Central Asia’s Ticking Time Bomb: Water

A giant body of water has nearly disappeared over the last 60 years. Now, its source rivers are depleting.

Reporting by Valerie Kipnis | Photography by Claire Harbage
Graphics by Connie Hanzhang Jin and Daniel Wood
Published Oct. 30, 2024

The Past

Around 20 years ago, the Aral Sea — once the world’s fourth-largest saltwater lake — almost dried up in Central Asia.

Straddling the southern border of Kazakhstan and the northernmost part of Uzbekistan, the Aral Sea was once a lifeline for the region.

For locals like Madi Zhashkenov, who grew up in the Kazakh port city of Aralsk, the sea defined everyday life. “I would wake up, eat breakfast, go swimming. Go to the cinema, go swimming. Go to school, go swimming,” he said.

Their houses used to stand on stilts because the sea was so full that it would spill out past the boardwalk.

The Aral Sea is fed by two source rivers — the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya — which begin their journey in glacial mountains to the east and travel more than 1,000 miles, through six countries, to bring fresh water to the salty lake.

In the late 1980s, water levels got so low that the lake split into two separate bodies of water: the North Aral Sea, in Kazakhstan, and the South Aral Sea, primarily in Uzbekistan. Since then, the North Aral has remained intact, while the South Aral has fragmented into several smaller bodies of water.

By 2011, the Aral Sea had lost 85% of its surface area.

The shrinking of the Aral Sea has itself changed the regional climate — affecting glacier melt and the amount of water that makes its way into the rivers and the lake.

Central Asia’s temperatures are increasing at twice the global average rate, and the region’s water supply has dropped to about a quarter of what it was in the 1960s, per the Caspian Policy Center.

Tasbolat Usenov, 75, was born and raised in the Kazakh town of Akespe, once on the Aral Sea’s shore. Now it’s a village almost entirely enveloped by sand. Usenov spent his days fishing until the water became so salty that it burned holes through his cotton shirt. “When the sea receded, the water became saltier and the fish died,” Usenov said.

The communities that had built their lives around the water no longer had work, and Kazakhstan’s once-booming fishing industry collapsed.

These days, the fish-processing plants and canning factories are abandoned, and the Moynaq port looks out onto a cemetery of rusting fishing ships. They have been stranded here, in sand, for the last four decades — an eerie reminder of what once was.

But even so, many locals chose to remain and build their lives here. Instead of fishing, younger generations now farm brine shrimp in an increasingly salty lake.

The Present

The story of Aral Sea loss took a turn in 2005, when Kazakhstan — with help from the World Bank — built an 8-mile dam as a last-ditch effort to save the lake’s remaining water coming in from the Syr Darya.

The Kok-Aral Dam was designed to contain and cut off the river’s flow from going south into Uzbekistan.

This dam successfully rejuvenated the North Aral Sea’s water levels. Within a few years, the local fishing industry was revived. Bream, asp and catfish returned to the salty lake.

“By the time I was born, the sea was already gone,” said Ibragimov, seen here (center) with his wife and child.

As a kid, he played in the rusted ships stuck in the sand.

When the dam was built, Ibragimov was almost a teenager. “In one or two years after building the dam, the salinity levels dropped and the water became fresh,” Ibragimov said. His father taught him how to fish.

“Nowadays we have 10 or so freshwater [species of] fish back in the sea.”

Despite the dam’s success, Ibragimov and other fishers still worry about the future.

“In the last two years, the sea’s receded about 200 meters from the coastline. Its levels are becoming lower and lower — there’s less and less water,” Ibragimov said. “And now we have less catch.”

Despite the success of the Kok-Aral Dam, long-term challenges persist, threatening the sustainability of the renewed livelihood of the North Aral.

The dam that contains the North Aral is too low. The Syr Darya, one of the rivers that feed the Aral Sea, has less and less water every year due to overuse, regional mismanagement and the effects of climate change.

The fishing village of Tastubek, right at the end of the river’s stream, has been one of the first to feel these effects.

