aral sea

[Note: The following piece is not new, but it needs a new home. The story remains vitally relevant, especially since the Bu$h administration continues to ignore environmental science. I hope it will be of interest to some. -bt]

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Fifty years ago, the Aral Sea basin was a richly forested eco-system fed by two of the longest rivers in Asia. Port cities thrived on the fishing and canning industries that fed the surrounding region. In the hinterlands, nomads herded sheep, barbecuing a favorite mutton entree known as Shashrik over the charcoal of the Saksawool woodlands, and maintaining a balance of usage and regrowth of the range for scores of generations.(1)

The Aral Sea - the Romans named it a sea because the water is salty - was the fourth largest lake in the world, larger than Lakes Huron and Michigan.(2) It stretched 266 miles from its northern port, Aral'sk, to the port on its southern delta, Muynak.(3) The lake was fed in the north by the Syr-Dar'ya River, flowing from its headwaters in Kyrgyzstan through Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, then north through Kazakhstan into the lake.(4) The Amu-Dar'ya River begins near Khyber Pass in Afghanistan, flowing along the border between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan before forming a delta at the southern end of the Aral Sea.(5) Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan borders the Aral Sea in the north, while Uzbekistan lies on the south shore.

The fishing industry and related canneries employed 35,000 people and supported thousands more, while feeding the region's population of some 3.5 million.(6) Ships loaded with sturgeon, perch, carp and other fish moved in and out of the ports, where the streets sometimes flooded on stormy days. The fisheries boasted a catch of 40,000 tons a year.(7) The sign welcoming visitors to Muynak still bears pictures of seagulls and fish, relics of a lost way of life.(8)

During the late 1980s when Mikhail Gorbachev allowed Soviet society to open, and especially after the Soviet Union collapsed, western scientists began to discover that the Aral Sea had gone missing. Western reference books were still printing the same size numbers for the Aral Sea,(9) but satellite photos demonstrated that the sea was receding at an incredible rate.(10)

Today, the Aral Sea has lost three-fourths of its former volume and two-thirds of its former surface area. The water level has dropped by almost seventy feet, and the salinity of the lake is triple the level of forty years ago.(11) The former sea has split into two parts with a diminishing trickle of water between them.(12) An international team of scientists reported in August 2001 that the average depth of the Aral has dropped to fifty feet and surmised that the sea will soon dissipate into a "cluster of pesticide-laced lakes."(13) Pessimistic projections raise fear of the complete disappearance of the Aral Sea by 2015.(14)

Out of the twenty-four species of fish that once survived in the Aral, only four remain, and these are too small to fish for or eat. Effectively all of the birds and wildlife, as well as the forests that once surrounded the lake, have disappeared. Michael Glantz, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, concludes that the sea is dead. "Flora, fauna, commerce, livelihoods, human health - they have all changed so much that the sea as it was 40 years ago is dead."(15)

The once busy ports at Muynak and Aral'sk now lie seventy miles from the lake shore. The bays that once drove the region's economy are now sand dunes littered with the sun-baked hulls of ships, literal fish out of water.(16) Both cities have begun to resemble ghost towns, where the infrastructure has fallen apart and residents are building shantytowns out of the bone-dry boat hulls.(17) Both towns fought to keep the water in the bays, building dams and dredging waterways, to no avail. The Soviet government began trucking fish to the canneries from the Caspian Sea, but then tin for the cans ran out and the Soviet Union dissolved.(18) Now the fisheries and canneries are long closed; there are "no trees, no grass, only dirt yards littered with bits of trash. Hanging over all of it -- and over the people who still live here -- is the memory of the water."(19)

The worse part of this tragedy is that it was caused entirely by policies and actions of the Soviet Union that utterly ignored environmental consequences, even against the advice of its own scientists. The Soviets willfully committed "eco-cide," sacrificing the Aral Sea in favor of an economic policy that would eventually collapse upon itself. The desertification of the Aral Sea was not a natural process that the Soviets failed to combat; it was deliberate. And since the Soviet Union collapsed, the governments left holding the bag have not been able to stem the ebbing tide -- indeed, they and the Russians may be accelerating the change from Aral Sea to Aral Desert.

