Creeping Environmental Problems and Sustainable Development in the Aral Sea Basin

by Edited by Michael Glantz

• ISBN13: 9780521081382
• ISBN10: 0521081386
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-09-18
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Environmental degradation in the Aral Sea basin has been a touchstone for increasing public awareness of environmental issues. The Aral crisis has been touted as a 'quiet Chernobyl' and as one of the worst human-made environmental catastrophes of the twentieth century. This multidisciplinary book comprehensively describes the slow onset of low grade but incremental changes (i.e. creeping environmental change) which affected the region and its peoples. Through a set of case studies, it describes how the region's decision-makers allowed these changes to grow into an environmental and societal nightmare. It outlines many lessons to be learned for other areas undergoing detrimental creeping environmental change, and provides an important example of how to approach such disasters for students and researchers of environmental studies, global change, political science and history.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Sustainable development and creeping environmental problems in the Aral Sea region

Changes of landscape composition of the Aral Sea Basin in connection with ecological disaster

Alteration of water level and salinity of the Aral Sea

Desertification in the Aral Sea region Asomitdin

Climate fluctuation and change in the Aral Sea Basin within the last 50 years

Priaralye ecosystems and creeping environmental changes in the Aral Sea

Public health in the Aral Sea coastal region and the dynamics of changes in the ecological situation

The impact of political ideology on creeping environmental changes in the Aral Sea

Change of the rivers' flow in the Aral Sea Basin (in connection with the problem of quantitative assessment and consideration of environmental after-effects)

Fish population as an ecosystem component and economic object in the Aral Sea

Creeping environmental changes in the Karakum Canal's zone of impact

Environmental changes in the Uzbek part of the Aral Sea

Creeping changes in biological communities in the Aral Sea

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.