The Aral Sea - Cotton Story, or Yet Another Tragedy of the Commons?
Aral Sea from space (north at bottom), August 1985 By NASA - http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/EFS/photoinfo.pl?PHOTO=STS51F-36-59, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=225591
This pro bono analysis was published by Apparel Insider in March 2021
Once the fourth largest lake in the world, as this brief film shows, the fate of the Aral Sea, could be seen as an allegory or object lesson in fast fashion. It is there to remind us of what happens when externalities are ignored, and ostensibly free resources - clean air, water, living space - are squandered by commercial interests, because those interests are not obliged to pay the price.
It is also a lesson in the importance of determining true cause and effect, before leaping to conclusions and engaging in strategies that may be useless, or even counterproductive. In the apparel sector there is an almost universal perception that the destruction of the Aral Sea is a cotton problem (when I first looked at sustainable fibers in 2017, I believed that myself). Once we all stop buying cotton, we are told, the problem will be solved.
That is not true. We have all been misled, and cotton farmers everywhere, have a right to be angry. It’s not a cotton problem, it’s a resource allocation problem, and simply not buying cotton will not change anything. Let me explain.
1. Is cotton the most “thirsty” crop produced in the region? Are crop water requirements even the villain?
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan,Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan all share the Aral basin to a greater or lesser extent. All draw water from the Aral’s two great tributaries: the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya. Today, thanks to oil and gas, Kazakhstan has a real GDP per capita of around $26,400. The other Aral states are considerably poorer. Turkmenistan’s GDP/capita is $14,900; Uzbekistan’s, $7,000; and Kyrgyzstan’s, $5,300/capita. Tajikistan is the poorest country of the five. Ranked 194 out of 228 countries in the world, with $3,400/capita it is slightly richer than Benin, and slightly poorer than Senegal.
Regional income and employment opportunities are scarce. All five countries are landlocked, and so exports are largely restricted to durables and unbreakables - oil, gas, gold, copper, cotton… Agriculture is crucial, almost half of the regional population lives in rural areas and depends directly on agriculture-related activities for their livelihoods.
An aggressive policy of agricultural expansion was pursued during the Soviet era, and water withdrawals from the Aral Sea Basin rose 1.8 times from 1960-90. After a brief decline following the breakup of the USSR, withdrawals for irrigation have stabilized at some 93% of 1990 levels. Agriculture represents 90% of total withdrawals, with the remainder accounted for by industry, domestic consumption, and above all, hydroelectricity. Excess water releases as a by-product of winter hydropower generation reduce summer water availability. And releases during wintertime climbed by a factor of four between the 1980s and early 2000s.
As a result, as the NASA images above and below show, whilst the Soviet era ended in 1990 and irrigation is now seven percent lower than it was then, the Aral Sea has continued to shrink.
NASA Goddard Space Center https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
But let’s focus on agriculture. What are the average net irrigation water requirements of the predominant crops produced in all five Aral nations? Is cotton the villain of the plot? The chart below was produced by the IBRD using CROPWAT, an FAO program for the calculation of crop water and irrigation requirements, based on soil, climate and crop data, which enables agricultural economists to model irrigation needs in different regions of cultivation, with some accuracy.
As you can see, the most irrigation intensive crop grown in the Aral region is not cotton. It’s that beloved of both the organic and livestock sectors - Alfalfa. In Kazakhstan, this “water thirsty” crop consumes 15,000 tonnes of irrigation water per hectare, per production season. Kazak cotton, on the other hand, only consumes 9,000 tonnes per hectare, per growing season. Indeed, alfalfa consumes more irrigation water per hectare than cotton in three of the 5 Aral Basin states including Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan.
In Uzbekistan however, alfalfa only consumes 9,000 tonnes of irrigation water per hectare on average, whereas Uzbek cotton consumes 11,000 tonnes/ha. Alfalfa also consumes less blue, or irrigation, water per hectare than cotton in Tajikistan. But in neither of those two nations is cotton the most water thirsty crop produced. That would be rice. Indeed in the Aral region, rice consumes more blue water per hectare than cotton in every single country.
