Poet and journalist Raim Farhadi with his young artists showing their masterpieces on environmental concerns.

 

 

   Roughly 80 students at the Young Artist Studio attached to the City Centre for Pupils’ Art are learning a “gentle” art form – one about the environment and especially water, which is a major issue in all of Central Asia.

   A painting hanging on the wall says what the classroom is about: It is the world of the imagination of eight-year-old Rustam Salyukov which has a deep blue river flowing through a deep green valley. 

   “Children should learn to appreciate nature through painting it because an artist cannot be a vandal or be indifferent to vandalism,” says Alfiya Mambetova, an artist who runs the studio in Tashkent. “The problem is that most people and government officials are indifferent (about anti-environment acts.)”

   Water is in the hearts and minds of all Central Asians who live in an area with some of the world’s largest rivers and lakes which ironically also faces an acute fresh water shortage.

    The five Central Asian states – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – are spread across 3.9 million square kilometres and have a collective population of 50 million people.

   The Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth-largest inland body of water – after the Caspian Sea separating Europe and Asia, Lake Superior in North America and Lake Victoria in Africa – began shrinking in the 1960s as a result of human encroachment.

   It has now has fragmented into two giant lakes, known as the South Aral and the North Aral and its water volume has dropped by 90 percent – to 115 billion cubic metres. Its surface area has also shrunk by 73 percent, to 17.6 thousand square kilometres.

   The region also has some of the world’s largest rivers – the Syr Darya and Amu Darya – but their waters are highly polluted and the five countries are also embroiled in disputes over water-sharing.

   “In essence the city (Tashkent) has become a huge bucket full of holes, with a great deal of pipes continuously pouring water,” Raim Farhadi, an Uzbek poet and journalist told the Asia Water Wire (AWW).

   “The people don’t realise how they are wasting the valuable resource,” adds Farhadi, who also heads the Eco-Art studio he set up in 2000. His studio is attached to a Tashkent-based charity and has also used many paintings of children studying with Mambetova to illustrate many of his books.

   Farhadi is pained by the sight of tap water used to supply household fountains and the pollution taking place in the rivers and lakes, which reflects in his writings.

   A 2000 regional report done by the World Bank, the Norwegian Trade Council, the International Fund on the Aral Sea and some other agencies representing Central Asian states estimated that in Uzbekistan almost 20 percent of water in the reservoirs comprised of sewerage drained into them.

   Pollution is very high in and around densely populated industrial zones and settlements outside the major cities.

   The same report also pointed out very high groundwater pollution. It said oil and phenol (a toxic substance that can cause severe chemical burns) levels exceed 100 times the maximum permissible concentrations in groundwater in and around Uzbek cities.

 

   “Water is treasure, we will not be able to live without it,” says 11-year-old Julia Skorobogatova at the Young Artist studio. “It is also a symbol of purity, I do not want to drink or touch dirty water or bathe in it.”

   A 1998 assessment of a regional working group of the UN Economic Commission for Europe said only 700 cubic metres of fresh water was available to residents of Central Asia – against the 5,000 cubic metres said to be needed by an individual annually. The shortage is more acute in the deserts, which comprise about one-fifth of the region’s landmass.

   “Children are ecologists by nature but they grow up in an environment of ecological nihilism,” says Farhadi. He adds that their paintings have no place for grey because they see the world in its real colours – the bright colours of flowers, trees, rivers and their surroundings.

   “Art allows them to imagine the world in its pristine best, untarnished by pollution,” he adds. “They cherish the values they paint as children throughout their lives.” 

   Farhadi represents an emerging group of environmental crusaders who aim at teaching children to value nature through painting, poetry and drama.

   Says Farhadi, “I don’t think everybody will become ecologists or artists, but we believe that the children we teach will learn to stand up for not only themselves but also their right to live in a healthy environment.”

(END/AWW/IPSAP/MK/BB/220506)