APRIL 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — More and more foreign tourists are heading to Nukus in Karkalpakstan, western Uzbekistan, to visit the dried up Aral Sea, the Eurasianet website reported. The Aral Sea had been a major inland sea but Soviet water systems siphoned off water and it shrivelled to a fraction of its size.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
MARCH 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan plans to spend $1b modernising its irrigation systems over the next five years, the state-linked UzDaily website reported. Uzbekistan’s Soviet-era water systems needs updating. Uzbekistan government’s is keen on delivering eye-catching initiatives, although their effectiveness is questionable.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Pollution and poor irrigation management have killed off much of the fish in Lake Sevan in Armenia, media quoted experts as saying. Lake Sevan is one of the world’s biggest fresh water lakes and one of Armenia’s main tourist attractions.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — It’s not just Western mining companies in Kyrgyzstan that have come under pressure to pay extra fines. Kyrgyz media reported that the local authorities in northern Kyrgyzstan want the Chinese-run Taldy Bulak Levoberezhni gold mine to pay $143m every year for environmental damage. Chinese firms are generally unpopular in Kyrgyzstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s government slapped a $735m fine on the consortium developing the Kashagan Caspian Sea oil field for environmental damage from burning off gas during repairs to a leak. The $50b Kashagan project sprung a gas leak in October, barely a month after production started.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In an echo of the Soviet Union’s efforts to control nature, Turkmenistan’s president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov wants to stop the Amu Darya river freezing over.
According to reports last month, the Turkmen minister for water resources has compiled a report for Mr Berdymukhamedov on how best to stop the mighty Amu Darya, which runs from the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan before fading into the desert just short of the Aral Sea, freezing.
The plan has not been revealed.
The Amu Darya river is particularly important to Turkmenistan as it not only supplies 90% of the country’s drinking water but it also irrigates many of its cotton fields.
Reports of a plan to bend Nature to Man’s will smacks of the Soviet Union. It diverted much water from the Amu Dayra and its sister river the Syr Darya river to irrigate the cotton fields. Its plan was to transform the region into a bread and cotton basket.
It managed this, to an extent, but, in the process, also dried out the Aral Sea.
Now the Amu Darya and Syru Darya rivers are a source of regional tension. They provide downstream Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan with drinking water and irrigation and upstream Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan with power.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
FEB. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The ecology department in the Mangistau regional government issued Ozenmunaigas, a subsidiary of Kazakh state-owned energy company Kazmunaigas, a fine of $1.8b for environmental damage. Ozenmunaigas refuted the claim. Environmental fines are sometimes used to pressure companies.
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(News report from Issue No. 174, published on March 5 2014)
FEB. 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Aral Sea, which straddles Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, has not lost as much water as scientists had previously feared, media reported quoting US scientists working at NASA. NASA’s Satellite photos showed that although 90% of the Aral Sea’s surface water has disappeared, much has concentrated in deeper pockets in the northern part of the sea.
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(News report from Issue No. 173, published on Feb. 26 2014)
SEPT. 20 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan is successfully rejuvenating the northern section of the dried up Aral Sea, media quoted the governor of the southwest Kazakhstan region of Kyzylorda, Krymbek Kusherbayev, as saying. He added that the Aral Sea’s water is now only 17km from the town of Aral. It had retreated 74km away.
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(News report from Issue No. 153, published on Sept. 25 2013)
JULY 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — An unmanned Russian rocket crashed on take-off at the Baikonur launch site, south Kazakhstan. The rocket smashed into the empty steppe sending an orange cloud of toxic fumes into the air. Rain later dispersed the clouds but the crash raised concerns both about the safety and future of the Baikonur programme and about potential damage to the local environment.
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(News report from Issue No. 142, published on July 8 2013)