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KAZAKHSTAN UZBEKISTAN Lake Sarykamish A m Dashoguz u D Collector a ry a

r en Collecto Great Turkm Karashor , Future Site of Caspian Golden Age Lake Merv IRAN A New Great Lake—or ?

Turkmenistan intends to create a huge lake in the by filling a natural depression with water. on June 3, 2008 Critics say it’s a bad idea that could even spark a war

ASHGABAT, TURKMENISTAN—Bone-dry and many problems,” says Paltamed Esenov, lake will become an artificial Dead Sea. as forbidding as California’s , the director of the National Institute for “Trying to find value in this lake may be windswept, 120-kilometer-long Karashor , Flora, and Fauna in Ashgabat. like trying to put lipstick on a pig,” says Depression—a natural bowl speckled with Turkmen officials predict that the project Michael Glantz, director of the U.S.

the ash-gray, mica-laden that gives the will reclaim 450,000 hectares of water- National Center for Atmospheric Research’s www.sciencemag.org Karakum, or “Black Sand,” Desert its logged agricultural fields and create a habi- Center for Capacity Building in Boulder, name—might seem the last place in the world tat for migratory birds and an inland fishery. Colorado. “A bad idea, even for the best of to put a lake. But on a fine day in Next month, Turkmen engi- intentions, is still a bad idea.” Some experts October 2000, some 450 kilome- neers say they will complete the believe that runoff will be insufficient to fill ters south of Karashor, President mammoth effort’s first phase: the lake, as the drainage water will evapo- Saparmurat Niyazov leaned Online excavation of the two “collector” rate or seep into the desert through unlined sciencemag.org

against a spade and breached a , each hundreds of kilome- feeder canals. Downloaded from few-meters-wide earthen dam. More on this ters long. Water apparently has That prospect raises fears that the lake story in Science’s Laborers took over, and soon Podcast already begun trickling into could trigger a water war. Some observers water was gushing into the initial Karashor. “We are carrying out a worry that to prevent Golden Age Lake from segment of a intended to fill unique, pioneering project,” says running dry and to dilute tainted water, Turk- Karashor to its rim. Golden Age Lake, the late a senior engineer at the Turkmen State menistan might top it off with president said, would become “the symbol of Water Research, Production, and Design from the , a on the revival of the Turkmen ,” covering 3500 Institute in Ashgabat, which leads construc- with Uzbekistan to the north. Uzbeks rely on square kilometers—nearly the area of ’s tion of Golden Age Lake. “Everything we the river for , and their leaders have Great Lake. are doing is aimed at increasing agricultural said they would not tolerate a reduced share With that gesture, Niyazov—known as productivity,” says the engineer, who of the Amu Darya. “The lake project has Turkmenbashi, or “Father of the Turkmen Peo- requested anonymity after agreeing to be incredible geopolitical implications,” says ple”—launched one of the most grandiose interviewed without permission from Turk- Johan Gely, who works on water issues in water projects ever undertaken. According to menistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. for the Swiss Agency for Devel- the plan, two canals that bisect the country will But Golden Age Lake has unleashed a opment and Cooperation. The senior water funnel runoff from heavily irrigated cotton torrent of criticism as well. “There’s no engineer insists such fears are unfounded: fields into Karashor. The $6 billion project is sense in this,” says Timur Berkeliev, a geo- “Every drop of the Amu Darya is valuable, designed to drain and combat the chemist who coordinates the Worldwide and nobody is planning to use this water for buildup of salt and other that have Fund for ’s Econet project in Turk- Golden Age Lake,” he says. degraded three-quarters of Turkmenistan’s menistan. He and others are skeptical of Some see a window of opportunity to arable land and eroded renowned archaeo- plans to purify the runoff, laden with pesti- coax Turkmenistan to reconsider. Niyazov

logical monuments. “The lake will solve cides and , and contend that the died in December 2006, and his successor, CREDIT (INSET): JACQUES DESCLOITRES, MODIS LAND RAPID RESPONSE TEAM, NASA/GSFC

1002 23 MAY 2008 VOL 320 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org Published by AAAS NEWSFOCUS