Economy Over Ecology

The Soviet Union began exporting cotton by the late 1930s, and the Stalin government made the decision to dedicate lands in Central Asia to cotton production, disregarding their own science concerning irrigated agriculture in arid regions. The government launched a massive irrigation project to drain the rivers of the Aral basin to irrigate wide expanses of desert.(20) Soviet scientists predicted dire consequences for the Aral Sea and its ecosystem if the Amu-Dar'ya and Syr-Dar'ya were exploited as planned, but their advice was ignored.(21) The irrigation channels "spread to about 7 million hectares by 1990, an area the size of Ireland."(22)

Irrigation canals were etched through the arid regions upstream from the Aral Sea, covering seventeen thousand square miles in the Amu-Dar'ya delta alone.(23) The poorly constructed canals lose half the water diverted through seepage and evaporation.(24) Further, no consideration of sustainability was given to the extensive project. Rice production was introduced to leach the salinized soil but required enormous amounts of water, where annual precipitation was already quite low.(25) More water was necessary for the plan than the river and skies could provide.

As a result, water from the two rivers stopped reaching the sea much of the time, and not at all in dry years. The Amu-Dar'ya has not reached the sea the last two years due to drought, and water from the Syr-Dar'ya has not reached the sea during the summer when needed for irrigation, coming instead in the winter and causing floods, exacerbating the ecological situation.(26) The sea began drying up within years after introduction of the plan, but the Soviets told people that "the disappearance of the sea would be good, because then more cotton fields could be planted on the seabed."(27)

The reduced flow to the Aral began a spiralling process that essentially salted the earth across the region. The rising salinity of the sea spread to the soil, requiring increased irrigation to achieve the same level of production, thereby taking more fresh water from the rivers and further lowering the sea level. As more of the barren sea floor continues to be exposed, winds blow salty grit throughout the region - and as far away as the Arctic Ocean - "thick enough to clog automobile carburetors in areas close to the Aral."(28) Satellite surveys show sand drifts measuring from 120-180 miles in length from the eastern coast of the sea. This massive transfer of salt and sand significantly increases the area affected by the dried-out seabed, as up to ten powerful drifts are recorded every year.(29) Incredibly, dust from the exposed Aral Sea bed alone has raised the level of particulates in the Earth's atmosphere by five percent.(30)

Despite increasing irrigation, productivity of agricultural fields has dropped precipitously, as more and more land has turned into an acidic, saline wasteland. According to one graphic report, "the whitish alkaline soil is dotted with huge salt flats - or with puddles that look like something out of science fiction: small crowns of foam floating on pink water, with white, salt-encrusted plant stems projecting bizarrely into the air. If you take a wrong step, you sink knee-deep into the black mud. There is a stink of rotten eggs."(31) Overuse of herbicides, pesticides, defoliants (including Agent Orange), and chemical fertilizers has leached into the water supply throughout the region, contaminating the drinking water pumped out of the ground.(32) The winds kick up the mix of salt and chemicals, meaning much of the air is toxic.(33) DDT began showing up in mothers' milk.(34)

The agricultural plan allowed the Soviet Union to become the world's second-largest exporter of cotton, but nearly half the mammal species of the Aral basin present in 1960 vanished, as did three-quarters of the bird species.(35) The fishing industry dwindled away as the sea dried up, and as the fish died in polluted, saline water.(36) Wild boars, jackals, foxes, muskrats, deer, pheasants, swans and pelicans used to roam the forests and sea shore - and even tigers as late as the 1970s - but all are gone now.(37) The Saksawool woodlands, once so important to the livelihood of the region, are no longer to be found.(38) The losses in the agricultural and fishing sectors caused by environmental damage are estimated at over $600 million a year in the Muynak region of Uzbekistan alone.(39)

Desertification

The death of foliage and wildlife surrounding the Aral Sea marked a vast climate shift known as desertificiation.(40) While a desert is a natural ecosystem in arid areas where ecological conditions continually change in a natural way, desertification transforms land into desert-like conditions through destruction or degradation.(41)

Weather patterns alter in response to the change in landscape, leading to pronounced extremes and Biblical-style infestations. The reduced moderating effect of the Aral Sea on local climate results in hotter summers, colder winters, and a diminished growing season.(42) The mean monthly temperature increased six degrees between 1970 and 1990, with 120 degree readings the norm during the summer and lows of fifty-below commonplace in winter.(43) Sandstorms dessicate the land in the summer, while winter rains cause floods that further erode the diminishing soil.

