This cliff that was once submerged in the Aral Sea now shows the shrinking sea's previous water levels (photography by Shahnoza Karimbabaeva).

 

 

   The brighter sides of the display depict what the Aral used to be until a few decades ago – crystal clear waters and a largely un-tampered landscape that used to be haven for many rare animals, bird and fish species. 

   The exhibition, entitled “From Barsa-Kelmes to Vozrozhdeniye,” – roughly translating as “from the land of no return to renaissance” – is part of the efforts to raise awareness about the deteriorating situation of the Aral Sea.

   Barsa-Kelmes, an island off the north-western shore of the Aral lies in Kazakhstan and has a sanctuary which is home to the Asiatic wild ass, Persian gazelle and several other species.

   The other island Vozrozhdeniye is shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and used to be a test site for Soviet biological weapons – anthrax, tularemia, plague, typhus, Q fever, botulinum toxin, and Venezuelan equine encephalitis.

   The exhibition which ended early this month a joint effort of Uzbekistan’s Academy of Arts, the Tashkent House of Photography, the Directorate of Art Exhibitions and the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea.

   “The title of the exhibition refers to the renaissance of the Aral. In the past it had a lot of water and many fish and birds species, but then it started to dry,” says Khadicha Agamirzaeva, spokeswoman for the Tashkent House of Photography. “Now water is returning to the Aral and people are beginning to fish again,” she adds.

   Aided by the United States of America, in 2002 Uzbekistan launched a project decontaminate Vozrozhdeniye island by depositing anthrax stocks in 11 concrete-lined pits and mixing anthrax with calcium hypochlorite, a decontamination agent.

   Until the late half of the 20th century, the Aral used to be the world's fourth-largest inland water body – after the Caspian Sea between Europe and Asia, Lake Superior in North America and Lake Victoria in Africa.

   But it began to dry in the 1960s after huge amounts of water was drawn for irrigating the then Soviet cotton fields.

   Experts say, the Aral’s water volume has shrunk by almost 90 percent – to 115 billion cubic metres – and its surface area has shrunk by 73 percent – to 17.6 thousand square kilometres.

   Kazakhstan has built a dike to prevent water from flowing into the Big Aral, which has caused its surface to expand and lower salinity allowing the reintroduction of fish. But all this has come at the cost of the Big Aral, where the water volume has continued to shrink.

   “Everyone must use water sparingly,” Zhollybai Izentaev, president of Karakalpakstan’s branch of the Academy of Arts of Uzbekistan, told the AWW. “The Aral is dying also because people are not using water economically.”

   Until the 1960s, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya – two of Central Asia’s largest rivers – carried about 58 billion cubic metres of water into the Aral every year. The volume flowing into the Aral declined drastically in the mid-1980s following expansion of irrigation.

   Experts say water consumption in the Aral Sea basin must not exceed 80 cubic kilometres a year, for sustainability reasons, but the present annual use is already around 102 billion cubic kilometres. Or, less water reaches the sea every year.

   “We hope there will be improvement in the Aral environment,” says Sarsen Baybosinov, an artist from Nukus, Karakalpakstan’s capital. His work at the exhibition depicts a rough map of the sea in which lambskin is used to show “drying land”, which he says represents the disappearing animals and water bodies.

   Photographs by Shahnoza Karimbabaeva, director of the Tashkent House of Photography, Tursun Ali and Viktor An have pictures of the Aral’s shallow waters, the lifestyles and its surroundings, including new settlements that have come up on the shoreline.

   “People tend to talk more about the Aral Sea and less about Karakalpakstan and its people,” Karimbabaeva told the AWW. “Apart from the Aral, we also want to show the world its people, sights, legends and traditions.”

 (END/AWW/IPSAP/MK/BB/FS/190606)