Of course, annual crops are rotated, so for annual irrigation values we are looking at a combination of cotton and winter wheat; of rice and fodder (maize); of tomatoes and winter wheat; or of alfalfa and any of the others (alfalfa is a green fertiliser), and so on.
In the post Soviet era - 1991 onwards - the cultivation of rice declined in both Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. This is particularly true for the latter, where rice cultivation is closely controlled and indeed banned in most regions. By contrast, the area planted in rice has essentially doubled in the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan. At the same time, as the chart below shows, in Uzbekistan, the cotton producing area has fallen to 55% of the pre-independence peak.
In summary, not only has the irrigated area within the Aral basin declined slightly since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the area under cotton has fallen markedly. But this has not halted the Aral Sea’s demise.
Source: Cotton Analytics
2. Crop water requirements are not the only Consideration
Farmers do not decide what to grow based on comparative irrigation values, they choose based on economics. They produce whatever crop or combination of crops will provide them with the highest net income per hectare. If the production of Aral cotton is rendered uneconomic, farmers will simply switch to a different crop combination. And if that crop combination consumes more irrigation water than previously, demonising cotton will worsen the plight of the Aral Sea not improve it.
In short, we should always look at the opportunity cost. In poor agrarian nations - which, with the exception of oil and gas rich Kazakhstan, the Aral states all are - farmers are going to grow something. There are no other economic opportunities in rural areas. And their Governments are not going to stop them. Indeed, in order to expand electricity supply and economic opportunity to the province of Sirdaryo, the Uzbek administration constructed a dam in the middle of the desert. The project emerged into public view in May 2017 “with declarations it would enable two harvests of cotton and grain a year, aquaculture development, and walnut plantations”. Last year, that dam broke, killing 6 people, washing away crops as well as homes in both Uzbekistan and neighbouring Kazakhstan, and causing over $1bn of damage. The President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev has appointed Abdugani Sanginov, an official involved in supervising the construction of the Sardoba dam, to the task force investigating its failure. His son is head of Topalang HPD Holding, one of the main sub-contractors that built the dam. The prospects for a transparent and thorough investigation are obviously not great. The fall-out has left a number of Uzbek journalists who dared to suggest a state cover up, out of a job.
That said, the fact that alternative crops might consume more water, should in no way be taken as an endorsement of brands and initiatives sourcing Uzbek cotton. Indeed, focusing solely on crop cultivation and irrigation, the figures shown in the table above actually grossly understate the amount of water that needs to be removed from either the Syr or Amu Darya to produce the crops concerned. This is because the Soviet era irrigation system is extraordinarily inefficient. Indeed, work by Bekchanov and others suggests that the average percentage of irrigation delivered to the crop, across the Aral region, is only 40%. Some of the missing 60% does end up in the groundwater that flows back to the source. However, between unlined channels, inefficient field systems, illegal outtakes, and farmer ignorance, perhaps 50% of the rivers’ waters are quite simply lost! This is an extraordinary statistic, and it makes it very clear that no brand should intentionally source Uzbek cotton, unless and until such sourcing is part of a global initiative to overhaul the Aral irrigation system. Ad hoc programs aimed at improving irrigation at field level are not adequate, because 40-50 percent of the water has already been lost, before it even reaches the field, through poor conveyance.
The task is mammoth. There are about 48,000 km of main and secondary canals and 360,000 km of on-farm canals in the Aral Basin. Most were constructed after 1960, and only 28% of the total length is lined. Main canals constructed before 1960, as well as the great majority of on-farm canals, are earthen. They wind significantly, and often display high leakage characteristics. Many are past their service life.The “On-Farm” network of secondary and tertiary canals is in even worse condition, as farmers lack the equipment and means to maintain it, and in some instances have cut new canals to suit new field configurations without proper technical supervision. The full replacement cost is likely to run into tens of billions of US Dollars.
