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Central Asia’s Water Challenges: Uzbekistan’s Legacy of Salt
June 17th, 2008
Via The New York Times, an interesting article detailing the destructive environmental and human legacy left behind in Uzbekistan, a land-locked country whose rivers were diverted to grow cotton on arid land, causing the Aral Sea, a large saltwater lake, to lose more than half of its surface area in 40 years. As noted in […]
Read more »Water shortages in Kyrgyzstan Cause Serious Problems in Uzbekistan
June 17th, 2008
From Eurasia.net, a report that low water levels in the Toktogul dam of Kyrgyzstan are having an adverse impact on Uzbek agriculture, as Toktogul is the main water reservoir in Fergana Valley. As the article notes: “…Uzbekistan is already having problems with irrigation of cotton fields in its Fergana valley part. The abnormal weather – […]
Read more »Global Water Geopolitics: Potential Water Woes (and Wars) in Central Asia
January 21st, 2008
As freshwater resources become ever more scarce or polluted, a global crisis in access to clean water is emerging. While this will be most acutely felt in Africa and West Asia, a lack of freshwater is already an economic constraint in major growth markets like China, India, and Indonesia, as well as commercial centers in […]
Read more »The Aral’s Agony: Hydrocarbons (yes); Water Restoration (a drop in the bucket)
January 1st, 2008
A recent report at Energy Daily on the race to exploit Central Asia’s last significant body of water – the Aral Sea – from a hydrocarbon perspective reminded us that the Aral basin is perhaps the planet’s most damaged freshwater resource, a brutal legacy of decades of Soviet centralized planning. Thus, while the Aral’s waters […]
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