The desiccation of the Aral Sea is a widely reported and well-known environmental disaster. Before the late twentieth century, this so-called sea was vast lake that supported major fisheries. Over the past seventy years, most of the flow of the two rivers that drain into it, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, have been diverted to irrigate cotton and other crops. Now only three remnant water bodies remain, two of which are too salty to support fish. But the third, the North Aral Sea in Kazakhstan, has been revitalized in recent years. The construction of dikes has prevented its waters from spreading across and evaporating over the salt flats that now cover what was once the main body of the lake. Other restoration projects undertaken by Kazakhstan have also had some success. According to a recent report, “the volume of water in the Northern Aral Sea has increased to 24.1 billion cubic metres from 2023 to the present.” The same publication also notes that twenty species of fish that had vanished from the northern lake have recently reappeared.
Contrastingly, the linked environmental crisis that has devastated the historical Khwarazm region south of the Aral Sea is seldom reported and poorly known. The Wikipedia article on Karakalpakstan, a supposedly autonomous region of Uzbekistan that covers much of this once fertile and prosperous area, starkly summarizes the situation:
Crop failures have deprived about 48,000 people of their main source of income and shortages of potable water have created a surge of infectious diseases. … [C]limate change over the centuries, accelerated by human-induced evaporation of the Aral Sea in the late 20th century has created a desolate scene in the region. The ancient oases of rivers, lakes, reed marshes, forests and farms are drying up and being poisoned by wind-borne salt and by fertilizer and pesticide residues from the dried bed of the Aral Sea. … The rates of incidence of anemia, respiratory diseases, and other health problems have risen dramatically.
Not surprisingly, the impoverished and environmentally ravaged region of Karakalpakstan has experienced periodical political unrest in recent years. Large protests in July 2022 led to hard repression. According to a recent scholarly article: “Uzbekistan’s authorities restricted internet use, cut off the region from the rest of the country, censored media reporting about the protests, and used lethal force against the demonstrators, leaving several people dead.” The same article further notes that the government of Uzbekistan subsequently changed the country’s constitution, “factually depriv[ing] Karakalpakstan, … of its nominal autonomy.”
More recently, Uzbekistan has been trumpeting its effort to bolster Karakalpakstan’s economy and alleviate its environmental crisis. A recent announcement from its president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, paints a positive picture, outlining foreign investment and tourism opportunities and touting recent economic gains and infrastructural investments. Some of Uzbekistan’s plans for Karakalpakstan are surprisingly ambitious, including “projects to establish a modular intelligent computing center in the Takhiatash district for the AI sector…” The Times of Central Asia tells us that “the new phase of IT Park [in Karakalpakistan] will accommodate AI-focused startups and modern data centers equipped with high-performance graphic processors capable of handling large-scale data processing,” while reporting that “authorities are targeting global tech firms such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon to establish data operations in Uzbekistan.” But considering the region’s water crisis and political tensions, such plans seem unrealistic. More credible is a recently announced United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project designed to “facilitate the introduction of upland rice in the Republic of Karakalpakstan, which will reduce water consumption by up to 40% compared to traditional rice cultivation.”
Reports on the environmental devastation experienced by (historical) Khwarazm usually focus on Karakalpakstan, ignoring the rest of this region located further to the south and east (Daşoguz in Turkmenistan and Khorazm in Uzbekistan). Most of the settled areas of these two regions are upstream from Karakalpakstan and are thus farther away from the bed of the former Aral Sea, the source of the pesticide- and salt-laden dust storms that plague the region. Presumably, they also have better and more reliable water supplies. As a result, I have assumed that these regions have experienced less environmental degradation and damage to human health than Karakalpakstan.
For a crude and preliminary test of this hypothesis, I carefully examined satellite images from the region, looking mostly for evidence of abandoned agricultural fields. I found many such signs in Karakalpakstan, especially in areas that are relatively close to the former Aral Sea. Contrastingly, I found few indications of field abandonment in either Daşoguz or Khorazm, regions that ad formed the core of historical Khwarazm. (I captured some of these images and have placed them at the end of this post, along with a map showing their locations.)
Such simple evidence, of course, would have to be subjected to rigorous “ground-truthing” to be given credence. It is, however, suggestive. I have included four satellite images of apparently abandoned fields in Karakalpakstan at the end of this post, along with a map that shows their approximate locations. For comparative purposes, I have also included a satellite image of an upstream area in Uzbekistan’s Khorazm region, located near the core of ancient Khwarazm. Here one sees many active farms along with several rural residential areas.
I also looked for reports on environmental and health issues in Daşoguz and Khorazm, but had little luck. As I am eager to move on to other issues, I turned to AI as a final expedient. Grok told me that although “Karakalpakstan is the epicenter” of the Aral agricultural disaster, the same problems blight the entire area. As it reported: “Salt storms in 2018, for example, affected Karakalpakstan, Khorezm, and Dashoguz simultaneously. In short, the degradation is not isolated to Karakalpakstan—it is a regional crisis rooted in the shared hydrology and history of the Khwarazm/Aral Sea basin. The problems are very much present (and actively addressed) in Khorazm and Dasoguz as well.”
I do not doubt this AI assessment. But I still suspect that the crisis is significantly less pronounced in the upstream areas than it is Karakalpakstan. This would make an interesting research project for a younger scholar, although I somehow doubt that it would be welcomed by local and national officials.
