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WATER POLITICS

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 the article and as discussed on this blog earlier, sharing dwindling water resources is a complex post-Soviet puzzle as Central Asia, once a single part in the Soviet machine, is now five countries with competing interests. Uzbekistan, for example, the most populous, depends on its neighbor Kyrgyzstan for water.

“…old habits are hard to break, and 17 years after the Soviet Union collapsed, cotton is still king and the environmental destruction continues unabated, cutting into crop yields. Uzbekistan is the world’s second-largest cotton exporter after the United States, drawing a third of its foreign currency earnings from the crop, but that status seems increasingly threatened by corruption, poor planning and the degradation of cropland.

Far less money is spent now on maintaining the vast networks of water drainage and irrigation that crisscross the country than was expended under Communism. Authorities spend about $12 per hectare on maintenance (a hectare is around two and a half acres), down from $120 per hectare in Soviet times, according to the International Water Management Institute. Blocked drainage pipes push salt levels up, damaging the land and dragging crop yields ever lower.

A United Nations report in 2001 estimated that 46 percent of Uzbekistan’s irrigated lands have been damaged by salinity, up from 38 percent in 1982 and 42 percent in 1995.

“The delivery system is dilapidated, the drainage system is failing,” said one foreign expert, who asked that his name not be used because he has to work with Uzbek officials. “It is a big problem.”

…Uzbekistan’s environmental problems date from the 1950s, when Nikita S. Khrushchev ramped up industrial agriculture, diverting river flows into a vast new maze of industrial-size canals. Slowly, the land began to change.

The farmer in Khujayli recalled a car trip with his father in the winter of 1954 near the city of Muynoq that began with a crossing of miles of Aral Sea ice. Now the shore is more than 50 miles away from the city. In the 1970s, his grandfather’s apricot trees died. Salt eats away at shoes here and turns bricks white. “For so many years we raped the land,” said the farmer. “This is the result.”

Sharing dwindling water resources is a maddening post-Soviet puzzle. Central Asia, once a single part in the Soviet machine, is now five countries with competing interests. Uzbekistan, the most populous, depends on its neighbor Kyrgyzstan for water. This year will be dry, Uzbek farmers and officials said, because Kyrgyzstan used more of its water than usual to generate electricity for heat last winter, which was unseasonably cold….”