water from the two rivers that fed the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, to irrigate cotton plantations in Uzbekistan. By 1980 the irrigated area in the Aral Sea basin was 6.5 million hectares which required all the water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. These rivers in 1961 provided 55 km3 in fresh water every year to the Aral Sea. However by 1987 once all the cotton irrigation canals were constructed the amount of water was nothing4. This meant that Sea levels dropped by 12.9m and the volume of water fell by 66%5. This left ports like Aralsk and Moynaq vast distances from the sea. Armadas of rusting ships fill their sandy, dusty, dry docks with no water to sail on. The livelihood and entire assets for many families were attached to these boats and now they were left to rust. Aralsk alone had a
fishing industry that accounted for 10% of the entire Soviet Union fish catch and now its just a town in the middle of an arid, dry, lifeless desert 6. There were over 40,000 people who worked in the fishing industry on the Aral Sea and when it disappeared in 1982 it left massive unemployment. The multicultural population at the time was made up of workers from all over the Soviet Union and native Kazakhs only made up a small percentage of it. When the waters dried everyone other than Kazakhs was able to move back to their homeland and new industries7. Native Kazakhs weren't so resilient. Their lands were now worthless making selling and moving elsewhere extremely difficult and risky. In order to improve employment the Soviet Union shipped in frozen fish from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans for processing in the existing fishing facilities8. This supply stopped when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 and the jobs were gone again leaving the community alienated. On the South shores Moynaq had been a thriving spa tourist destination. As with everything, when the water receded, it was lost, along with all the associated jobs. All the reasons that there were to visit or invest in the area were gone. It has been estimated that the loss of the Aral Sea has a cost of 1.5 to 2 million rubles a year9. The drying of the sea saw complete destruction of all successful industries in the area and left the native people with nothing. Many fishing villages were completely abandoned as they weren't economically diverse enough to handle such an event. Lack of industrial diversification meant that the local people did not have the capacity to contend with the difficulties and were extremely vulnerable to any changes to the Aral Sea.
The loss of jobs made native fisherman look elsewhere for work. Men would travel over two thousand miles to other fishing grounds to make money to support their families. They would spend half the year there in awful conditions with no access to sanitation or cleaning facilities to provide for their families back by the Aral Sea10. The fact that men were willing to do this shows how desperate conditions were in fishing towns like Aralsk. This movement away of working age men perhaps can explain why the population of the Aral sea is so young. Children under 15 comprise 42.5% of the population in the region. This is staggering considering the same age demographic only makes up 26.8% of the population in the rest of the former USSR11. This decline in the working population shows the lack of work prospects in the area. When these people leave to find better work all that will be left are the young, old and sick. This means the community that stayed were extremely vulnerable to common environmental hazards in the area such as droughts and disease. This can be seen as a factor that contributes to the poor quality of health in the area when compared to the rest of the former USSR.