The socio-economic cost has been staggering. Desertification has already engulfed seventy percent of the land formerly used in agriculture, depleting productivity - the gross harvest of vegetables, cereals, fruits and cotton have been increasingly falling since the 1980s.(44) The loss of livelihood among the people of the region has resulted in economic distress, political corruption, a rise in crime, mass unemployment, low wages and environmental destruction. Transforming the region into a huge cotton plantation monoculture has corroded not only agriculture, but also industry, education, health, and finally public morality.(45)

Adding to the misery this past summer, termites invaded the south shore near Nukus, the capital of Karakalpakia, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan.(46) An area of over 738,000 square kilometers has already been afflicted by termites in seven districts of Karakalpakia. Experts link the infestation to the abrupt change in the the region's biological diversity. Termites destroy trees and building foundations, further exacerbating the erosion and desertification process.(47)

To the east of the Aral Sea lies the Kyzilkum, or Red Sands. To the south, the Karakum, or Black Sands. To the west, the Ust-Urt Desert. With the deserts converging, one vast desert appears to be forming - ironically, the fourth largest desert in the world in place of the once fourth largest lake. In Karakalpakstan, they already have a name for the emerging wasteland. The name, spoken softly, as though with reluctance to give it power, "Aralkum": The Aral Sands.(48)

Renaissance Island

As if all this devastation were not enough, the Aral Sea is also home to perhaps the single most contaminated spot on the planet, Renaissance Island.(49) This site was home to a chemical and biological weapons testing facility where Soviet military scientists manufactured a poisonous cocktail of agents, including anthrax, tularemia, plague, brucellosis, Q fever and Venezuelan encephalitis.(50)

Soviet scientists tested strains of these agents, conducting experiments on animals, and developed aerosols for spreading the bacteria. Former head of the Soviet biological weapons program, Ken Alibek, described a typical test method, in which scientists tied hundreds of monkeys to poles on the island, set off bombs that puffed yellowish brown clouds of biological agents, then monitored how long it took for the monkeys, bleeding from their mouths, to collapse and die.(51) The facilities at Renaissance Island were shut down when the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Russians left for good in 1992. People living near the island sailed over to remove abandoned equipment and scrap metal to sell.

The citizenry, of course, was not told what the military had been doing on the island, but a series of catastrophes aroused suspicions and presaged the level of contamination to be discovered later. In 1976, an enormous shoal of fish died and washed ashore in the Aral Sea; in 1988, nearly 500,000 saiga antelope dropped dead in one hour on the steppe northeast of the Sea.(52) In 1971, a field test of unusually potent, weaponized smallpox caused an outbreak that killed two children and a young woman before health teams disinfected homes, quarantined hundreds of people and administered nearly 50,000 emergency vaccine shots in Aral'sk.(53) Apparently, a ship of scientists conducting ecological research sailed too close to the smallpox test, which had sent out a deadly plume of germs, infecting a crew member who carried the virus back to the city.

In the late 1980s, according to Ken Alibek, the Soviets buried more than 100 tons of Anthrax 836 - enough to extinguish the population of the Earth several times over if delivered efficiently - just a few feet underground.(54) Soil tests conducted by U.S. scientists in 1997 revealed that the anthrax spores were still alive in six of the eleven burial areas.(55) Alibek warns that no particular expertise would be necessary to collect a small vial of the agent, which would be sufficient to grow a ton of Anthrax 836.(56) He has advocated aggressive action to neutralize the facilities and to employ underpaid Soviet scientists since 1997.

The disappearance of the water from the Aral Sea raises an ominous new threat: As the water receded, Renaissance Island became ever larger, and now forms a peninsula that connects to land where terrorist groups like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) operate.(57) Intelligence experts believe the IMU maintains close links to the Al Qaeda network and Chechen rebels. Analysts fear that terrorists could venture out onto the island and collect anthrax from the contaminated soil.(58)

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Congress finally began to take action to address the threat posed by Renaissance Island.(59) Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan granted access to the island to U.S. military scientists, and Congress allocated six million dollars for a clean-up project.(60) Whereas in November 2001 the island still had not been secured,(61) by May 2002 military guards and groups of helicopters were patrolling the area.(62) The Pentagon plan for cleaning up Renaissance Island will likely entail digging thousands of shallow holes and pumping in chlorine, disinfectant hydrogen peroxide and formaldehyde, according to Alibek.(63) Shafts will later be dug for soil analysis and refilled when experts are convinced no traces of anthrax remain.(64) Of course, there is no way to know whether anthrax spores have already been collected from the island by terrorist or criminal groups.

