AR-News: Russian river plan threatens environmental catastrophe

[Andrew Gach]

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Russia revives epic river plan
New Scientist vol 181 issue 2433 - 07 February 2004, page 8

Countries in central Asia are facing a water crisis. Is the solution to
revive a huge Soviet-era engineering project and turn the flow of Siberia's
major rivers south?

RUSSIAN scientists are reviving an old Soviet plan to divert some of
Siberia's mightiest rivers to the parched former Soviet republics of central
Asia. Its backers say it will solve a growing water crisis in the region and
replenish the now desiccated Aral Sea, once the world's fourth-largest
inland sea.

The $40 billion scheme could also gain international support. Recent
increases in the flows of Siberia's rivers, probably due to global warming,
have raised fears that a less salty Arctic Ocean could shut down the Gulf
Stream and trigger icy winters across Europe. Diverting part of the flow of
the rivers could prevent that. But some experts say that the hugely
ambitious scheme will cause social, economic and environmental disaster.

The megaproject was rejected by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the
mid-1980s. But in recent months it has won vocal support.    ---- skip ----.

The proposed scheme would be roughly equivalent to irrigating Mexico from
the North American Great Lakes. It would drive a canal 200 metres wide and
16 metres deep southwards for some 2500 kilometres, from the confluence of
the north-flowing rivers Ob and Irtysh, to replenish the Amudarya and
Syrdarya rivers near the Aral Sea (see Map). The canal would carry 27 cubic
kilometres of water a year. Though this is just 7 per cent of the Ob's flow
it would bring 50 per cent more water to the lower Aral Sea basin.
The rationale behind the scheme is clear. Central Asian states that were
once part of the Soviet Union are economically dependent on cotton, a
notoriously thirsty crop. Today the region's two biggest cotton-growing
nations, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, have the highest per capita water
consumption in the world. Yet Turkmenistan says it intends to double cotton
production in the next decade.

Already, the Amudarya and Syrdarya, which once had combined flows greater
than that of the Nile, have been largely emptied by massive irrigation
projects to grow the cotton. As the rivers died, so has the Aral Sea into
which they drain. It has lost three-quarters of its water since 1960,
leaving former ports up to 150 kilometres from the receding shoreline, and a
salty wilderness where the sea used to be.

Meanwhile, irrigation canals in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have become
increasingly dilapidated and inefficient. Few of the region's 50,000
kilometres of irrigation channels are sealed, so much of their water goes to
waste. According to a World Bank study, some 60 per cent of water intended
for farms does not reach the fields.

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Last month, Luzhkov visited Kazakhstan to promote the plan. He says that
central Asia would have to pay for the water, but behind the scenes Moscow
sees the scheme as a way to rebuild its political and economic power in the
region.
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But, as in the 1980s, the scheme will be hugely controversial in Russia. The
chairman of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nikolai
Dobretsov, has told New Scientist that the diversion "would threaten the Ob
basin with eco-catastrophe and socio-economic disaster", destroying
fisheries and upsetting the local climate.
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Central Asia now faces a choice: begin massive reforms that will allow a
more efficient use of water and less reliance on thirsty crops like cotton,
or buy in water from outside. Nikita Glazovsky, a leading Russian geographer
and former deputy environment minister under Boris Yeltsin, says the
region's engineers "still find it easier to divert rivers than to stop
inefficient irrigation".

http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/article.jsp?rp=1&id=mg18124331.000