Eye View
by David Charbonneau
Receding Aral Sea could be a stern warning of disasters to come
April 30, 2002 Kamloops Daily News Moynaq used to be a prosperous town on the shores of the Aral sea. Fishing produced 12 million tins of fish a year and supported 40,000 people in 1960. Now Moynaq, in the republic of Uzbekistan, is not even near the Aral sea. The town hasn't moved. The Aral sea has receded. The area has the dubious distinction of being the largest ecological disaster in history. "The story of the Aral Sea is a parable of twentieth century development and industrialization, a parody of progress," says Tom Bissell in his article for Harper's. Bissell's return to Uzbekistan was a trip into the future, a preview of a world in which nature is sold for short term profit. What Bissell saw was the surreal transformation of landscape of the Aral Sea into a hellish nightmare -- all for the sake of cotton. Uzbekistan is now the world's second largest supplier of cotton. But what a price they paid. Keep in mind that this country is mostly desert and cotton is a thirsty crop. The water to irrigate the desert cotton comes from the river Amu Darya, which once emptied into the Aral Sea. Without this supply of water, the Sea began to shrink. Forty years ago, the sea was the fourth largest inland body of water in the world. Now the sea shrinks so fast that cartographers can't keep track. Astronaut Jay Apt saw watched the death of the Aral Sea from space. The rapidly growing exposed snow white sea beds are "loose salt deposits mixed with pesticides and fertilizers. Bourne by fierce winds, this white toxic dust, visible in both photographs, produces health problems ... among the highest ever recorded." It's not like the citizens of Moynaq didn't see the disaster coming. Twenty years ago, city sized clouds blew sand and poison from the dry seabeds into the town. Infant mortality, anemia and tuberculosis were the first sign that something was wrong. Don't worry, the government told the citizens of Uzbekistan, your health will actually improve from the money that we make selling cotton. Don't worry that the sea is receding and the fish are dying. Nature is resilient and the sea level naturally ebbs and recovers, they were told. The fishermen of Moynaq wanted to believe that their families were not getting sicker and that the receding sea was not a problem. Finally, they could pretend no longer. Unable to launch their boats, they left them on the toxic white sand beaches and walked away from a way of life. Things got worse. Now the rates of bronchial asthma, lung disease, infant cerebral palsy, cancer of the stomach and throat, urogenital and endocrine disease, are increasing at a rate as fast as the Aral Sea shrinks. Even without hindsight, the outcome was clear to those who could see. Why aren't we alarmed that we have 500 chemicals in our bodies that weren't there in 1920. How can we be optimistic when one-half of North American men and one-third of women will contact cancer in their lifetime, many because of carcinogenic chemicals? Part of the problem is the "passive bystander effect", says George Marshall in his essay for The Ecologist. Violent crimes, for example, can be committed on a crowded street and no one will intervene. Individuals know that our environment is under assault but we say "why doesn't someone do something?" Another form of denial is the self-justifying loop: "If the problem were that serious, somebody would be doing something about it." People wait for others to act first and if they don't, no one will. Inaction perpetuates inaction. There are times when the loop of complacency is broken such as natural disasters, like floods or earthquakes. Or in times of war, such as avenging the killing of civilians on September 11. But in those cases, some major event has to galvanize people out of complacency. The corporate spin doctors have made global warming seem like an immutable force of nature, even something that Canadians can embrace in the dead of winter. And the spread of harmful chemicals is something corporations could fix, if there was a profit in it. You won't have visit the Aral to see the disaster of environmental neglect. It's coming to a neighbourhood near you. All you have to do is nothing.go back to my Columns in the