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UZBEKISTAN: 'Soon, the Aral Sea Will Exist Only in Pictures'
By Marina Kozlova - Asian Water Wire*
TASHKENT, Mar 15, 2006 (IPS) - ''We cannot save the Aral and soon you will be able to see it only in pictures,'' claims Uzbek painter Rafael Matevosyan, whose work has portrayed Central Asia's shrinking and dying Aral Sea for more than 40 years.
Matevosyan, 82, came to the Aral - an inland sea between
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan - in 1962 and has since depicted it in
hundreds of paintings.
In those days, the Aral was the world's fourth-largest inland
body of water - after the Caspian Sea between Europe and Asia, Lake
Superior in North America and Lake Victoria in Africa.
The sea started to dry up in the 1960s as a result of human
activity, including the drawing of huge amounts of water for the
irrigation of cotton to feed the massive industrial production of the
then Soviet Union, of which Uzbekistan was a part. Today, the Aral's
volume of water has fallen by 90 percent - to 115 billion cubic
metres - and its surface area has shrunk by 73 percent - to 17.6
thousand sq km.
The sea has fragmented into two giant lakes, called the South
Aral and the North Aral. Millions of hectares of what used to be the
Aral Sea bed has now turned into a new desert called Aralkum.
Winds blow about 75 million tonnes of dust, sand and salt from
the desert into the atmosphere every year, all of which settles on
land within a 1,000 km radius.
''Paintings by Matevosyan are a chronicle of the Aral tragedy,''
Uzbek poet and journalist Raim Farhadi told Asia Water Wire. In his
first pictures, the artist depicted the deep waters of the Aral and
fisheries, and in later ones he showed abandoned ships lying
on dry land that was once covered by water.
Two years after Matevosyan came to the Aral, he noticed the sea
was shrinking. One of his paintings was of a fish factory in the town
of Moynaq in western Uzbekistan - once a centre of industrial
fishing and canning.
The factory stood on poles in the sea. Later he found, these
poles sticking into dry ground; the factory deserted.
Matevosyan was born in the Uzbek city of Samarkand, but his
parents subsequently moved to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, on the
western shore of the Caspian Sea.
He lived there for around 30 years and depicted the Caspian. He
also depicted the Black Sea, an inland sea between south-eastern
Europe and Asia Minor that is connected to the Mediterranean Sea by
the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara and to the Sea of Azov by the
Strait of Kerch.
Moreover, he was trained at a children's flotilla and graduated
from College of Art in Baku.
Matevosyan, says Farhadi, is a chronicler of the tragedy of man
and the environment, feeling the "bodies" of land and water.
''As the sea dries, it is leaving behind a new desert that
produces dust, sand and salt storms,'' the painter said in an
interview, explaining why he has followed the fate of the Aral Sea.
''The land around the Aral is covered with salt and toxic chemicals,
which are blown into the atmosphere and spread to the surrounding area.''
Plants and animals are vanishing, he says, and fish is now
shipped from the Baltic Sea, thousands of kilometres away.
''The people living there are suffering from a lack of fresh water
and, as a result, they are suffering from diseases,'' he adds.
The population around the Aral shows high rates of cancer and
lung diseases, as well as other diseases.
Not very optimistic about the Aral's future, Matevosyan says:
''The Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers (feeding the Aral) go through the territories of six Central Asian nations (Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) and every nation tries to draw as much water from them as it wants. If everyone takes a bucket of water from a barrel, there will not be water in it.''
Until the 1960s, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya poured about 58
billion cubic metres of water into the Aral every year.
However, water flowing into the Aral declined drastically after
the mid-eighties after the expansion of irrigation. The sea also
loses 30 to 35 billion more cubic metres of water through evaporation
every year.
The scientifically grounded and ecologically allowable water
consumption in the Aral Sea basin must not exceed 80 cubic km a year, but the present use of water - around 102 billion cubic
metres a year - is already higher than the permissible level.
''All these numerous funds and organisations (that want to provide
aid in the Aral disaster) are not much help,'' Matevosyan continues.
''They receive a lot of money from the West and use it. At the same
time, this state of affairs also may be advantageous to
representatives of the West who want to be present here.''
The artist believes that his paintings help raise money for
people living around the Aral.
His works have been shown at art exhibitions in the countries of
the former Soviet Union, Germany, Turkey, the United States and
former Yugoslavia. He also has written a book about his work titled
'Man and the Sea'.
These days, Matevosyan is a skinny senior citizen whose beret is
almost permanently atop his head. Currently married to a woman 23 years his junior, he has three daughters and one son from two marriages and four grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
Apart from Caspian, Black and Aral Seas, he has depicted in his
work such themes as fisherfolk, doctors, police officers and images
of beautiful women.
Paintings by Matevosyan reflect the states of the day, surroundings and the colours in them depend on light. The painter prefers realism - the depiction of fact or reality, rather than imaginary subjects - in his works because this manner is ''more long-lived''.
(* This story was produced for the Asia Water Wire, a series of features on water and development in the region coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific.)
(END)
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