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How are identified instances of contamination addressed, assuming they have been identified and disclosed? The U.S. has evolved an activist ethos with regard to contamination – both in terms of identifying it and, in the case of identified contamination, taking some engineering action to remediate the hazard. In Chapter 13, A Grassroots Perspective on the Brownfields and Superfund Programs, veteran New Jersey grassroots leader Madelyn Hoffman offers a thorough review of the Superfund program that, since 1980s, has guided U.S. cleanup of sites identified as contaminated at a threshold demanding remediation. She provides a detailed overview of the process identifying the problem and for developing and comparing alternative approaches for remediation. Public involvement is integral to this process, as is the assessment of health risks for local populations. Hoffman also describes the more recent process of Brownfields remediation added as an adjunct to Superfund to more speedily return contaminated lands to productive use. If Superfund has been the subject of political opposition for its regulations, costs and for tying up property, Brownfields offers the political remedy by streamlining cleanup in order to foster reuse. The downside of this streamlined mitigation, however, as Hoffman stresses, may be the sacrifice in the quality of restoring the contaminated land, leading to future toxic exposures. Finally, throughout her discussion, Hoffman stresses the vital role of the grassroots network of organizations in the U.S. that “watchdog” local environments. Under the leadership of Lois Marie Gibbs, this grassroots network has become a force fighting for environmental cleanup and supporting newly discovered contaminated communities as they grapple with the attendant issues. In this view, it is the combination of laws and regulations and political will with an active level of citizen oversight and participation that makes the environmental cleanup process work.

If one were revisiting the list of the Seven Wonders of the World, Uzbekistan and the Silk Road region would offer many candidates. The Registan in Samarkand, the central square in Bukhara, the Ichan Kala in Khiva, all offer architectural marvel after marvel. Our task, sadly, is to consider wonders of another kind. Any list of the worst disasters of the world would also rank Uzbekistan at the top, making clear reference to the massive transformation of western Uzbekistan (and Kazakhstan) from home to the fourth largest inland sea to host of a barren desert. All of the waterborne life force of the Aral Sea has been swept from the region and converted into dry sands and dusty winds. The void that remains is a scar on nature of unprecedented magnitude. In the Aral's collapse, the disaster has sucked into its vacuum the peoples of the region, their lives and livelihood, their health and well being, and certainly their hopes and aspirations. And it has created regional and global issues of great urgency and sensitivity.

The history of Vozrezdheniye Island in the Aral Sea is recounted, both to establish the related hazards and to acknowledge the underlying social process it shares with the Aral Sea Disaster, itself. A Closed City, part of the secretive world of Soviet arms manufacture and testing, carried out a hidden agenda of experimentation in the heart of the vast blue sea. Even as the Aral Sea was polluted and starved of water from without, parallel authoritarian regimes were poisoning its heart at the center. In this way, the military industrial complex became an actor with parallel duplicity to the public planned economic sector in charting the death of the Aral Sea. Ironically, the very attraction of Rebirth Island as an isolated weapons testing ground was undermined by the actions of the Soviet government to desiccate the Aral Sea, thus uniting Vozrezdheniye to the main shore and destroying its seclusion. In both instances, the case study is a further indicator that the people of Karakalpakstan were considered marginal and expendable, underscoring environmental injustices that continue long after the demise of the Aral Sea.

In this chapter, the title theme of “Disaster by Design” is explored and justified. Even from early times, the Aral Region was subject to alterations of natural conditions due to human intervention, often deliberate and designed. After the final conquest by Russia, the region became a fixed colony as part of the Soviet Union, ripe for exploitation characteristic of the Soviet approach to nature broadly and to stigmatized areas specifically. The Aral region was selected for irrigated cotton and other cultivation even though the consequences for desiccation of the sea, desertification, and salinization were understood. The decision was so calculated that even a cost–benefit analysis was offered to show that the Aral fishery was worth but a fraction of the cotton potential. The destruction of the region was made possible by a Soviet system of central planning and peripheral control. The brief glimmer of hope for the region evidenced during glasnost was the only moment where the Aral's fate was not sealed. The outcome is a model of ecological disaster by design, an environmental injustice, and an indication of the abusive nature of authoritarian power.

