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Uzbekistan
Climate
Uzbekistan's climate is classified as continental, with hot summers
and cool winters. Summer temperatures often surpass 40°C;
winter temperatures average about -23°C, but may fall as low
as -40°C. Most of the country also is quite arid, with average
annual rainfall amounting to between 100 and 200 millimeters and
occurring mostly in winter and spring. Between July and September,
little precipitation falls, essentially stopping the growth of
vegetation during that period.
Environmental Problems
Despite Uzbekistan's rich and varied natural environment, decades
of environmental neglect in the Soviet Union have combined with
skewed economic policies in the Soviet south to make Uzbekistan
one of the gravest of the CIS's many environmental crises. The
heavy use of agrochemicals, diversion of huge amounts of irrigation
water from the two rivers that feed the region, and the chronic
lack of water treatment plants are among the factors that have
caused health and environmental problems on an enormous scale.
Environmental devastation in Uzbekistan is best exemplified by
the catastrophe of the Aral Sea. Because of diversion of the Amu
Darya and Syrdariya for cotton cultivation and other purposes,
what once was the world's fourth largest inland sea has shrunk
in the past thirty years to only about one-third of its 1960 volume
and less than half its 1960 geographical size. The desiccation
and salinization of the lake have caused extensive storms of salt
and dust from the sea's dried bottom, wreaking havoc on the region's
agriculture and ecosystems and on the population's health. Desertification
has led to the large-scale loss of plant and animal life, loss
of arable land, changed climatic conditions, depleted yields on
the cultivated land that remains, and destruction of historical
and cultural monuments. Every year, many tons of salts reportedly
are carried as far as 800 kilometers away. Regional experts assert
that salt and dust storms from the Aral Sea have raised the level
of particulate matter in the earth's atmosphere by more than 5
percent, seriously affecting global climate change.
The Aral Sea disaster is only the most visible indicator of environmental
decay, however. The Soviet approach to environmental management
brought decades of poor water management and lack of water or
sewage treatment facilities; inordinately heavy use of pesticides,
herbicides, defoliants, and fertilizers in the fields; and construction
of industrial enterprises without regard to human or environmental
impact. Those policies present enormous environmental challenges
throughout Uzbekistan.
Water Pollution
Large-scale use of chemicals for cotton cultivation, inefficient
irrigation systems, and poor drainage systems are examples of
the conditions that led to a high filtration of salinized and
contaminated water back into the soil. Post-Soviet policies have
become even more dangerous; in the early 1990s, the average application
of chemical fertilizers and insecticides throughout the Central
Asian republics was twenty to twenty-five kilograms per hectare,
compared with the former average of three kilograms per hectare
for the entire Soviet Union. As a result, the supply of fresh
water has received further contaminants. Industrial pollutants
also have damaged Uzbekistan's water. In the Amu Darya, concentrations
of phenol and oil products have been measured at far above acceptable
health standards. In 1989 the minister of health of the Turkmen
SSR described the Amu Darya as a sewage ditch for industrial and
agricultural waste substances. Experts who monitored the river
in 1995 reported even further deterioration.
In the early 1990s, about 60 percent of pollution control funding
went to water-related projects, but only about half of cities
and about one-quarter of villages have sewers. Communal water
systems do not meet health standards; much of the population lacks
drinking water systems and must drink water straight from contaminated
irrigation ditches, canals, or the Amu Darya itself.
According to one report, virtually all the large underground
fresh-water supplies in Uzbekistan are polluted by industrial
and chemical wastes. An official in Uzbekistan's Ministry of Environment
estimated that about half of the country's population lives in
regions where the water is severely polluted. The government estimated
in 1995 that only 230 of the country's 8,000 industrial enterprises
were following pollution control standards.
Air Pollution
Poor water management and heavy use of agricultural chemicals
also have polluted the air. Salt and dust storms and the spraying
of pesticides and defoliants for the cotton crop have led to severe
degradation of air quality in rural areas.
In urban areas, factories and auto emissions are a growing threat
to air quality. Fewer than half of factory smokestacks in Uzbekistan
are equipped with filtration devices, and none has the capacity
to filter gaseous emissions. In addition, a high percentage of
existing filters are defective or out of operation. Air pollution
data for Tashkent, Farghona, and Olmaliq show all three cities
exceeding recommended levels of nitrous dioxide and particulates.
High levels of heavy metals such as lead, nickel, zinc, copper,
mercury, and manganese have been found in Uzbekistan's atmosphere,
mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, waste materials, and
ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy. Especially high concentrations
of heavy metals have been reported in Toshkent Province and in
the southern part of Uzbekistan near the Olmaliq Metallurgy Combine.
In the mid-1990s, Uzbekistan's industrial production, about 60
percent of the total for the Central Asian nations excluding Kazakstan,
also yielded about 60 percent of the total volume of Central Asia's
emissions of harmful substances into the atmosphere. Because automobiles
are relatively scarce, automotive exhaust is a problem only in
Tashkent and Farghona.
Government Environmental Policy
The government of Uzbekistan has acknowledged the extent of the
country's environmental problems, and it has made an oral commitment
to address them. But the governmental structures to deal with
these problems remain confused and ill defined. Old agencies and
organizations have been expanded to address these questions, and
new ones have been created, resulting in a bureaucratic web of
agencies with no generally understood commitment to attack environmental
problems directly. Various nongovernmental and grassroots environmental
organizations also have begun to form, some closely tied to the
current government and others assuming an opposition stance. For
example, environmental issues were prominent points in the original
platform of Birlik, the first major opposition movement to emerge
in Uzbekistan (see The 1980s, this ch.). By the mid-1990s, such
issues had become a key concern of all opposition groups and a
cause of growing concern among the population as a whole.
In the first half of the 1990s, many plans were proposed to limit
or discourage economic practices that damage the environment.
Despite discussion of programs to require payments for resources
(especially water) and to collect fines from heavy polluters,
however, little has been accomplished. The obstacles are a lack
of law enforcement in these areas, inconsistent government economic
and environmental planning, corruption, and the overwhelming concentration
of power in the hands of a president who shows little tolerance
of grassroots activity (see Postindependence Changes, this ch.).
International donors and Western assistance agencies have devised
programs to transfer technology and know-how to address these
problems (see International Financial Relations, this ch.). But
the country's environmental problems are predominantly the result
of abuse and mismanagement of natural resources promoted by political
and economic priorities. Until the political will emerges to regard
environmental and health problems as a threat not only to the
government in power but also to the very survival of Uzbekistan,
the increasingly grave environmental threat will not be addressed
effectively.
Data as of March 1996
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