Health Ramifications in the Region

The health effects stemming from the degradation of the Aral Sea have predictably devastated the surrounding region. The serious illnesses that plague the population at unusually high rates read like the family history section of an insurance form: viral hepatitis, tuberculosis, typhus, cancer, dysentery, diphtheria, kidney ailments, bronchitis, asthma and other respiratory diseases, cholera, gastritis, and an array of allergies.(65) The respiratory diseases and various forms of cancer have reached epidemic proportions.(66)

The infant mortality rate may be the most severe health consequence. One in nine children dies before reaching a first birthday, one of the highest rates in the world and seven times the rate in Russia.(67) Eighty percent of the women in the Karakalpakstan province of Uzbekistan suffer from anemia; virtually all pregnant women are severely anemic, the highest rates in the world.(68) "Nearly all of them haemorrhage while giving birth," says gynaecologist-obstetrician, Dr. Oral Ataniyazova. "One reason why the maternal mortality rate is so high."(69)

Dr. Ataniyazova says that most of illnesses are environmentally induced. "We have high levels of heavy metals, salts and other toxic substances in our drinking water, and the bulk of our vegetables are contaminated with organochlorine pesticides, such as DDT, which is still used here in great quantities." Food fish are taken directly from pesticide-laced irrigation canals.(70) In roughly the last decade, kidney and liver diseases, especially cancers, have increased by more than 30-fold, arthritic diseases 60-fold, and chronic bronchitis by 30-fold. "Over 20 per cent of our young women, aged 13-19, have kidney disease. Another 23 per cent suffer from thyroid dysfunctions. And many women have high levels of lead, zinc and strontium in their blood."(71)

Due to the abject poverty in the region, patients receive insufficient treatment, and there is not enough medicine to treat even the most acute cases.(72) The medicines that are available were first used in the 1950s and 1970s, and some people are developing medicine-resistant forms of tuberculosis.(73) "People are dying like flies," laments Dr. Ataniyazova, who fears she is witnessing the end of her society due to human folly. Last year, thousands of Uzbek families formed a mass exodus out of Karakalpak to the Kazakhstan border areas,(74) adding more reason to believe her fears are valid.

Local and International Response

When the contraction of the Aral Sea began to threaten the livelihood of Aral'sk and Moynaq, the towns desperately fought back. Residents dredged away earth and fashioned sand dikes to contain the water. With limited technical means and resources at their disposal, the efforts largely failed as the water diminished and became too salty and polluted to support fish.(75)

The Aral has now separated into two sections, north and south, and efforts have begun again to contain the water, albeit far from the two former ports. Scientists hold out hope that the smaller, northern section may be salvaged. In 1997, residents of Aral'sk deployed earth-moving equipment to scoop sand from the seabed and built a dike twelve miles long and 85 feet wide between the two sections of the lake. "Birds reappeared, including gulls, swans, and pheasants. Danish scientists analyzed fresh sole from its waters and were amazed to find them clean enough to eat." Local authorities spent about $535,000 on the dike, and the water depth grew from 115 feet to 125 feet.(76)

The Kokaral Dam containing the Malyi Aral ("Little Aral Sea") has burst twice, yet locals continue to be encouraged.(77) Thousands of pounds of kambala and plaice were brought from the Sea of Azov to stock the fledgling lake, and they have remained viable and even multiplied. The project, financed by Denmark, has extended this effort, and large scale fishing appears to be in the near future for the Little Aral.(78)

The government of Kazakhstan secured a $64.5 million loan from the World Bank earlier this year to support the growing project.(79) Further aid to rescue the Aral has trickled in from numerous international organizations, including the UN, US-AID, the EU, and the Asian Development Bank. Numerous conferences have been convened to explore solutions to the health and environmental problems faced by the region. These efforts focus on the goals of maximizing the satisfaction of competing demands for water in the basin and equalizing distribution of water deficits, while securing continued flow to the Aral Sea.

