Global warming, which started at the beginning of the last century, and the main cause of which, according to most environmental scientists, is human activity or the so-called anthropogenic factor, has already led to significant climate changes on our planet. Based on mathematical calculations, scientists have concluded that the magnitude of the likely further increase in air temperature in the 21st century, depending on greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, will range from 1.7 degrees Celsius to 4 degrees during each subsequent ten-year period. As a result of global temperature increases, the level of the world’s oceans will continue to rise, and the polar ice caps in Antarctica and the Arctic will decrease. The amount and nature of precipitation will change, the area of deserts will increase, and in Siberia the permafrost layer will begin to decrease more intensively and as a result of this process, methane gas will be released from the thawed earth, increasing the scale of the carbon footprint in the atmosphere. Ocean warming is already negatively affecting the functioning of large marine currents, in particular the Gulf Stream, as well as negatively affecting ocean biodiversity.
In recent years, the Central Asian countries have become more acutely aware of the effects of global climate change. These include frequent dust storms, abnormally hot summers with temperatures above 40-45 degrees C and cold winters unusual for these places, shallowing of rivers and lakes, and other environmental problems associated with a shortage of water, the main source of life. Perhaps the impact of climate change in Central Asia is most evident in mountainous areas, where the area covered by glaciers has decreased by a third over the past century. Speaking at the UN General Assembly in September 2025, Tajik President Rahmon said that out of 14,000 glaciers in the mountains of the republic, 1,300 glaciers have disappeared in recent years, while the rest have significantly decreased in volume. It is predicted that glaciers in Tajikistan will decrease by 20 percent in the next 30-40 years, and in Kyrgyzstan – by 40 percent.
The predictions of environmental scientists who warned that human activity is ruining the planet’s ecosystem are coming true and events on Earth are developing even ahead of these forecasts. A striking example is the sad fate of the Aral Sea. Until recently, by historical standards, in the middle of the last century, the Aral Sea occupied an area the size of Switzerland and was 60 meters deep. Shipping and industrial fishing developed in it.
And in just half a century, the world’s largest environmental disaster occurred, as a result of which the Aral Sea (actually the fourth largest lake in the world) turned into a new Aralkum desert. During the drying of the sea, sand and salt were carried away, along with particles of chemical fertilizers and pesticides harmful to human health from the bottom of the Aral Sea, which are constantly carried by winds across the Central Asian region and even reach the mountain glaciers of the Tien Shan and Pamir. By now, thanks to the efforts of Kazakhstan, which has built an earthen dam in the northern part of the former sea, it has been possible to preserve a small residual reservoir, the so-called Northern Aral.
At the same time, the same processes as in the Aral Sea are taking place in the region on another large lake – Balkhash. Research by scientists shows that by 2030, the water level may drop critically and the process of shallowing and drying out of the lake will begin. Balkhash is more vulnerable than the Aral Sea, as its maximum depth is only 36 meters. In this case, the region faces a new environmental disaster, as a result of which a fifth of the territory of Kazakhstan may become a lifeless desert.
The demise of the Aral Sea and its environmental consequences for Central Asia are a prime example of how uncalculated, mismanaged and wasteful human activities can lead to such negative results. In the USSR, in the republics of Central Asia, a policy was pursued aimed at maximizing the crops of such a moisture–loving plant as cotton – the “white gold”. The most fertile lands were given over to it, numerous open irrigation channels and ditches were supplied, most of which did not have concrete gutters and half of the incoming water went into the soil or evaporated. The huge overspending of water for irrigation was simply ignored by the authorities. In addition, by 1988, the colossal Karakum Soviet superproject was completed (it did not have concrete cladding and a protected bottom from filtering water into the ground) in Turkmenistan, which takes about 20 percent of the river flow from the Amu Darya River. Thus, by the beginning of the 21st century, the waters of the Amu Darya River no longer reached the Aral Sea and sank into the sand, which accelerated its drying and death.
