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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Turkmenistan
Index
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, environmental regulation is
largely unchanged in Turkmenistan. The new government created the Ministry
of Natural Resources Use and Environmental Protection in July 1992, with
departments responsible for environmental protection, protection of flora
and fauna, forestry, hydrometeorology, and administrative planning. Like
other CIS republics, Turkmenistan has established an Environmental Fund
based on revenues collected from environmental fines, but the fines
generally are too low to accumulate significant revenue. Thanks to the
former Soviet system of game preserves and the efforts of the Society for
Nature Conservation and the Academy of Sciences, flora and fauna receive
some protection in the republic; however, "hard-currency hunts"
by wealthy Western and Arab businesspeople already are depleting animals
on preserves.
Desertification
According to estimates, as a result of desertification processes and
pollution, biological productivity of the ecological systems in
Turkmenistan has declined by 30 to 50 percent in recent decades. The
Garagum and Qizilqum deserts are expanding at a rate surpassed on a
planetary scale only by the desertification process in the Sahara and
Sahel regions of Africa. Between 800,000 and 1,000,000 hectares of new
desert now appears per year in Central Asia.
The most irreparable type of desertification is the salinization
process that forms marshy salt flats. A major factor that contributes to
these conditions is inefficient use of water because of weak regulation
and failure to charge for water that is used. Efficiency in application of
water to the fields is low, but the main problem is leakage in main and
secondary canals, especially Turkmenistan's main canal, the Garagum Canal.
Nearly half of the canal's water seeps out into lakes and salt swamps
along its path. Excessive irrigation brings salts to the surface, forming
salt marshes that dry into unusable clay flats. In 1989 Turkmenistan's
Institute for Desert Studies claimed that the area of such flats had
reached one million hectares.
The type of desertification caused by year-round pasturing of cattle
has been termed the most devastating in Central Asia, with the gravest
situations in Turkmenistan and the Kazak steppe along the eastern and
northern coasts of the Caspian Sea. Wind erosion and desertification also
are severe in settled areas along the Garagum Canal; planted windbreaks
have died because of soil waterlogging and/or salinization. Other factors
promoting desertification are the inadequacy of the collector-drainage
system built in the 1950s and inappropriate application of chemicals.
The Aral Sea
Turkmenistan both contributes to and suffers from the consequences of
the desiccation of the Aral Sea. Because of excessive irrigation, Turkmen
agriculture contributes to the steady drawdown of sea levels. In turn, the
Aral Sea's desiccation, which had shrunk that body of water by an
estimated 59,000 square kilometers by 1994, profoundly affects economic
productivity and the health of the population of the republic. Besides the
cost of ameliorating damaged areas and the loss of at least part of the
initial investment in them, salinization and chemicalization of land have
reduced agricultural productivity in Central Asia by an estimated 20 to 25
percent. Poor drinking water is the main health risk posed by such
environmental degradation. In Dashhowuz Province, which has suffered the
greatest ecological damage from the Aral Sea's desiccation, bacteria
levels in drinking water exceeded ten times the sanitary level; 70 percent
of the population has experienced illnesses, many with hepatitis, and
infant mortality is high (see table 5, Appendix; Health Conditions, this
ch.). Experts have warned that inhabitants will have to evacuate the
province by the end of the century unless a comprehensive cleanup program
is undertaken. Turkmenistan has announced plans to clean up some of the
Aral Sea fallout with financial support from the World Bank (see
Glossary).
Chemical Pollution
The most productive cotton lands in Turkmenistan (the middle and lower
Amu Darya and the Murgap oasis) receive as much as 250 kilograms of
fertilizer per hectare, compared with the average application of thirty
kilograms per hectare. Furthermore, most fertilizers are so poorly applied
that experts have estimated that only 15 to 40 percent of the chemicals
can be absorbed by cotton plants, while the remainder washes into the soil
and subsequently into the groundwater. Cotton also uses far more
pesticides and defoliants than other crops, and application of these
chemicals often is mishandled by farmers. For example, local herdsmen,
unaware of the danger of DDT, have reportedly mixed the pesticide with
water and applied it to their faces to keep away mosquitoes. In the late
1980s, a drive began in Central Asia to reduce agrochemical usage. In
Turkmenistan the campaign reduced fertilizer use 30 percent between 1988
and 1989. In the early 1990s, use of some pesticides and defoliants
declined drastically because of the country's shortage of hard currency.
Data as of March 1996
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