In addition, major studies to deal with the Aral problem have been commissioned, often from far-flung institutes. The Center for Research in Water Resources at the University of Texas conducted an extensive study to develop a water allocation model allowing the region to predict the impact of different scenarios of water consumption and water supply development.(80) The Japanese government has taken an acute interest in the Aral problem, making it a priority for its Global Infrastructure Fund and instituting a campaign to promote control and management of the natural environment of the Aral region.(81)

A British consulting firm, Gibb, has been developing a dam and reservoir management program to assess storage reservoir alternatives and wetlands restoration.(82) Construction of mini-reservoirs have begun in the south to revitalize the delta in the Muynak region.(83) A system of hydrometric and hydro-chemical equipment for automatic control of water flow speed, quality and quantity monitoring has been installed on the Amu-Dar'ya River in northeast Turkmenistan as well.(84) Nevertheless, billions of dollars will be needed to sustain and stabilize the water level, particularly if the larger problem in the south is to be addressed.

Reviving the Aral Sea will require a complex effort focusing on region-wide economic development. Conflicting water demands between the mountainous upstream areas and the lowlands downstream must be resolved, with the objective of allowing the Amu-Dar'ya and Syr-Dar'ya Rivers to feed the Aral once again.(85) Key to this goal will be introducing efficient irrigation methods, which will entail lining canals to prevent leakage and retiring unproductive agricultural lands.(86) Replacing the cotton monoculture in the lowlands with traditional fruit and vegetable farming, which requires less water, will be necessary as well.

Without such a shift to sustainable development, economic and political stability will remain out of reach in the region, continuing the allure of of Islamic fundamentalist terror and organized crime groups.(87) Unfortunately, a lack of coordination and cooperation among the various countries in the basin have disrupted success of these efforts. Indeed, self-serving projects and outlandish proposals by surrounding states threaten to make the situation worse.

In Uzbekistan, cotton production remains a priority, with extensive and wasteful irrigation continuing to drain the Amu-Dar'ya before it reaches the Aral.(88) In Turkmenistan, the leaky Karakum canal carries water across hundreds of miles of desert to the capital, Ashkhabad. Worse, the Turkmen government has adopted a plan to create a vast concrete reservoir stretching hundreds of miles, virtually filling in the Central Karakum desert.(89) While Turkmen officials forecast that the reservoir will improve the ecological situation in the Aral basin, the plan would virtually cut off water flow to Uzbek lands and to the Aral Sea itself for good. In the north, Tajikistan holds back water from the Syr-Dar'ya for hydroelectric plants, while the Kyrgyz are creating reservoirs with the intent of selling water to those downstream.

In an even more ambitious and potentially catastrophic scheme, Russia has revived a Soviet-era project to address the Aral Sea problem. Under this plan, thousands of miles of canals would divert water from Siberian rivers, the Ob and the Irtysh. The canals would stretch from southern Russia across the breadth of Kazakhstan to feed the Syr-Dar'ya.(90) The plan has created tensions between Russia and the basin countries, as well as with China, which has begun damming the Black Irtysh River and constructing canals to bring water to its western territories.(91) The project is fraught with problems and threatens to extend to the north the same environmental decimation caused by the initial Aral Sea irrigation project fifty years ago. Yet the plan moves forward as Russia seeks to revive its influence in the region and stave off incursions by the United States and China into regional affairs.

The terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 and the ensuing war on terrorism have further complicated matters. While aid for regional solutions to the crisis in the Aral basin had begun to gain momentum, Afghanistan has become a new focus for aid efforts. In particular, proposals to boost Afghan agriculture diverts aid, but more importantly, will almost certainly entail further depletion of water from the headwaters of the Amu Dar'ya.(92) And, as with the rest of the Aral basin, without economic development in northern Afghanistan, the lure of terror and organized crime groups remains the best hope for young people wishing to improve their lot. As a result, the need for a region-wide solution to water shortage and agricultural development has become even more acute post-9/11.