It makes sense to focus on Uzbekistan in all this because, of the 5 Aral nations, Uzbekistan is by far the largest user of the Aral Sea’s water. Of the 7.5 - 8 million irrigated hectares in the basin, 4.3 million are in Uzbekistan. Similarly, of the estimated 408,000 km of irrigation channels, some 66% appear to be in Uzbekistan. In addition, nearly 2 million ha in the Aral Basin are fed by pumped irrigation. Again, Uzbekistan has way more (often inefficient) pumps, with over 14,000, compared to roughly 3,000 pumps in Turkmenistan, and 2,300 in Tajikistan (albeit 49 of these are particularly large).
Moreover, of the 7.5 - 8 million irrigated hectares, 5 million have drainage systems, and 70% of these too, are in Uzbekistan. Most Aral drainage systems exhibit signs of advanced deterioration/dilapidation. As a result, 45% of irrigated lands are subject to medium or severe levels of soil salinization. Indeed, about 30% of the irrigated area has such a high groundwater level that it is prone to waterlogging, and as much as 35% of the annual water limit in those regions, is just to leach salt out of the root zone, contributing absolutely nothing to actual crop cultivation.
The problem, of course, is that considerable funding is needed to support the management, operation, and maintenance of the capital-intensive irrigation and drainage systems in the Aral Sea Basin. And this money has simply not been available.To repair and maintain the system adequately, the World Bank has estimated that Uzbekistan alone would require some US$12 billion between now and 2030. Some agencies have already made lending commitments: The European Investment Bank, for example, is looking at an investment plan worth EUR 100 million. But where is the remaining $11.9 billion to come from?
The Amu Darya between Khiva and Bukara, October 2013.image Bates Kassatly
3. How to Help the people of Uzbekistan?
Uzbekistan is currently a poor nation, with little in the way of natural resources. If we don’t want the Uzbek people to exploit the Aral’s waters for agriculture, we must pay them not to. And we must also offer an alternative source of income/employment. One obvious candidate is tourism. Uzbekistan is poor now but the cities on the Great Silk Road were once rich and powerful. The legacy of this period is a host of dazzling structures - mosques, madrasas, and minarets. From Khiva in the West, through Bukhara, Samarkand, and Tashkent, and on East to Fergana. Uzbekistan’s tourist potential is enormous, and little exploited. It seems an obvious place to start.
If we want to restore the Aral Sea - and I am told this should be hydrologically possible - then this cannot be handed over to a hodgepodge of private corporations and initiatives of good intent. We need an Uzbek Government program, supported by a global donors conference, to agree on exactly what will be repaired, how much water use - particularly in irrigation - is going to be reduced, and who is going to provide the requisite funding and how.
We shall be asking poor Uzbeks not to use what appears to them, a god given resource which is theirs to employ. At the same time, from restoring/improving the efficiency of the existing irrigation system, to compensating farmers for not producing, and finding them alternative income sources, all of this will cost tens of billions of dollars. It is clearly unrealistic to expect the Uzbeks to bear the entire burden alone.
The United States spends around $1 billion per year on cotton subsidies. Total U.S. agricultural subsidies are $18 billion per year. EU agriculture subsidies notified to the WTO are larger - although there are more farmers in the EU. Funding then, is arguably a question of priorities, not constraints.
At the same time, the apparel sector already spends tens of millions of dollars annually on various sustainability initiatives of no proven worth (€21 million on the Better Cotton Initiative alone, in 2019). Would it be wiser for the major players to switch from unsubstantiated initiatives to restoring the Aral Sea? Surely this would be a more powerful and effective message of sustainability and intent to make amends for the global impact of fast fashion, than anything that the present system can provide? On the other hand, if brands head back into Uzbekistan, without taking any steps to ensure that Uzbek economic and agricultural policy dovetails with climate targets, how can they reasonably profess sustainability and CSR in their product offering?