The Lara Sea

The Aral Sea is wet again!

The Aral Sea in central Asia has been in trouble for decades. Soviet engineering diverted the rivers feeding it to create vast agricultural canals, which eventually turned the body of water into two sickly, salty puddles.

By 1990 the falling waters cut the North, or "Small," Aral Sea off from the bigger southern part. In 2001 the island of Vozrozdeniya -- once so isolated that it was used for biological weapons research -- joined the mainland, turning the southern sea into the shape of two collapsing lungs.

All of this took a huge toll on the 3.5 million humans living nearby:

Over the past 15 years chronic bronchitis has increased by 3,000 percent in the area, arthritic diseases by 6,000 per cent. Oral Antaniyazova -- a local doctor whose campaigning on the issue has won her a Goldman Prize, the world's foremost award for grass-roots environmental activists -- says that up to 99 per cent of women of reproductive age on the southern shore of the sea have anaemia, and that 87 per cent of their babies are born with the condition. Cancers, allergies, miscarriages and kidney and liver diseases have all increased, she says, and life expectancy has slumped from 64 years to 51.

To add insult to injury, the irrigation has poisoned the cotton fields with salt, causing production to fall.

But now there is no more Soviet engineering. And the state of Kazakhstan -- rich with oil money -- is attempting to restore the waters of the North Aral by building a dam between the northern and southern portions, then trying to fill it.

By the time the new dam in the Berg Strait was completed last year, work had also been done to rescue the Syr Darya river, which flows into the northern sea, and its flow was doubled.

Even optimists thought it would take years for the small sea to recover; pessimists said it could never happen. But it has now filled up to the top of the dam, and the waters are flowing back towards Aralsk, the main port in the north, having previously retreated as far as 80km. Fishermen in the surrounding villages are going to sea again, and there are plans to release 30 million young fish into its waters to restock the North Aral.

Don't get entirely lost in the glory of this restoration: It is working wonders, but only for northern part. Meanwhile, the South Aral is further collapsing. Perhaps the death of the southern sea will be the price to pay for terraforming the north. All that Soviet engineering indeed had a lasting effect.

But really, I find this story incredibly inspiring. It highlights so many important truths. The main one is this: Human actions have effects. The Soviets permanently changed a large area of geography with their canal-digging projects. But getting people together to build a dam and collectively try to help the problem also had an effect.

Too often, the story of environmentalists is that human actions have caused huge amounts of damage, about which there is absolutely nothing we can do. This is nonsensical! If our actions have effects, then they have effects. We can do something. (And indeed, choosing not to act is itself an action that will have an effect).

But we need to be flexible about what we can do. It is not true that all problems in the world can be made to go away. Another truth of the world is nonreversibility: in fact, nothing can go back to "the way it was." [And would we want that?]

Hence, we are not really "restoring" the Aral Sea. We are creating a new body of water from what used to be the Aral Sea.

Let's call it the Lara Sea.