Postscript

In June 2002, the United States Environmental Protection Agency issued a report to the United Nations acknowledging global warming as a rapidly growing, man-made problem.(93) The report cites specific, looming consequences of climatic change, threatening the meadows of the Rocky Mountains, the crucial marshes along seacoasts, and the forests of the Southeast. Water supplies dependent on melting snow are also at risk, leading to more prolonged heat waves, droughts, and increased forest fires. The administration of President George W. Bush has chosen to ignore these warnings, however, stating that Americans will simply need to adapt to these climate changes.

The Aral Sea disaster provides stark illustration of the dangers of ignoring large-scale environmental threats for the sake of short-term economic concerns. While the recent EPA report does not predict the sort of devastation suffered in the Aral basin, neither did the Soviet scientists who warned against transforming the Aral fifty years ago. Now, the Aral Sea may transform into the Aral Desert, in the course of a single life-time. The unforeseen effects of ignoring deliberate, man-made climate change in the Aral region provides a cautionary tale to those who would ignore the effects that global warming is now having in the United States and beyond.

- Blake Thompson, Dec. 11, 2002

Notes:

• 1. Yukihiro Morimoto, Atsuo Morimura, & Natalia Ogar, "Several Landscape Ecological Concepts on the Aral Sea Crisis Revealed by Remote Sensing," CEReS International Symposium, Journal of JSRT (Japan) (1997).

  2. The Hammond Almanac, at 292 (1982 ed.). The Aral Sea had a surface area of 25,676 square miles, compared to 23,010 sq. m. for Lake Huron and 22,300 sq. m. for Lake Michigan. The Caspian Sea, another salty lake, is the world's largest in area at over 143,000 sq. m.

  3. Id.

  4. The Syr-Dar'ya flows 1,859 miles, slightly shorter than the Rio Grande River, at 1,885 miles. Id. at 291.

  5. The Amu-Dar'ya flows 1,616 miles, somewhat longer than the Colorado River, at 1,450 miles. Id.

  6. Douglas Frantz, "Despair Looks Like A Sea That Died," New York Times, Mar. 4, 2001, Sec. 4, Pg. 16.

  7. "When the Sea Runs Dry," Swiss Review of World Affairs, October 1, 1997 [hereinafter, "Swiss Review"].

  8. The sad story of Muynak (Turkic spelling, Moynaq) has been reported in depth: Frantz, supra note 6; Bruce Finley, "Soviets leave anthrax legacy: As sea shrinks, danger grows," Denver Post, Dec. 2, 2001, at A1; Thomas French, "Where the Sea Used to Be," St. Petersburg Times, Dec. 02, 2001, Pg. 1A; Rachel Dornhelm, "History of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan," Savvy Traveler, Minnesota Public Radio, June 1, 2002, available in Lexis/Nexis ALLNEWS directory. A documentary film on Muynak produced by the Canadian Broadcast Company, "The Hospital at the End of the Earth," premiered last spring at the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. The Washington Daybook, March 14, 2002, available in Lexis/Nexis ALLNEWS directory.

  9. See, e.g., The Cambridge Factfinder (1993), at 41.

  10. The Aral Sea Homepage, http://www.dfd.dlr.de/app/land/aralsee/index.html.

  11. Mick Corliss, "Agencies seek help for Aral Sea: Suffering sea overlooked amid Afghan aid," The Japan Times, Jan. 20, 2002; Juha I. Uitto, "Environmental disaster feeds terrorism," The Japan Times, March 30, 2002. The Aral Sea Homepage provides these measurements comparing the lake in 1960 to 1998:

• 1. "Saving the last drop," The Economist, July 01, 2000.

  2. Bruce Finley, "Soviets leave anthrax legacy: As sea shrinks, danger grows," Denver Post, Dec. 2, 2001, at A1.

  3. Daphne Biliouri, "The International Response to the Aral Sea," Monograph, Jan 6, 2000 [on file with author].

  4. Corliss, supra note 11.

  5. See Finley, supra note 13; Thomas French, "Where the Sea Used to Be," St. Petersburg Times, Dec. 02, 2001, Pg. 1A; Swiss Review, supra note 7.

  6. Rachel Dornhelm, "History of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan," Savvy Traveler, Minnesota Public Radio, June 1, 2002, available in Lexis/Nexis ALLNEWS directory.

  7. Id.

  8. French, supra note 8.

  9. David H. Getches, Essays from Ashkhabad, to Wellton-Mohawk, to Los Angeles: the Drought in Water Policy, Univ. of Colorado Law Review, 64 U. Colo. L. Rev. 523 (1993), at 527.

