Water, environment and development

As we mark the World Environment Day (June 5), it would be pertinent to reflect on why a serious issue like water and its close interrelationship with the environment has for all practical purposes disappeared from the global political agenda.

The increasing demand for water, coupled with poor management practices over decades, has already caused a lot of damage to the environment. Take the Aral Sea for example. During the first half of the 20th century, it was the world's fourth-largest inland water body with a surface area of about 68,000 square kilometers, equivalent to more than half the area of England.

In the early 1960s, the Soviet Union government decided to divert the waters of the two major rivers, Amu Darya and Syr Darya, which fed the Aral Sea to irrigate the arid areas of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan (which then were part of the Soviet Union). The Karakum Canal, whose construction was completed in 1967, diverted the waters of the Amu Darya to irrigate the perennially dry areas of nearly 3 million hectares primarily to grow cotton. Although irrigation was successful, it sounded the death knell for the Aral Sea. The Amu Darya, which has been completely cut off from the Aral Sea, now ends in a dam some 110 km away.