Creeping Environmental Problems and Sustainable Development in the Aral Sea Basin

by Edited by Michael Glantz

• ISBN13: 9780521620864
• ISBN10: 0521620864
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-05-13
• 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 is the first to comprehensively describe 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

List of contributors	vi
Introduction	vii
Michael H. Glantz
Sustainable development and creeping environmental problems in the Aral Sea resion	1	(25)
Michael H. Glantz
Ecological disaster linked to landscape composition changes in the Aral Sea basin	26	(21)
Elisabeth A. Vostokova
Alteration of water level and salinity of the Aral Sea	47	(19)
Vitalyi N. Bortnik
Desertification in the Aral Sea region	66	(20)
Asomitdin A. Rafikov
Climate fluctuations and change in the Aral Sea basin within the last 50 years	86	(14)
Alexander N. Zolotokrylin
Priaralye ecosystems and creeping environmental changes in the Aral Sea	100	(28)
Nina M. Novikova
Public health in the Aral Sea coastal region and the dynamics of changes in the ecological situation	128	(29)
Leonid I. Elpiner
The impact of political ideology on creeping environmental changes in the Aral Sea basin	157	(34)
Igor S. Zonn
Change of the rivers' flow in the Aral Sea basin (in connection with the problem of quantitative assessment and consideration of environmental after-effects)	191	(13)
K.V. Tsytsenko
V.V. sumarokova
Fish population as an ecosystem component and economic object in the Aral Sea basin	204	(21)
Iliya Zholdasova
Creeping environmental changes in the Karakum Canal's zone of impact	225	(20)
Nikolai S. Orlovsky
Environmental changes in the Uzbek part of the Aral Sea basin	245	(16)
Anatoly N. Krutov
Creeping changes in biological communities in the Aral Sea	261	(22)
Nikolai V. Aladin
Index	283