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This chapter addresses the Aral Sea disaster, not as an acute event demanding emergency response, but with a long-term view aimed at determining the causes of the disaster and providing analysis and troubleshooting to prevent such catastrophes in the future.

Emergency response requires quick action and no cost is spared. Such actions look very bold and are very often used to enhance the public image of politicians, businessmen, and leaders of various organizations who have rendered assistance.

The second direction, described here, is a more complicated and thankless task. The investigation faces obstruction from those who caused the disaster or who can use the crisis situation to their advantage. It is hard to get financing for long-term solutions. This chapter describes the key causes of the death of the Aral Sea. I then describe our engagement in the hard work of looking for ways to correct errors and provide innovative solutions that would satisfy the majority of stakeholders.

The UN Declaration for Human Rights on the availability of clean water gives a new context for the case made in this chapter. Here I argue that all people along the rivers of Central Asia (and elsewhere) share the same rights to have enough high-quality water and to fully enjoy a healthy environment, regardless whether they live upstream or downstream.

In these comments, I share my long-term thoughts on the Aral disaster. I begin with my philosophical position. For the restoration of the Aral Sea to even become possible, we must change the current human relationship to the Earth. Then, within that first context, I turn to a concrete proposal to address water management affecting the Aral region.

This chapter explores the lessons of the Aral Sea disaster for social learning and for achieving future sustainability in the Aral region. Evident is what might be called “the law of delayed response” which states that social response tends to lag behind deteriorating ecological conditions. The bounding of the Aral Sea problems at various scales of consideration from local to global is explored, with a particular emphasis on the importance of a bioregional approach. Not only is the Aral disaster a global problem, part of the overall climate crisis, but it is also a much replicated disaster, sharing a global but decentralized impact. Proposals address the need for sustainable outcomes in the Aral region.

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.

Having established multiple disasters now radiating from the core loss of the Aral Sea, we turn to the volume's theme of Disaster by Design in Section Two. Neither the trunk nor the branches was a natural process; all took root in the hands of humans intent on altering nature to serve humans.

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.

Over the past two decades, four Uzbek historic cities and four “intangible cultural heritage” traditions have been raised to the World Heritage List. Yet none of these is in Karakalpakstan, and a painful disconnect appears between the zeal to protect the cultures and monuments of southern Uzbekistan and inaction in identifying and addressing the huge cultural as well as environmental losses most directly associated with the death of the Aral Sea. In this chapter, a U.S.-based cultural historian and conservation-preservation practitioner offers impressions and cultural and spatial material analysis of some of the historic places included on a recent study team tour of Uzbekistan to explore the impacts of the Aral Sea disaster. It is apparent that three-term president Islam Karimov has made culture a linchpin of his program of Uzbek growth and security, cultivated a higher and higher profile for his regime within UNESCO, and focused intensely on interpretation and material conservation of historic sites favoring the themes of his own regime. The focus of this chapter is the disconnect between the emerging national and achieved Aral Sea narratives.

This chapter briefly discusses an often overlooked impact of the loss of the Aral Sea, the social costs to the population in the surrounding areas. While much focus has been on the shrinkage of the Aral in the past half century, the story is much older and includes a diversity of people, ecosystems, and productive ways of living in a harsh climate. This chapter is an overview of how ecological parameters have influenced life for the local population in Karakalpakstan. The research is based on a short site visit and tests ideas for a longer project that will look at who is migrating for employment, based on what criteria, and the dynamics of that choice. Seminal writings about human activity around the Aral when it was full, along with recent reports on livelihoods, health, and migration patterns are reviewed. The chapter supports the idea that migration can be an adaptation to climate. Migration is overall a negative social sustainability indicator for Karakalpakstan.