Karakalpaks have long existed in a state of tension with Uzbekistan, which in part has to do with their poor living conditions, exacerbated by the shrinking of the Aral Sea.

Karakalpakstan’s fishing economy, which depended on water, disappeared along with it. Fisheries were shuttered, clean drinking water became difficult to come by, and water for growing crops has become scarce.

Air quality, the climate, nutrition and public services followed in tandem. Karakalpaks suffered from exceptionally high rates of respiratory and intestinal illnesses. Tuberculosis grew to epidemic proportions.

For years, Karakalpakstan had the highest maternal mortality rate of any region of Uzbekistan.

Seventeen-year-old Aysulu grew up in Karakalpakstan, on the banks of the Amu Darya. Every year, she notices changes in the river. Aysulu asked not to use her full name out of fear of reprisal.

“If [authorities] don’t act,” she said, “regions could be left without water, without work, which is kind of scary, because I see it every day.”

Aysulu plans to study and live abroad.

She’s not alone in this. Many families send members to study or work abroad in Russia, South Korea and Kazakhstan, in hopes that they will be able to support those back home.

But ultimately, Aysulu says she wants to return and build a life in Karakalpakstan. Even though she worries about what the future could bring, she has grown up surrounded by resilience.

More than three decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan still directs 90% of its water to agriculture and has expanded irrigated land by 43% since 1991. Seventy percent of that land is devoted to cotton.

Uzbekistan is the world’s sixth-largest producer of cotton. It’s also among the 20 most wasteful countries when it comes to water use compared with economic growth, according to the World Bank.

For Kamalov, “the main reason of the disaster is not cotton itself — it’s bad water management.” He’s referring to a systemic problem: A lot of water is lost in the process of farming. Farmers continue to grow water-hungry crops with low-cost water that arrives via Soviet-era canals, which often leak.

Such water management practices can even be found in Karakalpakstan, the most downstream region — where the land is at its driest and where the water is the lowest.

Khalif is among the many farmers in this region grappling with severe water shortages. He did not want to be identified by his full name for fear of retribution by authorities.

He said about 86 acres of cotton and 25 acres of wheat — almost half his land — are state-ordered, meaning the agreement he signed with the government specifically allocated certain parts of his land to growing cotton and wheat. On the rest of the land, he can grow what he wants; Khalif (seen here holding cotton seedlings) chooses onions, potatoes and more cotton.

Khalif says he’d like to switch to less water-intensive crops like licorice or mung beans but can’t afford the financial risk of growing and selling a new crop.

In Uzbekistan, farmers don’t own their land — they lease it from the government. And even though, formally, there is no longer a state order for cotton and wheat, the leases that farmers like Khalif sign have guidelines for what can and cannot be planted on certain land.

In Nukus, the capital of Karakalpakstan, government officials told NPR that farmers are free to grow what they like.

In any case, these days there are large private companies with close ties to the government, called “clusters,” that buy raw cotton from farmers at a set minimum price predetermined by the government. Some farmers told NPR that these clusters also control access to seeds, fertilizers and agricultural loans. Most farmers are required to contract with a specific cotton cluster in the region, which then sets quotas for how much cotton they need to produce.

“If I didn’t have this contract, I wouldn’t get water,” Khalif said.

Yusup Kamalov sees this as a systemic issue, where farmers are coerced by policies and artificial market mechanisms to continue to grow cotton, despite scarce water.

“It’s useless to tell farmers to save water, because they don’t have any incentives or stimulus to save it,” Kamalov said.

The Future

In Central Asia, water is running dangerously low. The World Bank estimates that without climate and development action, 2.4 million people across Central Asia could become climate refugees by 2050.

If the region’s water crisis isn’t averted, the future could be rife with tensions over water rights, conflict and challenges in securing sustainable livelihoods for millions of people.

But what happens to the Aral Sea could play out differently in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

The current dam that contains the North Aral Sea is too low, causing water to spill and evaporate.