Making a lake. Two cross-country canals will funnel primarily sodium sulfate—to the surface by menistan’s irrigation runoff into Karashor, drainage water from Turkmenistan’s heartland into capillary action. With evaporation, the brine near the border with Uzbekistan. Niyazov the Karashor Depression. crystallizes into mirabilite, a corrosive min- dusted off a Soviet rough blueprint for an eral that ruins oases and poisons fields. artificial lake, Glantz and others assert, as a Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, has not yet “Several kilometers to the left and right of strongman’s way of showing dominion over spoken publicly about the project. Foreign the canal is a death zone,” says a Turkmen nature. “Only a powerful state can build leaders have remained mum as well, perhaps government scientist who asked to remain such a gigantic thing,” Niyazov said in in deference to Turkmenistan’s growing clout anonymous to keep his job. “If you step in 2003. Turkmenistan’s leader from the coun- as owner of the world’s fifth largest the extremely salty water, your shoes are try’s independence in 1991 until his death, reserves. In the meantime, Berdimuhamedov destroyed within a week,” adds a Western Niyazov was anointed by parliament as has promoted a gradual opening of the iso- technician in Ashgabat who has visited the Saparmurat Turkmenbashi the Great and, in lated country. “The leadership is now sensitive construction site of Golden Age Lake. 1999, made president for life. Golden Age to world opinion,” says Berkeliev. There might The Karakum Canal is not the only vil- Lake was not put to public consultation or be one last chance, he says, to persuade lain in the salinization saga. In the mid- debate. “It was almost impossible to object authorities to convene an international scien- 1970s, Soviet engineers constructed before,” says Berkeliev. In 2004, after tific review before irreversible steps are taken drainage canals to discharge runoff into the merely asking whether the project included to fill the lake. “This is the right time to do desert. Dumping, coupled with overirriga- ecological expertise, the country’s sole something,” he says. tion of farm fields, has saturated the ground homegrown environmental group, the and brought salt to the surface across the Katena Ecological Club, was shut down. Back in the USSR watershed. The water is so high in the One potential beneficiary of the lake Centuries ago, central Asians learned how to Dashoguz region, researchers say, that project is the region’s archaeological treas- make the most of the region’s scarce water dozens of saline lakes have formed from ures. “Water and salt are the main enemies with networks of underground canals that water burbling up from the ground. “About of archaeological sites,” says the govern-

conserved water for irrigation and drinking. 80% of arable land is damaged to different ment scientist, who says that farmland and on June 3, 2008 “The tragic irony is that this region was home degrees,” says Berkeliev. Many Turkmen runoff have begun to encroach on what to one of the largest and most efficient irriga- farmers soak fallow fields in winter, might be Turkmenistan’s most famous tion systems in history, until the Mongol inva- wrongly believing that as fresh water seeps site, the Bronze Age ruins of Gonur Depe sion destroyed much of the network,” says into the soil, it takes salt with it. “But this has (Science, 3 August 2007, p. 586). Saliniza- Peter Sinnott, director of the Caspian Project the opposite effect,” concentrating tion has already taken a heavy toll at one at Columbia University. mirabilite, Berkeliev says: “This is a very ancient monument, Little Kyz Kala in the Josef Stalin managed to outdo the Mon- complex problem, and the level of study is medieval city of Merv, which has deterio- gols. During the Cold War, when central not adequate.” rated especially rapidly in recent decades.

Asia was part of the , Stalin’s That hasn’t stopped Turkmen authorities The rose, soaking the foundations www.sciencemag.org water managers cooked up a notorious from forging ahead with a solution: the res- of the 1400-year-old brick fortress with salt fiasco. In the 1950s, they began to divert urrection of a 1970s idea to divert Turk- and weakening them (see photos, below). massive amounts of water from the Syr With archaeologist Tim Williams Darya into a network of canals to irrigate and colleagues at University Col- cotton fields in Uzbekistan. The Syr Darya lege London, Sébastien Moriset’s is one of two main sources of water for the team at the International Centre

