What the Aral Sea Tells Us About ImpactTragic Soviet errors are being repeated in the Amu Darya (River Oxus) watershedJOHN ELKINGTONOCT 29The Ar...

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What the Aral Sea Tells Us About Impact
Tragic Soviet errors are being repeated in the Amu Darya (River Oxus) watershed
JOHN ELKINGTON
OCT 29

The Aral Sea: a toxic case study in ecological collapse (source: JE via Artiphoria)
Once the world’s fourth-largest inland sea, the Aral—straddling Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan—began shrinking catastrophically in the 1960s. The cause: Soviet planners diverted the Amu Darya (aka River Oxus) and Syr Darya rivers to irrigate cotton and rice fields in Central Asia’s deserts, chasing “white gold” self-sufficiency.

As they say: big mistake. Huge.

By the early 2000s, the Aral had lost over 90% of its volume. Salinity soared, fisheries collapsed, and the newly exposed seabed became a toxic desert laced with pesticides and salt. Dust storms carried this contamination across the region. From space, NASA images show a disaster of planetary scale—a human-made lesson in unsustainable water use.

The drying up of the Aral Sea (source: NASA)
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Lessons (Barely) Learned

The Soviet project epitomized technocratic hubris—treating rivers as machines to be engineered, not ecosystems to be sustained. Water was seen as a production input, not a finite, living resource. Success was measured in cotton yields, not long-term ecological viability.

This mindset persists in many places around the world. From the Colorado and Nile to India’s groundwater basins, short-term economic goals still override hydrological balance. The Aral crisis shows how shared rivers breed shared vulnerabilities: upstream nations such as Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan seek hydropower; downstream states like Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan need irrigation. Climate change now compounds those tensions as glacial meltwaters decline.

And the desiccation of the Aral Sea exposes a deeper flaw—the assumption that economic growth can expand endlessly within an ecologically closed system. The Soviet plan treated nature as infinitely pliable. It wasn’t. The result: salinized soils, falling aquifers, spreading desert.

And still, globally, we repeat the same logic: overpumping aquifers, damming rivers, exporting “virtual water” through thirsty crops grown in arid lands.

Tomorrow’s Watersheds

Driving between Khiva and Bukhara, we crossed the fabled River Oxus (now Amy Darya)—the longstanding boundary between ancient Persia and Central Asia, once marking the edge of the known world for Greeks and Persians alike. Alexander the Great famously crossed the river in 329 BCE on his march into Sogdiana and Bactria, a region that became a Silk Road crossroads linking Greek, Persian, Indian, and Islamic cultures.

Today, the river’s future captures the dilemma facing all closed-basin systems. The Amu Darya depends on glacial melt from the Pamir and Hindu Kush ranges. Yet climate models warn of accelerating glacial retreat—first floods, then long-term depletion. Without regional coordination, future scarcity could well eclipse Soviet-era crises.

Post-Soviet states inherited fragmented institutions and conflicting priorities. The International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea (IFAS) may have achieved limited coordination, but enforcement of water-sharing remains weak. New dams and irrigation projects—especially in Tajikistan—often ignore transboundary impacts.

Water fountains express beauty, identity and wealth in today’s Tashkent (source: JE, 2025)
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Enter the Taliban

Now there’s a new wildcard: Afghanistan. The Taliban-led government has revived a massive irrigation canal project in the north, drawing heavily from the Amu Darya to irrigate hundreds of thousands of hectares.

Upstream, but largely excluded from Soviet and post-Soviet water accords, Afghanistan now inists that it has the right to use its share of the basin’s water. That said, some analysts also suggest that the Taliban sees the canal as a potential lever of political influence across Central Asia. That, in effect, they plan to hold the river hostage.

Downstream countries are understandably alarmed. Estimates suggest the canal could reduce Amu Darya flows by 10–20% in some years—an enormous hit to already stressed water systems in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Extraction or Stewardship?

Time and again, monetization and financialization blinds us to the political, social, and ecological consequences of our actions. The Aral’s fate forces us to confront a deeper question: how do we value nature itself?

For too long, water has been treated purely as an instrument of production, not as part of a living system with intrinsic worth. Perhaps future water conflicts will force a shift—from extraction to stewardship, and from control to reciprocity.

The Amu Darya river has long marked frontiers—between empires, faiths, and ecologies. Perhaps it can now mark a new boundary: between a world that treats water as a commodity and one that recognizes it as part of a critical life-support system.

This shift is already reflected in emerging debates about water rights, ecosystem services, and planetary boundaries. But whether that recognition arrives in time is, frankly, uncertain.

To be honest, I’m not holding my breath.

Next, the third part of this series, to posted on Friday, 31st October, will explore some of the implications of all of this for the future of the sustainability agenda.

John Elkington is Founder & Global Ambassador at Volans and Chairman & Chief Pollinator at Countercurrent. His personal website can be accessed here. https://substack.com/app?utm_campaign=email-read-in-app&utm_source=email

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