“We need to fix the dam. We need to decide whether to raise the dam or build a second one,” said Nikolai Aladin, a Russia-based zoologist who has spent the last four decades studying the Aral Sea. In the 1990s, he was involved with building the precursor to the Kok-Aral Dam: a crude dike that contained the water from the Syr Darya in the North Aral.

Plans to build the second phase of the dam have been stalled for years.

“No decisions are being made. This is the tragedy of what’s happening in Kazakhstan,” Aladin said.

As Omirserik Ibragimov pulls out his daily catch, he says his only dream now is for the lake to be restored for good.

“My only dream now is that the Aral Sea will be again refilled, restored, because if it continues shrinking, there will be less water, it will get more salty and we will lose fish,” he said. “Now that will be the biggest tragedy for the villagers.”

“The Kazakh part of the Aral Sea is in a very difficult position because we’re the most downstream point of the [Syr Darya] river,” said Zauresh Alimbetova, the former deputy director of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan.

“We [the Aral Sea region] are dependent on all the countries through which the Syr Darya flows. We are also dependent on neighboring regions and on places … like Kyzylorda that grow rice.”

Upstream from the Syr Darya delta in the region of Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan, 85% of the country’s rice, a water-hungry crop, is produced.

Other water-hungry crops, such as wheat, barley and cotton, also drink up a big portion of Kazakhstan’s water supply. Much of the country’s farming sector receives state subsidies.

“A lot of water is lost in the infrastructure that supplies the water,” said Bolat Bekniyaz, Kazakhstan’s vice minister of water resources and irrigation. “The big, long irrigation canals. Some of them are not lined. Some are earthen.”

Studies show that unlined canals can lose up to 37% of water before even reaching farmers’ fields.

Bekniyaz has dedicated his life to studying the Aral Sea, so this is a priority for him. “Our ministry is doing extensive work to reconstruct these canals. That’s why I think in the near future, we will gradually reduce water consumption. And the more we reduce, the more water will flow into the Aral Sea ecosystem.”

Kazakhstan has already begun relining its canals. Bekniyaz says that conversations about a second dam are ongoing. In the meantime, the government has launched efforts like growing drought-resistant shrubs near the Aral Sea to prevent further desertification and teaching locals how to improve soil conditions or fish in human-made ponds.

Now there’s also the added threat of climate change.

Farmers in Karakalpakstan worry about what that could mean for them.

“We hear that up to 40% of the water that used to come here will be going there now,” one farmer named Timurat said. He and other farmers who spoke with NPR would use only one name, for fear of retribution by local officials.

Experts like Vadim Sokolov, who works for the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea and has been involved with official conversations about the canal, say that the canal should not divert more than 20% of the Amu Darya’s flow — or could divert less, if Afghanistan accepts help in constructing the canal from other Central Asian countries.

Taliban authorities predict that the Qosh Tepa will be completed by 2028.

“In the meantime, we must rely on God. We are praying for more snow and rain,” Timurat said.

Uzbekistan says it knows it has a problem.

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev declared 2024 the start of an “emergency regime of water conservation.” With that, the government has rolled out a plan that includes farmer education, innovation programs and financial incentives for water-saving technologies. There are also efforts to line irrigation canals all over Uzbekistan. The plan is to move quickly and finish up by 2026.

Baxitjan Xabibullaev runs an innovation lab in Karakalpakstan. “To return the water to the Aral Sea seems like an impossible task to me,” Xabibullaev said. “But to help the region is the goal. To help them adapt to the future.”

Xabibullaev spends his time teaching farmers how to use drip irrigation and laser-leveling techniques so they can use less water to farm.

He shows them how to use runoff water to raise carp in underground ponds and then use that same water to grow strawberries in greenhouses.

Yusup Kamalov, the Karakalpak researcher and environmental activist, thinks that while all of this is a step in the right direction, it’s just too little, too late.

“Is it good? It’s good. But the question to them is — so many years already we’ve had this problem. Why it’s still not happened? The answer is no democracy, no freedom — at least for farmers.”