landlocked ; the river’s reduced for Construction of the Downloaded from flow resulted in the Aral’s shrinkage to less Grenoble School of Architec- than a quarter of its original surface area. ture in France has helped Turk- Soviet planners were pushing cotton in men conservators improve Turkmenistan as well, and in 1954, work com- drainage and apply sacrificial menced on the Karakum Canal, which would soil layers at monuments that feed water from the Amu Darya—the other will bear the brunt of erosion big Aral Sea source—into the Turkmen heart- rather than the original walls. land. At 1375 kilometers in length, the Draining the runoff water Karakum waterway, completed in 1988, is the from the should, in the- world’s longest irrigation canal. It has been a ory, ameliorate salt-induced ero- boon for —it tripled the arable land sion of the monuments, says the in its vicinity—and provides water to the cap- government scientist. “How it ital, Ashgabat. will work in practice,” he says, But it has a dark side: A sizable fraction “we don’t know.” of the water that enters the canal (15% to 50%, depending on whom you ask) seeps Salvation or damnation? through its unlined bed into the surrounding To turn a dusty depression into a soil. The hemorrhaging created a patchwork lake requires a whole lot of mois- of and swamps and has exacerbated Going, going … The 1400-year-old Little Kyz Kala fortress in ture. So the first and perhaps salinization. As the ground became water- Merv was in bad shape in 1950 (top); a rising water table acceler- most formidable task was to

CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): YUTAKE, COURTESY OF TIM WILLIAMS/UCL; LOUISE COOKE/UCL COURTESY CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): YUTAKE, logged, the water table rose, bringing — ated the erosion, greatly diminishing the monument by 2003. excavate the two cross-country

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The End of an Intellectual Dark Age? ASHGABAT, TURKMENISTAN—This autumn, 80 top university graduates in this central Asian nation will take part in a revived system of candidate (the Russian equivalent of a Ph.D.) and doctoral degrees in fields as diverse as art history and zoology. If that sounds modest, consider how many stu- dents last year began postgraduate studies in Turkmenistan: zero. This is the country’s first crop of postgrads since 1997. That year, the nation’s authoritarian former leader, Saparmurat Niyazov, abolished advanced degrees. Other elements of his stultifying program included halving undergraduate education to 2 years and lopping a year off secondary school. Niyazov also closed the Academy of Sciences in 1997, cit- ing “the lack of any practical scientific results.” Perhaps most insidious of all, his underlings enforced rote memorization of a book—the Rukhnama, a banal spiritual primer that Niyazov himself penned—as dogma. Since Niyazov’s death in December 2006, his successor, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, has made education reform a top priority. He has upped Soaking up new ideas. Turkmen university education to 5 years—six for aspiring physicians—and reinstated State University students are riveted the lost year of secondary school. Science is back in fashion: “Science plays by the words of a foreign lecturer. the leading role in the strong state, and therefore we should keep pace with

collector canals. Specialists plotted out area of roughly 20 to 25 square kilometers at by … and not so reliable,” says Glantz. But

routes that would make best use of natural the southern end of Karashor was flooded. even rough approximations suggest that the on June 3, 2008 topography. “In some places we had to dig as Filling the lake should take several project is doomed, says Berkeliev. The quality deep as 50 meters,” says the senior water decades, says Esenov of the desert research of the lake will depend on what goes into it, engineer. In other areas they built platforms institute. Water must first flow into the capil- and Turkmen authorities in the past have pre- or added boulders as obstacles to suppress laries—a 1000-kilometer network of small dicted a water inflow of 10.5 cubic kilometers the flow rate. When they encountered giant feeder canals linking at one end to agricultural a year. About two-thirds will come from stone slabs, they invented equipment that drainage ditches and at the other to small Dashoguz, including cross-border runoff could be inserted in cracks between layers to or to the vast collector canals. from the Khorezm region of Uzbekistan; the lift the rock out. Blasting was considered too Pumping stations regulate the flow into the Great Turkmen Collector will supply the other

expensive, and “we don’t have reliable pro- collectors. Eventually, the senior water engi- third of the water. However, Uzbekistan plans www.sciencemag.org fessionals for that purpose,” says the senior neer says, the table should drop to build a drainage canal from Khorezm to the water engineer. by a couple of meters, allowing for the gradual Aral Sea, so the amount feeding Golden Age The crew dug the northern canal in the desalinization and reclamation of farm fields. Lake would eventually taper off, says Kai Dashoguz region wider and deeper to allow Although Golden Age Lake could save Wegerich, a central Asia water expert at for a larger water flow. For about half its some iconic monuments, lesser known Wageningen University in the . length, the 432-kilometer Dashoguz Collector archaeological sites were damaged during “If the Uzbek drainage canal is built, it might

