A sea of trouble.

The government of the former Soviet Union wanted to expand the country's cotton production. To do that, it decided to irrigate vast areas of arid and semi-arid territory by diverting two rivers, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya. But these rivers fed the Aral Sea. This huge inland sea supported a large maritime community, which supplied one-sixth of all the seafood in the former Soviet Union. During the 1980s, the sea received little or no water. But, enough cotton grew to make the Soviets self-sufficient in textiles. The project was so successful that cotton became an export crop for the cash-hungry government.

Under the communist regime, there were no protests. But the Aral Sea became a dead sea. With its water supply cut off it shrank, and its fishing boats now sit silently in desert sand. The sturgeon, carp, and herring that once filled its waters are gone, as are the villages and towns that thrived on its shores more than a generation ago.

Some might argue that's the price of progress -- if development equals progress.

But, in the end, a dying sea did not breath life into the land. Instead, the irrigated land became waterlogged. When the water evaporated, it left a build up of salt. The earth had to be cleared of its salt, using river water, before the cotton crop could be planted. That's not all. As most farmers can tell you, crops have to be rotated. Otherwise, they'll deplete the soil of its nutrients. The cotton crops weren't rotated. The soil was dying too. It needed artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. The deadly Agent Orange was also used -- the defoliant that was used in the Vietnam War to destroy heavy groundcover which also devastated the ecology of an essentially agricultural country. The whole region surrounding the Aral Sea became a victim as the contaminated dried up sea bed of sand blew everywhere. Infant mortality rates rose along with stomach-cancer rates, and life expectancy dropped.

What could have remained a valuable resource, supplying fish to the entire region and beyond, has turned into an ecological disaster.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITY:

Research and report on environmental disasters in Canada that could negatively affect the lives of Canadians for generations. What efforts have been made by protest groups to stop projects that threaten our ecological balance, and how effective have they been in changing harmful developments?