The post-Cold War period allowed the U.S. nuclear legacy of ecocide to be declassified and made public. The policy of nuclear secrecy, evident in Russia (see Mironova et al., this volume), was not merely an eastern practice. Western nuclear releases were kept equally under wraps. In England, for example, the Windscale disaster was not fully disclosed until 1987.¹ Likewise, releases from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, in Washington State, and other U.S. nuclear sites were kept undercover until the same period. The irony was that Americans learned of many of the nuclear skeletons in their closet around the time that Russians learned of theirs (see Mironova et al., this volume). It would appear that glasnost was contagious.

The Ural Mountain region is a remarkably beautiful landscape of forests and lakes. Here is the continental divide between Europe and Asia. One of the rivers originating here to eventually feed feeding the Artic Sea is the Techa river. But the verdant greenery that characterizes the region does not disclose the hidden dangers of plutonium and other radioactive materials either downstream or downwind of the Mayak Nuclear Complex. Major areas of the Techa river corridor and downwind areas were permanently evacuated after radioactive releases from the Mayak Nuclear Complex from the 1950s through the 1970s. Although acute and chronic water releases encompass this period, the so-called Kyshtim 57 accident, an air release from Mayak in 1957, was the word's worst nuclear accident until surpassed by Chernobyl (see Mironova et al. and Kutepova and Tsepilova, this volume). But what of the inhabitants who remain? In this chapter, we explore some of the psycho-social impacts of living in contaminated areas, drawing primarily upon interviews with residents of the region. In doing this, we give voice to their perspective and views on each other and life in this contaminated region.¹

Bakhtiyor Abdullayev is the leader of the Samarkand region branch of eco movement, a green political party in Uzbekistan and professor of Soil Science at Samarkand Agricultural Institute. Dr. Abdullaev earned his Ph.D. in Agriculture in 1990. He held the position of vice dean for academics for several years. He actively participates in the ecological political movement at the regional and national levels.

Because we tend to make a close association between farming and the land, agriculture is not widely recognized for its destructive impacts to the environment and health. The shape of agricultural production is very place specific in many ways. The Soviets collectivized farms, farmers and machinery, deliberately destroying the preexisting peasant culture. The rural small farmer worldwide has been dramatically impacted by neocolonialism and globalization, with a massive out migration to cities resulting.

During our visit to the Aral Region, our exchange team had a lengthy meeting with a former Karakalpak leader, Ubbiniyaz A. Ashirbekov. Director of the Executive Committee, Nukus Branch, International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea. As we sat in his cramped office in Nukus, he pointed in despair to the bookshelves on his wall, filled to the ceiling with multiple millions of dollars of studies of how to address the Aral disaster. The sea level had fallen and in its place there rose a pile of books. If only they could have been employed to dam the remaining waters they might have served some utility. Much as the Soviets before them, those designing solutions to the region's problems think big. A big disaster requires a big solution with big impacts and a very big budget. But, perhaps a big disaster requires many small solutions instead, each designed to mesh with the others but not so interdependent that the failure of one brings down the lot.

In a seminal essay, Mumford (1963) argued that society is forced to adapt to the demands of the technological systems it chooses. He distinguished between what he called “Authoritarian” and “Democratic” technics. Societies choosing the former path select technological and energy systems that are high risk and therefore demand authoritarian, centralized, secretive and closed social controls. In contrast, the second low-risk path allows for decentralized, open, participatory and democratic control. The two directions, and thus the resulting social forms, could not be more contradictory.¹ Democratic technics, not Authoritarian, are necessary for a sustainable future.