Human and Environmental Symbiosis in Central Asia: Through the Water Management of the Aral Sea Basin Crisis

Abstract

The Aral Sea is an inland lake in Central Asia, which lies between Kazakhstan in the north and Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan, in the south. (Fig. 1) There are two inflow rivers of this inland sea. One inflow river is Amu Darya, which is one of the longest rivers in Central Asia and forms part of Afghanistan’s borders with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan and part of Uzbekistan’s border with Turkmenistan. The other is Syr Darya, which forms by the confluence of two headstreams in the fertile Fergana Valley, and its lower course is on the eastern edge of the Kyzylkum desert. The water catchment area of both Amu Darya and Syr Darya expands spreads all Central Asian republics and Afghanistan; therefore, the Aral Sea can be regarded as the ‘Common Pool’. In recent days, the Aral Sea is confronted with the crisis of extinction. The Aral Sea used to be the fourth-largest inland sea in the world in the 1950s. However, the altitude and basin area of the Aral Sea have been decreased drastically since the 1960s. In the current situation, the magnitude of Aral Sea has shrunk to less than one-third of its original dimension (Fig. 2), and some estimates forecasts ‘‘The Sea