Central Asia pledges action over Aral Sea
Central Asia pledges action over Aral Sea
By Douglas Busvine
DASHKHOVUZ, Turkmenistan (Reuter): Cash-strapped Central Asian states pledged action on the Aral Sea ecological disaster zone but their one-day summit on Friday last week was marked by divisions over joint funding of a clean-up.
Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov told a news conference the five states directly affected by the sea's rapid shrinkage had to act together if they were to solve the problem and attract international help.
"Nobody will help us if the states affected by this disaster do not devote their own attention to it," Karimov said.
Divided between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the Aral Sea was once the world's fourth largest lake but has been shrinking since 1960 after Soviet planners expanded intensive irrigation on its tributaries, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, to boost the cotton harvest.
Between 1960 and 1993 the lake's level fell by more than 16 meters, its area by 45 percent and its volume by three-quarters. Salinity rose threefold, killing fish stocks and decimating a fishing industry which used to support 60,000 people.
Now the sea has retreated as much as 150 km (95 km) from its old shores, exposing salt beds laced with pesticides, which are whipped up and dumped by winds as much as 500 km (310 miles) away -- hitting the health of the local population and damaging crops.
The international community, headed by the World Bank, has donated more than US$40 million to feasibility studies on an action plan to improve the environmental situation.
Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev opened talks by berating his counterparts for paying only 15 percent of the cash the five states pledged two years ago into a joint fund on saving the Aral Sea.
The five states had pledged to pay founding contributions of one percent of their national budgets into the fund.
But at the closing news conference a common view emerged that spending by individual states on environmental projects linked to the Aral, not deposited in the fund itself, should be counted as contributions.
"The information in President Nazarbayev's report gave a rather one-sided view of the problem," Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov said.
"A lot of money has been spent where people are most affected, but this money came from national budgets and was not contributed to the common fund," he said.
Nazarbayev was confirmed as the fund's chairman, but its role looked to have been downgraded after the non-payers -- led by Turkmenistan -- appeared to have won the day.
Presidents from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan attended the summit. A Russian delegation was absent due to scheduling problems.
The meeting also covered procedural and bureaucratic issues. The interstate council on saving the Aral Sea, a second structure with a coordinating role, will in future be chaired by Turkmen Deputy Prime Minister Matkarim Radzhapov.
Peter Whitford, a World Bank official, said the apparent downgrading of the international fund was merely a recognition of the situation that already exists. But he described the meeting overall as a step forward.
"They are conscious of the need to attract international cooperation and they realize that being united and positive is necessary to do that," he said.
An international conference on the Aral Sea will be held under United Nations auspices in Nukus, in Uzbekistan's autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan, this September.