The problem of water scarcity in the Amu Darya basin may become even more complicated for the population of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, due to the start of construction in 2022 in Afghanistan, without prior coordination with Tashkent and Ashgabat, of the 285 km-long Qosh Tepa irrigation canal in the north of the country. Given the scale of the new canal (100-115 m wide and up to 8.5 m deep) and its characteristics- the canal has no concrete lining and waterproofing of the bottom, it is safe to predict that after completion of construction Qosh-Tepa will take at least 10 cubic kilometers of water. To understand the scale of the problem: the average annual runoff of the Amu Darya River is about 97 cubic kilometers of water (about 40 cubic kilometers in dry years). Thus, even in the case of partial implementation of the canal construction project, it may lead to a reduction in available water resources. by 17-20 percent. In this case, not only the environmental, but also the socio-economic interests of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are at risk, because the Amu Darya Region is the basis of agriculture, a source of drinking water and industrial water supply for these countries.
If the anthropogenic factor became the main cause of the ecological disaster in Central Asia – the drying up of the Aral Sea – then, according to most environmental scientists, the process of shallowing of the world’s largest lake, the Caspian Sea, which began in 1995, is primarily a consequence of natural climatic changes on the planet, and only partly of the human factor (no more than 10 percent).
Speaking at the 80th session of the UN General Assembly, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, on the contrary, persistently pursued the idea that the reason for the shallowing of the Caspian Sea is mainly the human factor, namely, a decrease in river flow into this reservoir isolated from the World Ocean, primarily due to a reduction in the intake of Volga water (80-85 percent of the volume of all rivers flowing into the Caspian). In this, he was fully supported by the President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, at the SCO summit in Tianjin, linking the negative processes in the Caspian Sea with a decrease in the flow of the Volga River due to Russia’s allegedly excessive regulation of water flow at the Volga-Kama cascade of hydroelectric power plants and increased water extraction for agricultural needs.
So, what is the true reason for the shallowing of the Caspian Sea? According to Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources, under global warming, in a warmer atmosphere, the inflow of water through rivers and precipitation decreases, but surface evaporation increases. As a result, the sea loses tens of centimeters per year. So, if at the beginning of the XXI century the sea level dropped annually by only 6 centimeters, then after 2020 -by 30 centimeters.
In the last century, from 1978 to 1995, the water level in the Caspian Sea rose by 2.4 meters, and after 1995, within 30 years, the sea level dropped by three meters. The main problem is not that the water is being used irrationally or is going somewhere – for the most part it just evaporates. Over the years, the surface temperature of the Caspian Sea has increased by 1.5 degrees. The air temperature in the summer months in the region already regularly exceeds +30 degrees Celsius, and in 2024, the abnormally record air temperature off the coast of Kazakhstan was +43.5 degrees. Such conditions dramatically increase evaporation – according to hydrologists, the Caspian Sea annually loses about 50 cubic kilometers of water.
Under these conditions, while maintaining the current rate of lowering sea levels and reducing its surface area, the areas of the Northern Caspian Sea, where depths do not exceed 5 meters, have become the greatest danger to navigation. All this calls into question the continued existence of the maritime transport infrastructure in the area, through which about 50 million tons of cargo are currently handled annually, and which is one of the main directions of the North–South transport corridor.
Scientists’ calculations show that with a 10-meter drop in sea level, a Russian port like Lagan may be 115 km from the new coastline, the Turkmen port of Turkmenbashi may be 16 kilometers from the water, and the Kazakh port of Aktau may lose at least 30 percent of cargo turnover due to the need to use vessels with only a shallow draft and low carrying capacity in shallow water conditions. The process of degradation of the maritime transport system can be slowed down by intensifying dredging and laying fairways and shipping channels between ports and the new coastline.
The Caspian Sea is not only losing water, but also endangered marine ecosystems that have been forming for thousands of years. Caspian seals and sturgeons, whose populations are on the verge of survival, have been hit. Recently, due to the shallowing of the sea, their traditional spawning grounds and feeding areas in the mouths of small rivers flowing into the Caspian Sea have not become accessible to sturgeons. All this leads to the degradation of fishing, the main type of work for the population of coastal areas.
The shallowing of the Caspian Sea is not only a local environmental problem in the region. Sea level decline affects the climate of Central Asia, bird migration, and even the global economy through oil supply chains.
According to environmental scientists, humanity cannot yet radically influence the processes of shallowing the Caspian Sea, since water fluctuations completely depend on the balance between river flow and evaporation from the surface of the reservoir, but it is possible to mitigate the negative consequences of this phenomenon through the combination of financial, economic and scientific efforts of all five Caspian littoral countries – Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan. and Turkmenistan.
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