follows the bed of the ancient River. construction. “They just bulldozed some not make sense anymore to construct the Downloaded from The 720-kilometer Great Turkmen Collector small monuments and sites that hadn’t been lake,” he says. starts in the Lebap region in the east and excavated yet,” says the government scien- Khorezm canal or no, Berkeliev says his links up with the Dashoguz Collector 75 tist. The project’s design called for an calculations are damning. Based on the high kilometers upstream of Karashor. About 45 archaeology rescue program, he says, but it evaporation rate in Karakum, he asserts, kilometers from the depression, engineers had no funds. Living heritage is being lost as “there will never be a water body there.” Oth- built a 30-meter-tall, 600-meter-long dam to well. The collectors have raised the water ers say Golden Age Lake may well come into steer the water; otherwise it would have fol- table along their length, spoiling drinking being but is fated to become an environmental lowed the lower-elevation Uzboy riverbed to water wells in some desert settlements. “Vil- nightmare: a salty broth of organic pesticides the . The senior water engineer lages with ancient roots are being moved,” and fertilizers. says his engineers have also done some says the independent scientist. “It’s a degra- Not so, says Vyacheslav Zharkov. He and “sculpting” of Karashor’s contours. dation of the cultural landscape.” his colleagues at the desert research institute Water is now moving the length of the Future plans call for widening and deepen- in Ashgabat are devising filter media that Dashoguz Collector and beginning to flow in ing both collectors, says the senior water engi- absorb heavy metals and organic contami- the Great Turkmen Collector, the senior water neer. But there are no plans to line them. He nants from runoff. These can be installed at engineer says. Satellite images confirm this. referred questions about their dimensions and treatment plants at points where water enters “It looks like canals, even unlined, can convey anticipated flow rates to institute colleagues, the collector canals—if the Turkmen gov- the drainage flow,” says Leah Orlovsky, a who were not available for interviews. One ernment finds money to build such treat- water researcher at Ben-Gurion University of told Science privately that the lake’s depth ment plants. “After treating water with our the Negev in who works in Turk- should reach 130 meters and its anticipated sorbents, it is suitable for agriculture and for menistan. On a flight from Tashkent to Tel volume is 135 to 145 cubic kilometers. drinking,” Zharkov says. He claims that salt

Aviv last October, Orlovsky noticed that an “Data from Turkmenistan are hard to come will be drawn out as water moves along the MUTSUMI STONE CREDIT:

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its latest achievements,” Berdimuhamedov said recently, according to the city on the Caspian , “every student had a copy of the book on their desk, state press. But recovery will not be easy. “After so many years of the forced and they were expected to read from it every day.” But to the relief of scholars, degradation of the education system, it’s really hard to revive it,” says one the Rukhnama is being phased out in universities and government offices. Turkmen government scientist. “The serious scientists didn’t wait for changes Turkmen academics are trying to pick up the pieces. “A change of the cur- within the country—they left.” riculum is needed badly,” Yacher says. One problem is that there are few solid Turkmenistan is not the first modern nation to willfully erode its intellec- Turkmen textbooks, and no recent textbooks in Russian or in English, says the tual capacity: Afghanistan under the Taliban, for instance, suffered severely. government scientist. That matches the general decrepitude of the faculty. Even But Turkmenistan’s descent took place largely out of sight, as Niyazov iso- in a field that was in favor under Niyazov—archaeology—the department was lated the country and placed sharp limits on international cooperation. In eliminated at Turkmen State University in 1999 and, says the government sci- this twilight, in 2001, the Rukhnama appeared. The book is a mix of folksy entist, “the youngest archaeologist we have is a 60-year-old guy. When the last guidance about how to lead a good life and a history of the Turkmen people generation of archaeologists is gone, only foreigners will work here.” that mangles the chronology of real events and fabricates others. “It did Among signs of progress, construction has begun on a $35 million build- great damage for historians,” says the government scientist. Workplaces ing for Turkmen State’s physics and mathematics faculty, and a new campus formed Rukhnama study circles, and TV programs showed children reciting is in the works for Turkmen State Medical Institute. The country is looking passages while professing their love for Niyazov. Rukhnama knowledge was beyond its as well, with plans this fall to dispatch 1500 students to necessary to pass exams, including the driver’s test. overseas universities, including Columbia University. “If [students] are off- The Rukhnama is still for sale in Ashgabat, and in some primary and second- the-charts good, we should do what we can to overcome any obstacles and ary schools “it remains a strong part of the curriculum,” says Leon Yacher, a get them here,” says Peter Lu, a physicist at Harvard University, who lectured geographer at Southern State University in New Haven, who lec- in Turkmenistan in 2005. Foreign institutions can play a critical role in the tured in Turkmenistan last month. When he visited a school in Turkmenbashi, a intellectual revival, starting with the next generation. –R.S.

