Novel ecosystems as restoration in the world’s newest desert

Keywords: restoration, novel ecosystems
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 39

Abstract

The Aral Sea region of Uzbekistan is home to about 3.8 million people, along with millions of other living creatures ranging from the tiny brine shrimp to the charismatic Saiga antelope. The area also boasts the world’s newest desert – the Aralkum – which formed as the Aral Sea shrunk. On May 21, 2021 the UN General Assembly approved a resolution declared the Aral Sea region a “Zone of Ecological Innovations and Technologies.” Fifteen days later on World Environment Day the UN launched the Decade for Ecosystem Restoration. Continually hearing about both the resolution and the decade during nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Aral Sea region of Uzbekistan prompted me to ask what restoration means for the Aral Sea region and the Aralkum desert when there is consensus that restoring the Aral Sea to the 1960 level (“baseline”) is not possible? In this paper I explore different visions for the Aral Sea region, which range from covering the dried seabed in a “protective green coating” of native salt-tolerant trees to increased extractive industry. I demonstrate how the Amu Daryo delta, once the point of connection between the Amu Daryo (Oxus) river and the Aral Sea, and home to most of the region’s population, is excluded from imaginaries of restoration. I argue that the impossibility of restoring the Aralkum to “baseline” opens space for visions of novel ecosystems and “ecological innovations” while restoration of the delta to “baseline,” perhaps because it is technically feasible, remains outside of development visions.