Aral Sea in 2009

Aral Sea in 1985

Ship in Aral while dried up

The once lively Aral Sea in Uzbekitan is drying up and will soon be forgone, in spite of those perfect snow storms and the would-be spring flooding in China’s Xinjiang province within weeks.

The Aral’s drying is not done by global warming (though it will add additional pressure to the drying). Aral used to be one of the five biggest lakes in the world, an area of 68,000 km2, about twice the size of the Hainan Province of China, but it has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet Union irrigation projects. The attached 4 pictures demonstrates the devastating effects as a result of the agricultural needs.

Aral is not an isolated case; there is abundance of evidences around the globe for this indictment that we humans are running out of water, therefore running out of living space, mainly from our stupidity. And actually, the recent draught in the Southwest China can be traced through the building of dams for hydroelectric power stations to power the world’s factory in China, and the phasing out of primitive forests and the diversion of the local water to grow water-demanding production trees for paper mills for a quick profit to foreign investments.

We humans must be fed through growing agricultural products such as wheat, corn, and rice, but if we don’t do it according to the rules of the nature as far as water resource is concerned, we are basically committing suicide or genocide (to the people who are living down-streams); the same applied to industrial development’s needs. Aral had never been dried up in history recorded by humans and this is the first time. From my knowledge and assessments here and there, I would expect we humans will be seeing a cruel picture stemming from the lack of water by 2030; by 2050, wars, famines, plagues will vastly destroy a good portion of the human population; and it will be a non-stoppable process unless we are taking actions to save our water along with other resources and come up with a plan that is just enough for each mouth of the world’s population.

We humans have at least lived in this world of land for over 10,000 years, yet ideologies such as Capitalism, Communism, and Socialism are all artifacts within the past 200 years. Capitalism has run its full length and has revealed shockingly its ugly side as of today. I may not live to see this world in 2050; notwithstanding I can imagine what a scene of carnage it will be.

The lack of unlimited resources has exercised its relentless might upon both Communism and Capitalism, yet in the end, it is the non-other-than unsustainable "Capitalism" and the run-away "Free Market Economy" that will do us in!

Here again, my stern warning: unless we can reshape our ideology and our living style, we humans are doomed! Please check out the following article from AP.

UN’s Ban calls Aral Sea ’shocking disaster’
 

By JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press Writer

NUKUS, Uzbekistan – The drying up of the Aral Sea is one of the planet’s most shocking environmental disasters, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Sunday as he urged Central Asian leaders to step up efforts to solve the problem.

Once the world’s fourth-largest lake, the sea has shrunk by 90 percent since the rivers that feed it were largely diverted in a Soviet project to boost cotton production in the arid region.

The shrunken sea has ruined the once-robust fishing economy and left fishing trawlers stranded in sandy wastelands, leaning over as if they dropped from the air. The sea’s evaporation has left layers of highly salted sand, which winds can carry as far away as Scandinavia and Japan, and which plague local people with health troubles.

Ban toured the sea by helicopter as part of a visit to the five countries of former Soviet Central Asia. His trip included a touchdown in Muynak, Uzbekistan, a town once on the shore where a pier stretches eerily over gray desert and camels stand near the hulks of stranded ships.

"On the pier, I wasn’t seeing anything, I could see only a graveyard of ships," Ban told reporters after arriving in Nukus, the nearest sizable city and capital of the autonomous Karakalpak region.

"It is clearly one of the worst disasters, environmental disasters of the world. I was so shocked," he said.

The Aral Sea catastrophe is one of Ban’s top concerns on his six-day trip through the region and he is calling on the countries’ leaders to set aside rivalries to cooperate on repairing some of the damage.

"I urge all the leaders ... to sit down together and try to find the solutions," he said, promising United Nations support.

However, cooperation is hampered by disagreements over who has rights to scarce water and how it should be used.

In a presentation to Ban before his flyover, Uzbek officials complained that dam projects in Tajikistan will severely reduce the amount of water flowing into Uzbekistan. Impoverished Tajikistan sees the hydroelectric projects as potential key revenue earners.

Competition for water could become increasingly heated as global warming and rising populations further reduce the amount of water available per capita.

Water problems also could brew further dissatisfaction among civilians already troubled by poverty and repressive governments; some observers fear that could feed growing Islamist sentiment in the region.

Ban also is taking on the region’s frequently poor human rights conditions.

That is likely to be an especially tense issue when he meets Monday with Uzbek President Islam Karimov, who has led the country since the 1991 Soviet collapse and imposed severe pressure on opposition and civil rights activists.

The meeting comes less than two weeks after the U.N. Human Rights Committee issued a report criticizing Uzbekistan, including calling for fuller investigation of the brutal suppression of a 2005 uprising in the city of Andijan. Opposition and rights groups claim that hundreds were killed, but authorities insist the reports are exaggerated and angrily reject any criticism.