Discuss: Return to the Center of the World
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Just to add some information to this excellent piece, here is something I wrote while researching on agriculture and child rights for the Canadian International Development Agency a few years ago:
Agriculture and Child Protection in the Aral Sea Area
The biological death of the Aral Sea and its devastating effects on the livelihood of the 5 million people who live in the bioregion is one of the world’s worst ecological disasters. It is caused by ongoing unsustainable agricultural practices upstream, and its effect has been to undermine the health of the ecosystem and all living things in it, including people (Small and Bunce, 2003). It is featured in the World Bank’s 2003 World Development Report as a cautionary tale about just how bad “spillover effects” can get if the “role of an environmental asset” (the watershed) is ignored (World Bank 2003). If the Bank and donor community were to take a rights-based approach to addressing the causes and the effects of the disaster, however, the case could usefully described as the cost of ignoring the links between agriculture and child protection, understood to require a commitment to Ecosystem Health and Sustainable Livelihoods.
5 million people live in the degraded and increasingly uninhabitable environment of the Aral Sea Area, which includes the northern inhabited areas of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, as well as western Kazakhstan. In the 1950s the Soviets began to develop an ever-expanding irrigation scheme in the Central Asian watershed of the great Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers in an effort to become self-sufficient in cotton. The overall watershed spans six countries. Since its inception, agriculture policies driving the industry have been blind to intractable sustainability problems. Millions of hectares of naturally arid lands are irrigated with highly sedimented, saline river waters in primitive unlined and uncovered systems to create a cotton monoculture, combined with rice cultivation in the desert.
Linkages between Livelihood, Ecosystem and Child Health Impacts
Towns that were fishing villages in the 1950s are now as much as 100 km. from the sea. The former great fishery is now unfit for aquatic life. The seabed is saturated with saline river sediments and agricultural chemicals including pesticides, herbicides, defoliants and fertilizers excessively used during the Soviet era. As the seabed continues to dry up, these toxic chemicals and salts are blown back into the face of the population at a rate of 43 million tons of dust per year. Indeed, The Aral Sea area currently logs the highest dust deposition rates anywhere on the planet (Small and Bunce, 2003). This is suspected to be a prime cause of the elevated levels of acute respiratory infections in the local populations, and respiratory diseases are the leading cause of mortality among children. Weakened lung function and high rates of anemia may also exacerbate the tuberculosis epidemic in the region which is currently the highest in Europe and the former Soviet Union (Small et. al., June 2001). Water and food quality are also affected by airborne and waterborne chemical and salt contamination of soil and water. In the Uzbek Aral sea area over a quarter of the population draw their water from irrigation ditches, which are heavily contaminated with agrochemicals and sewage. The proportion of infant death due to diarrhea is as high as 29.1% compared to the regional rate of 16%. Outbreaks of water-borne diseases such as hepatitis B are common (Small et.al., Oct. 2001).
The failure of the World Bank and international donors, despite many millions of dollars invested, to make any substantial progress in alleviating the suffering of the area’s 5 million inhabitants over the last fifteen years has been well documented (Small and Bunce, 2003).
Since 1997 Médecins Sans Frontières has been engaged with a project in the region to assess the impact of the disaster on human health, and to help the people who live in the Aral Sea Area cope with their environment. MSF has engaged in ongoing advocacy to draw international attention and resources to the agricultural causes and health effects of the disaster, to change regional agricultural policies and programs and to provide health services and ecological restoration for the affected population around the sea. As part of this operational research MSF is conducting a longitudinal study of child respiratory health. Research will measure the impact of dust on the lungs of children. Data collection includes study of dust samples, spyrometry testing of children, and questionnaires to mothers. Next steps will include analysis of the policy significance of these child health outcomes linked to the dust which is evidently contaminated and produced, as noted above, due to agricultural practices in the watershed. A consortium of Canadian research institutes and NGO’s are currently taking over the research from MSF, to expand the scope of the project and implement new initiatives to address the health needs of the population in the Aral Sea Area.
Remarkable images of this part of the world and I appreciated the audio component, where the author provided her comments about her experiences. She captured so many “everyday” images, I really had the feeling that I was walking around in the homes, villages and countryside—it wasn’t a flashy pictorial, the kind of thing we get too much of. Most moving were the ones of very tired women and children and very tired looking men, yet people who obviously were still hanging on to their situations. bleak, as always these days, “no longer the center of the world, but now living on its edge,” a chilling reminder of so many things haunting western culture (or at least those of us haunted…) thank you for making these available. I hope to see more by that photographer…
Such beautiful images. Not grandiose beauty, but focused segments of richness. Surely the people living in these places must appreciate the beauty of it, even while dealing with the hardships of their lives. In life’s mixed bag survival is top priority of course but beauty can’t be at the bottom of the list. And those stars!