  10. Id. at 528.

  11. J. R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (2000), at 164.

  12. The Aral Sea Homepage, supra note 10.

  13. Swiss Review, supra note 7; The Aral Sea Homepage, supra note 10.

  14. Morimoto et al., supra note 1. Rice production in Kazakhstan requires more than 3,000 mm of water per year, whereas annual precipitation is only around 100 mm per year.

  15. Vladimir Solntsev, "Desertification of Aral sea basin continues," ITAR-TASS News Agency, Nov. 15, 2001, available in Lexis/Nexis ALLNEWS directory.

  16. French, supra note 8.

  17. Center for Research in Water Resources, The Aral: Coming to the Aid of a Dying Sea (Fall 1995), [hereinafter, "CRWR"]. Medical aid group Doctors Without Borders estimates that 75 million tons of salts and toxic dusts have been spread across Central Asia from the Aral region. Judith Matloff, "Optimism rises, with water, in bid to revive Aral Sea," Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 5, 1999.

  18. Leena Ninan, "Fighting Against Ourselves: Efforts to Combat Desertification & Land Degradation," Currents: International Trade Law Journal (Summer, 2001), 10 Currents Int'l Trade L.J. 65.

  19. Getches, supra note 20, at 526.

  20. Swiss Review, supra note 7.

  21. Swiss Review, supra note 7; Frantz, supra note 6.

  22. French, supra note 8; Fred Pearce, "When the Wind Blows," New Scientist, June 26, 1999, at 25.

  23. CRWR, supra note 28.

  24. McNeill, supra note 22, at 164-65.

  25. CRWR, supra note 28.

  26. French, supra note 8; CRWR, supra note 28.

  27. Morimoto et al., supra note 1.

  28. Biliouri, supra note 14.

  29. Morimoto et al., supra note 1.

  30. Ninan, supra note 29. The comprehensive United Nations definition of desertification follows:

• 1. CRWR, supra note 28; Aral Sea Homepage, supra note 10.

  2. Aral Sea Homepage, supra note 10; Swiss Review, supra note 7.

  3. "Sixty per cent of Uzbekistan affected by desertification - academic," BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union - Economic, June 20, 2001, originally from Narodnoye Slovo, Tashkent (in Russian), Jun 16, 2001, pg. 3.

  4. Getches, supra note 20, at 529; Biliouri, supra note 14.

  5. "Termites attack Aral Sea shore," Interfax News Agency, June 01, 2002, available in Lexis/Nexis ALLNEWS directory.

  6. Id.

  7. French, supra note 8.

  8. The Russian name for Renaissance Island, Vozrozhdenie, is frequently mistranslated as Resurrection Island, which would be Voskreshenie.

  9. "Poisoned island," The Economist, July 10, 1999 [hereinafter "Poisoned Island"].

  10. Finley, supra note 13.

  11. Poisoned Island, supra note 50.

  12. William J. Broad & Judith Miller, "Report Provides New Details of Soviet Smallpox Accident," New York Times, June 15, 2002,http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/15/health/15SMAL.html. The report, written by a team of experts at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, draws on formerly secret Soviet documents and interviews with survivors.

  13. Finley, supra note 13.

  14. "US to clean up anthrax test site on Aral Sea island in Uzbekistan," Agence France Presse, Oct. 23, 2001.

  15. Finley, supra note 13.

  16. Uitto, supra note 11.

  17. A related concern is that plague and other diseases on the island could be spread by animals such as burrowing rodents, or humans collecting scrap metal, causing an epidemic in the beleaguered region. Worse, "many of the strains of disease developed on the island were deliberately made resistant to standard antibiotics." Poisoned Island, supra note 50.

  18. Marina Kozlova, "U.S. senator concerned about anthrax," United Press International, March 25, 2002.

  19. Finley, supra note 13; "US to clean up anthrax test site on Aral Sea island in Uzbekistan," Agence France Presse, Oct. 23, 2001; "Kazakhstan to examine anthrax island in Aral Sea," Interfax news agency, Moscow (in English), Nov. 11, 2001, reprinted in BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union - Economic, Nov. 12, 2001.

