Enviromental History of the Aral Sea Basin in the Post-War Soviet Period: Human Activities and Ecological Crisis

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25870003
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Area studies; Economic history
• Research Institution: Hokkaido University
• Principal Investigator: CHIDA Tetsuro 北海道大学, スラブ・ユーラシア研究センター, 助教 (10612012)
• Research Collaborator: KUBOTA Jumpei 総合地球環境学研究所, 副所長/教授 ; KAWABATA Yoshiko 東京農工大学, 農学府, 准教授 ; ALADIN Nikolai ロシア科学アカデミー動物学研究所, 教授 ; ERMAKHANOV Zaurkhan カザフ漁業研究所, アラル支部, 支部長 ; JOLLIBEKOV Bakhtiyol タシケント農業大学, ヌクス校, 教授 ; NURTAZIN Sabyr カザフ国立大学, 教授
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 環境史 / 中央アジア / 災害 / 環境政策 / アラル海

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The project was aimed on the comprehensive study about the Aral Sea catastrophe in Central Asia from 1960s until today. The study mainly took the historical approach, based upon analysis of primary sources like archival documents, newspapers and journals, as well as strove to multidisciplinarity, borrowing some aspects from several other disciplines. The research not only found out specific facts about the process of the disaster itself and the recovery from it, but disclosed the “politics of scale” related to the mitigation measures to the disaster and the future of the Aral Sea. The study also revealed temporal, functional and spatial “misfits” in the basin, which hindered the Soviet Union from taking preventive measures to preserve the status quo of the Aral Sea. The researcher also made field works around the damaged areas and investigated the contemporary situation of the socio-economic recovery of the region, which unfortunately posed some questions about its sustainability.

Free Research Field

ソ連史