Shrinking Freshwater Resources: Part I

Despite our dependency on freshwater resources, the unsustainable and over-consumption of the resource has led to irreversible consequences, and one famous case study that you may know of is the shrinking of the Aral Sea. I will be focusing on the impacts of unsustainable consumption of surface freshwater resources and looking specifically at the Aral Sea case study.

The Aral Sea, located in Central Asia, used to be one of the world’s largest lakes until the 1960s, and now it is known as one of the world’s largest environmental disasters (Spoor, 1998). The Aral Sea is largely controlled by its tributaries, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, due to the absence of surface outflows and prior to the 1960s, lake levels were relatively stable with water levels fluctuating between 20 – 40m. However, human action was the largest cause for the decline in the lake (Micklin, 1988). Irrigation practices existed for many millennia and irrigation posed no threats to the lake levels, however when irrigation expanded from 5 million to 7.9 million ha of land from the 1960s to 2000, huge changes can be seen in the lake levels (Micklin, 2007). The Former Soviet Union in Central Asia planned to build large damns, canals and reservoirs for the expansion for the cotton industry. This saw 700,000 km of canals, of which the Karakum Canal is the largest (1,370 km), being built and the water was solely derived from the Amu Dayra and Syr Darya rivers (Waltham & Sholji, 2001). Ultimately, lower inputs and high evaporation rates in the hot desert climate saw the steady shrinking and salinization of the Aral Sea whereby the sea is now made up of three residual lakes and the salt content of two of these lakes no longer contains any fishes. See the video below for a time lapse of the shrinking of the Aral Sea from 1985 to 2015. 

The shrinking of this freshwater resource has huge consequences on the populations who depends on this freshwater resource, and the biological and ecological services provided by the lake. For example, the fishing industry has suffered massively due to declining indigenous fish populations; the decline of fish populations occurred due to the increasing salinity of the lake as well as the loss of feeding and spawning areas (Micklin, 2007). Many people had lost their jobs in the 1980s due to this collapse in the fishing industry. Health problems have also occurred; whereby intestinal illnesses are attributed to the declining quality of drinking water (Micklin, 1988), and respiratory illnesses are associated with increasing airborne salt and pesticide content which is blown into populous areas or deposited as aerosols in the form of rain (Micklin, 2007). The Aral Sea was full of flora and fauna, however many plant communities and fish populations have declined where the lack of floodplain inundation made conditions worse for plants to grow. The habitat of the flora and fauna saw the decline of many species, such as wild boar, deer and a few tigers, from 178 to 38 animal species (Micklin, 1988). The decline in the quality of the land proved also to be a problem for agriculture, where degraded soils and the lack of floods made it difficult to grow crops or graze cattle and these areas soon started experiencing desertification.

The negative impacts of the shrinking of the Aral Sea is undeniably large, however the efforts and focus that should now be paid attention onto the lake is the restoration of the lake, and how we can go about achieving this. Micklin and Aladin (2008) explains that the only way to restore some significant amount of the lake would be to stop or significantly reduce the amount of water used for irrigation from the Amu and Syr Darya rivers as the source. However, this is idealistic since many of the former soviet republics do not intend to do this. Uzbekistan intends to expand their cotton industry to gain foreign currency. Although other countries such as Kazakhstan made attempts to restore water in the northern Small Aral Sea. In 2005, an $85 million fund was provided to rebuild an earthen dike of 13km to block the unnecessary outflow that was prone to evaporation. Results of this project has shown that the surface area of the northern Aral increased by 18% and salinity levels had declined from 20 to 10 g/l (Micklin & Aladin, 2008). Fish species are returning and thus providing hope for local fishermen and the fishing industry in resuming business once again (See this video below for more on the prospects of fishing). 

Prospects are looking hopeful again, however more work is required to restore lake levels and quality in the large Aral Sea. Micklin and Aladin (2008) suggests that large scale engineering can help to significantly restore the larger Aral Sea (See below).

These proposals and solutions have the potential to encourage the sustainable restoration of the lake but despite certain successes in the small Aral Sea, there has been backward progress in other areas. A shocking article in the national geographic by Howard, B. (2014) explains that the eastern basin of the large Aral Sea has completely dried up. The decline of this part of the lake was the result of continuous withdrawals from the rivers and a decline in rain and snow which fed into the Amu Darya river.

Human activity has pushed this ecosystem to an irreversible state and both humans and the environment has suffered consequently. Solutions have been implemented to restore parts of the Aral Sea but these efforts seem futile in the face of another decline residual lake. Therefore, despite our attempts to restore this lake, can humans ever restore the Aral Sea before it ultimately ceases to exist?