Paper short abstract:

While the desiccation of the Aral Sea has been seen at regional and global levels as a disaster, locally it does not tend to be conceptualised as such. I look at the discursive and visual construction of the disaster, what it achieves, and why the label is resisted locally.

Paper long abstract:

The desiccation of the Aral Sea, notorious within the USSR by the late 80s, achieved global attention in the 1990s as one of the most serious ecological disasters of the twentieth century. Yet today in the town of Aralsk (Kazakhstan), once a major port on the sea, the label disaster is largely rejected, and many inhabitants insist on the normality of the region. I will thus argue that the 'Aral Sea disaster' is constituted not only by physical impacts but also by its discursive and visual construction. In examining the disjuncture between local and global constructions, I will draw out the double-edged power of disaster discourse. On the one hand the disaster label mobilises external actors and funds - evidenced by the vast number of projects and committees which have sought to save the sea, or ameliorate the effects of its desiccation. Most significantly, a recent World Bank project has restored the northern part of the sea, with beneficial results for fishing villages around Aralsk. On the other hand, the disaster label is locally felt to be stigmatising, hence resistance to it. Furthermore, the sea's desiccation is felt to be marginal to the town's general economic malaise, which inhabitants relate to the closure of factories after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the town's peripheral location within contemporary Kazakhstan. The sea's return has had little effect on employment levels in the town. Thus, for inhabitants of the town, discourse about ecological disaster is a distraction from more pressing economic issues.