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- Convenors:
-
Kate Shields
(Rhodes College)
Sarah Cameron
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- Chair:
-
Aibubi Duisebayeva
(Al-Farabi Kazakh National University)
- Discussant:
-
Jennifer Keating
(University College Dublin)
- Format:
- Panel
- Theme:
- Geography
- Location:
- 401 (Floor 4)
- Sessions:
- Saturday 8 June, -
Time zone: Asia/Almaty
Abstract:
Historically, drylands have made those from wetter, more forested areas, such as Russia, France, Germany and the UK, uncomfortable, provoking state anxieties and plans for “improvement.” Persistent misunderstandings about drylands as empty wastelands and fears of increasing desertification have led to policies and development schemes to increase forest cover and irrigation around the world. These schemes, however, have often failed and resulted in real degradation of these delicately balanced ecosystems. This panel focuses on these schemes for “improvement” in the Central Asian drylands (i.e. deserts and steppes) such as the Virgin Lands Campaign, construction of the Karakum Canal, and irrigation of the Hungry Steppe, and their consequences including large-scale salinization of lands and the shrinking of the Aral and Caspian Seas. Thes environmental consequences in turn affect the lives and livelihoods of dryland residents. The goal of this panel is to contribute growing work that seeks not to improve drylands, but to understand ecologies and human-environment interactions in drylands past and present in order to better manage and restore these areas. Viktoriya Krylova’s paper examines how climate change exacerbates historical development schemes in Kazakhstan. Sarah Cameron's paper examines debates in the immediate post-Soviet period (1991-2005) over how to “restore” the Aral Sea and its environs. Finally, Kate Shields provides insight into how policy makers and foresters are working to stabilize the soils of the dried Aral Seabed in Uzbekistan through large-scale afforestation by mixing ethnographic and remote sensing analysis.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 8 June, 2024, -Abstract:
On May 18, 2021, the UN General Assembly unanimously approved a resolution declaring the Aral Sea region a “Zone of Ecological Innovations and Technologies”. Once the fourth largest lake in the world, the Aral Sea is now 10% of its former volume. The UN resolution is an effort by the Uzbek state to court international investment by reframing the Aral “catastrophe” as an opportunity for innovation. As the UN resolution moves the Aral Sea once again into the global spotlight, the Uzbek state regularly announces the latest statistics on their “innovative” large-scale plantation-style afforestation of the Aral Seabed with the native salt-tolerant plant saxaul. Their stated goal: to mitigate the catastrophe by stabilizing the soils of the seabed and restoring the landscape. In this paper, I present results of remote sensing analysis of actual growth of afforested saxaul on the seabed. Thinking with and against different technologies of seeing (e.g. human eye, satellite sensor), I compare these results to reported afforestation activities, embedded observations from participant observation, and insights from key stakeholder interviews. My analysis shows how attempts at large-scale monoculture afforestation remain partial and incomplete. I argue that co-creating the future of the Aral Sea region instead requires a “polyculture” approach that incorporates multiple scales, species and types of cultivation.
Abstract:
This paper examines debates in the immediate post-Soviet period (1991-2005) over how to “restore” the Aral Sea and its environs. Once one of the world’s largest inland bodies of water, the Aral Sea began to shrink dramatically in the 1960s, when Soviet officials directed an increasing volume of water towards cotton production. As a result of the sea’s declining water levels, the climate and ecology of the surrounding region changed, and the people who lived near the sea began to experience a dramatic increase in health problems. The sea’s vibrant fishing industry came to a halt. After the Soviet collapse, an array of international actors rushed in to try and manage the problem. Globally, the Aral Sea began to be portrayed as the prime example of Soviet environmental mismanagement. But many struggled to offer effective solutions to the disaster. They also confronted a basic definitional challenge: Given that the Aral Sea has always been linked to regional water needs, what does it mean to “restore” the sea and who should get a say in that choice? This paper will examine how different groups (international agencies, local actors and others) approached that question in the period 1991-2005. As well, it will address why a dam to “bring back” the sea was built on the Kazakhstani side in 2005 but no similar project was attempted for the Uzbekistani side.
Abstract:
Arid or semi-arid ecosystems, subjected to or already affected by land degradation, occupy predominantly part of the territory of Kazakhstan. More than 67% of the country's territory is subject to desertification processes, including soil and vegetation cover degradation, water and wind erosion of soils, salinization, and loss of fertility.
It is not a secret that irrational long-term policy on the development of virgin and fallow lands in Kazakhstan, on the regulation of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers flow for the development of irrigated agriculture in the desert zone of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, pasture development of deserts of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan was not sufficiently based on the scientific substantiation of consequences for ecosystems. These historical land transformations are exacerbated by intensifying climate change
Climatic changes such as increasing aridity, lack of precipitation, inconsistent precipitation, decreasing water availability and quality of surface and underground water resources, and deterioration of land cover characteristics along with intensive anthropogenic impact make agricultural lands in Kazakhstan ecologically unstable. Temperature rise and shift of arid zones will lead to negative consequences for the biodiversity of lands. This, in turn, poses a potential threat to the food security of the country and the well-being of the population. Increasing rates of climate aridization threaten the stability not only of the natural environment but also of the national economies of Kazakhstan and neighboring countries of Central Asia, as land degradation is often transboundary.
Analysis of the scale and assessment of the degree of degradation become relevant steps to justify targeted adaptation measures for fragile dryland ecosystems. The paper will reflect the emerging trends of the negative impact of climate change on the state and dynamics of ecosystems involved in agriculture.
Keywords: Kazakhstan, climate change, degradation, desertification, agricultural lands.