Ecology and the Aral tragedy

In the 1960s–1980s opening new land and the growth of factories and transport upset the natural balance. According to the textbook, chemical plants were built in the densely populated cities of Navoi, Chirchiq and Fergana, 90,000 tonnes of pesticides were used on cotton fields in the mid-1980s and about half of them were sprayed from aircraft. The highly toxic butifos, used to make leaves drop, was applied for 20 years, often in 2–3 times the set norm; its use was banned in 1981 but some farms still used it later. From the 1960s expanding irrigation reduced the water that the Amu Darya and Syr Darya brought to the sea, the Aral’s level fell, salinity rose and fish declined. Illness grew in the Aral region: infant mortality (under one year) rose from 46.5 per thousand in 1980 to 72 in 1986, and fishing disappeared in places like Mo‘ynoq. At the end of the 1980s the sea split into the Small (northern) and Large (southern) Aral, later the Large Aral also split into western and eastern parts, and the eastern part has almost completely dried up; more than 40,000 km² of the seabed dried out, forming the Aralkum desert.