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A Quiet Chernobyl
| Article
# : |
19725 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1991 |
2,312 Words |
| Author
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Michael H. Glantz and Igor Zonn
Michael H. Glantz is head of the Environmental and Societal
Impacts Group at the National Center for Atmospheric Research
in Boulder, Colorado. Igor Zonn is a Soviet expert on
desertification control, working in Algeria, Iraq, and south-
central Asia. |
Six years ago Soviet leaders embarked on the course of restructuring the economic and political aspects of their society. In the West we know of this restructuring as perestroika. But, with respect to the environment, perestroika really began several decades earlier, manifesting itself in the USSR's attempts to modify, if not control, nature in a gigantic way.
Examples of "eco-perestroika" include such post-World War II projects as extensive tree belts (called windbreaks or shelterbelts in the United States), the Kara Kum Canal that irrigates the central Asian desert, the Volga-Don Shipping Canal that connects these river systems and the Caspian Sea with the open ocean, and the Virgin Lands program of the 1950s that attempted to grow wheat on massive new acreage on the Soviet steppes. These projects were explicitly highlighted by the Communists Party as socialist domination of nature and were to serve as building blocks of communism. Unfortunately, in addition to whatever benefits they were designed to yield, such engineering projects often generated many environmental and social problems to which policymakers as well as construction engineers had given little attention.
People are now talking about the "critical" situation in the Aral Sea basin. The truth of the matter is that the situation is well beyond critical. Some Soviet scientists have referred to the deteriorating environmental situation as a "quiet Chernobyl".
"Aral" in the ancient Turkic language means "island"--an island of water in a sea of desert sand. A few decades ago the Aral Sea, an inland sea located in Soviet central Asia, was the fourth largest inland body of water in the world. It contained an estimated 1000 cubic kilometers of water and was the location of successful fishing, hunting, and recreational activities. It was considered a favorable environment for livestock rearing and for waterfowl. In sum, the region was one exhibiting (at least on the surface) sustainable regional development and viable communities.
Today, the picture is totally different. The Aral Sea is now seventh in size. Whereas in the 1950s it covered an area of about 64,000 square kilometers, by the end of the 1980s it had been reduced to 50,000 square kilometers. This decrease has been primarily anthropogenic in origin, resulting from reduced inflows from two major rivers in central Asia: the Amu Darya that flows mainly through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and the Syr Darya that flows through
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