canals. “We have asked how the salt will be The best solution to Turkmenistan’s says Aral Sea expert Philip Micklin, a geog-

removed. They say the water will clean water problems, Berkeliev and others argue, rapher at Western Michigan University in on June 3, 2008 itself. Nobody is able to explain to me how is conservation. Currently, Turkmenistan Kalamazoo. In his view, Golden Age Lake is this works,” says the Western technician. uses 5000 cubic meters of water per capita “a big waste of money.” When the plan was Berkeliev too says he is mystified. per year. That’s twice the rate of Uzbekistan being put together in the late 1990s, it had a and more than 10 times that of Israel. “We conservation component—“but that disap- Looming shortage are the champions of water waste,” says peared,” says the independent scientist. “If The overarching question is whether Turk- Berkeliev. It’s high time, he and others say, they spent half the budget of the lake on menistan might tap the Amu Darya to that the country revises its Soviet-era agri- water conservation,” he says, “they would improve the new lake. Under the Soviet-era cultural system and switches to water-saving not have had to build the lake.”

water-sharing agreement, Turkmenistan and technologies, like drip or subsoil irrigation, The senior water engineer says he is not www.sciencemag.org Uzbekistan each can use up to 22 cubic kilo- and converts a significant portion of farm- bothered by the criticism and that it will not meters of water flowing out of Afghanistan land to less water-intensive crops like wheat, derail the lake project. “We faced the same and along their shared border—despite a corn, grapes, and olives. opposition when we built the Karakum huge difference in population size. (Turk- Turkmenistan must also solve another Canal,” he says. “Any such great project will menistan has 5 million people; Uzbekistan problem arising from its poorly maintained have negative effects. But these are out- has 28 million.) “The Uzbeks will not toler- infrastructure: water hoarding. Public sup- weighed by the benefits.”

ate any ‘vanity diversions’ to the new lake,” plies are sporadic, and when the spigot is on, Berkeliev says it’s refreshing to be able Downloaded from says Glantz. In a tense situation, “new diver- Turkmen farmers funnel off as much as they to have this debate; it could never have sions will lead to a real war.” can. Upgrading the irrigation system would happened under Niyazov. “But to change Even if water isn’t diverted to the lake, be a much better investment than the lake, the minds of decision-makers, we need Afghanistan’s plans to rev up irrigation are strong support from the outside,” he says. likely to curtail the Amu Darya’s flow. Cur- “We must have an international review of rently, it uses only a few cubic kilometers each this project while there’s still time,” adds year. “They are planning a massive expansion geographer Igor Zonn of the Engineering of irrigation,” says Wegerich. Several Research Center on Water Management, major projects launched in the last 2 years , and Environment in aim to irrigate more than 1 million Moscow. That might be possible, as Turk- hectares, with completion dates staggered menistan continues a cautious opening up over the next 5 to 15 years. Adds Glantz, to the world. “We are trying to increase “The Uzbeks think it is decades away. international cooperation on environmen- Wrong.” A complicating factor is the retreat tal issues,” Ogulsona Karyeva of the Min- of in the Pamir —the istry of Nature Protection told a Fulbright source of much of central Asia’s fresh water. conference in Ashgabat last month. “Eventually, there will be no Amu Darya, no “We would be very happy to work with Syr Darya,” Mamadsho Ilolov, president of foreign scientists,” says Esenov. “It’s a Tajikistan’s Academy of Sciences, told Sci- Soaking up contaminants. Vyacheslav Zharkov complex problem.” That’s something ence. Golden Age Lake, he says, “will be says his sorbents can render the waters of Golden everyone can agree on.

CREDIT: MUTSUMI STONE CREDIT: very dangerous for neighboring countries.” Age Lake suitable for drinking. –RICHARD STONE

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