  20. Finley, supra note 13.

  21. "US experts burying biological materials in northwestern Uzbekistan," BBC Monitoring Central Asia Unit, May 18, 2002, originally in Ekspress-K, Almaty (in Kazakh) 15 May 02, pg. 2.

  22. Finley, supra note 13.

  23. "US experts burying biological materials in northwestern Uzbekistan," BBC Monitoring Central Asia Unit, May 18, 2002, originally in Ekspress-K, Almaty (in Kazakh) 15 May 02, pg. 2.

  24. Swiss Review, supra note 7; Uitto, supra note 11; French, supra note 8; Frantz, supra note 6.

  25. Uitto, supra note 11; "TB kills 560 in northwestern Uzbekistan in 2001," BBC Monitoring Central Asia Unit, April 15, 2002, originally from Bekobod TV, Bekobod (in Uzbek), Apr. 11, 2002, available in Lexis/Nexis ALLNEWS file.

  26. Uitto, supra note 11; Biliouri, supra note 14; Swiss Review, supra note 7.

  27. Pearce, supra note 33.

  28. People and the Planet, "Aral Sea: a health disaster revealed," April 1995, [hereinafter People and the Planet].

  29. Getches, supra note 20, at 526.

  30. People and the Planet, supra note 69.

  31. Uitto, supra note 11.

  32. "TB kills 560 in northwestern Uzbekistan in 2001," BBC Monitoring Central Asia Unit, April 15, 2002, originally from Bekobod TV, Bekobod (in Uzbek), Apr. 11, 2002.

  33. "Thousands of Uzbek families preparing to leave Aral Sea area - Iranian radio," BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union - Economic, Aug. 28, 2001, originally from Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mashhad (in Uzbek), Aug. 28, 2001.

  34. French, supra note 8.

  35. Matloff, supra note 28.

  36. Swiss Review, supra note 7.

  37. "Fishing returns to Aral Sea in Kazakhstan," Interfax News Agency, February 15, 2002, available in Lexis/Nexis ALLNEWS file.

  38. "Kazakh head signs laws on Aral Sea loan, aid to disabled," BBC Monitoring Central Asia Unit March 21, 2002, originally from Khabar Television, Almaty (in Kazakh), Mar. 21, 2002, available in Lexis/Nexis ALLNEWS file.

  39. CRWR, supra note 28.

  40. Ninan, supra note 29.

  41. "UK Consultant to Study Aral Sea," Water Power & Dam Construction, November 30, 1999, Pg. 3; "Engineers to Study Dam Safety in Basin of Shrinking Aral Sea," Engineering News-Record, Nov. 8, 1999, vol. 243, no. 19, pg. 27.

  42. "Mini-reservoirs under construction in Uzbek Aral Sea area," BBC Monitoring Central Asia Unit, May 23, 2002, originally in Pravda Vostoka, Tashkent (in Russian), 23 May 02, pg. 1.

  43. "Amudarya control system started up in Turkmenistan," BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union - Economic, May 29, 2001, originally from Turkmen State News Service news agency, Ashgabat (in Russian), May 28, 2001.

  44. CRWR, supra note 28.

  45. Corliss, supra note 11; Getches, supra note 20, at 529-30.

  46. Uitto, supra note 11.

  47. Id.

  48. "Turkmen lake to improve Aral sea zone environment," BBC Monitoring Central Asia Unit, May 6, 2002, originally from Turkmenistan.RU Moscow (in Russian), Apr 20, 2002, available in Lexis/Nexis ALLNEWS file.

  49. "Russians, Uzbeks "pressuring" Kazakhstan with Siberian rivers diversion project," BBC Monitoring Central Asia Unit, May 1, 2002, originally from Karavan, Almaty (in Russian), Apr 19, 2002, p.5; "Russian, Central Asian leaders asked to push ahead with canal to help Aral crisis," BBC Monitoring Central Asia Unit, April 10, 2002, originally from Uzbek National News Agency web site, Tashkent (in Russian), Apr. 9, 2002.

  50. Eric W. Sievers, "Transboundary Jurisdiction and Watercourse Law: China, Kazakhstan, and the Irtysh," 37 Texas International Law Journal 1 (Winter, 2002).

  51. Corliss, supra note 11.

  52. Thomas Oliphant, "Two leaps forward on global warming," Boston Globe, June 4, 2002.