It is only a coincidence that I also read today a post by Oregon State University’s Dr. Michael E. Campana. He was also referring to the river Amu Darya and the probability of the earthquake formed dam of Lake Sarez breaking up and flooding the entire region… perhaps in another earthquake. If that were to happen, Carolyn Drakes photos might be what we are able to remember of the area as it once was.
Fantastic work. I appreciated the audio component as well. Thanks so much for sharing.
Just to add some information to this excellent piece, here is something I wrote while researching on agriculture and child rights for the Canadian International Development Agency a few years ago:
Agriculture and Child Protection in the Aral Sea Area
The biological death of the Aral Sea and its devastating effects on the livelihood of the 5 million people who live in the bioregion is one of the world’s worst ecological disasters. It is caused by ongoing unsustainable agricultural practices upstream, and its effect has been to undermine the health of the ecosystem and all living things in it, including people (Small and Bunce, 2003). It is featured in the World Bank’s 2003 World Development Report as a cautionary tale about just how bad “spillover effects” can get if the “role of an environmental asset” (the watershed) is ignored (World Bank 2003). If the Bank and donor community were to take a rights-based approach to addressing the causes and the effects of the disaster, however, the case could usefully described as the cost of ignoring the links between agriculture and child protection, understood to require a commitment to Ecosystem Health and Sustainable Livelihoods.
5 million people live in the degraded and increasingly uninhabitable environment of the Aral Sea Area, which includes the northern inhabited areas of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, as well as western Kazakhstan. In the 1950s the Soviets began to develop an ever-expanding irrigation scheme in the Central Asian watershed of the great Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers in an effort to become self-sufficient in cotton. The overall watershed spans six countries. Since its inception, agriculture policies driving the industry have been blind to intractable sustainability problems. Millions of hectares of naturally arid lands are irrigated with highly sedimented, saline river waters in primitive unlined and uncovered systems to create a cotton monoculture, combined with rice cultivation in the desert.
Linkages between Livelihood, Ecosystem and Child Health Impacts
Towns that were fishing villages in the 1950s are now as much as 100 km. from the sea. The former great fishery is now unfit for aquatic life. The seabed is saturated with saline river sediments and agricultural chemicals including pesticides, herbicides, defoliants and fertilizers excessively used during the Soviet era. As the seabed continues to dry up, these toxic chemicals and salts are blown back into the face of the population at a rate of 43 million tons of dust per year. Indeed, The Aral Sea area currently logs the highest dust deposition rates anywhere on the planet (Small and Bunce, 2003). This is suspected to be a prime cause of the elevated levels of acute respiratory infections in the local populations, and respiratory diseases are the leading cause of mortality among children. Weakened lung function and high rates of anemia may also exacerbate the tuberculosis epidemic in the region which is currently the highest in Europe and the former Soviet Union (Small et. al., June 2001). Water and food quality are also affected by airborne and waterborne chemical and salt contamination of soil and water. In the Uzbek Aral sea area over a quarter of the population draw their water from irrigation ditches, which are heavily contaminated with agrochemicals and sewage. The proportion of infant death due to diarrhea is as high as 29.1% compared to the regional rate of 16%. Outbreaks of water-borne diseases such as hepatitis B are common (Small et.al., Oct. 2001).
The failure of the World Bank and international donors, despite many millions of dollars invested, to make any substantial progress in alleviating the suffering of the area’s 5 million inhabitants over the last fifteen years has been well documented (Small and Bunce, 2003).
Since 1997 Médecins Sans Frontières has been engaged with a project in the region to assess the impact of the disaster on human health, and to help the people who live in the Aral Sea Area cope with their environment. MSF has engaged in ongoing advocacy to draw international attention and resources to the agricultural causes and health effects of the disaster, to change regional agricultural policies and programs and to provide health services and ecological restoration for the affected population around the sea. As part of this operational research MSF is conducting a longitudinal study of child respiratory health. Research will measure the impact of dust on the lungs of children. Data collection includes study of dust samples, spyrometry testing of children, and questionnaires to mothers. Next steps will include analysis of the policy significance of these child health outcomes linked to the dust which is evidently contaminated and produced, as noted above, due to agricultural practices in the watershed. A consortium of Canadian research institutes and NGO’s are currently taking over the research from MSF, to expand the scope of the project and implement new initiatives to address the health needs of the population in the Aral Sea Area.