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Turkmenistan
Environmental Issues
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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