Asia's desert set to bloom again

The 22 billion project would involve constructing a canal 200 metres wide and 16 metres deep for 2,500 kilometres from Siberia to the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

Supporters believe it would solve a burgeoning water crisis in the area, which has undergone catastrophic desertification in recent decades.

They also claim the project could refill the Aral Sea - once the world’s fourth largest inland sea, which has shrunk to a quarter of its former size since 1960.

The Aral’s rapid shrinkage has left fishing boats that once plied the fertile waters as rusted hulks in a near-desert, miles from the shifting coastline.

The catastrophe began in the early 1960s, when Soviet officials began to use the waters of the two main rivers flowing into it, the Syrdarya and Amudarya, to irrigate the plains of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to grow cotton, a highly water-hungry crop.

Apart from refilling the Aral sea, scientists believe diverting Siberian rivers will ameliorate a new environmental threat: the increasing amount of fresh water flowing into the Arctic Ocean in the past ten years, probably due to global warming.

Fears have been raised that the higher flow will reduce the ocean’s salt concentration, possibly causing the Gulf Stream to shut down and plunging Europe into a mini ice age.

But not everyone is pleased with the canal plan.

Critics believe it is reminiscent of the kind of centralised, Stalinist planning that precipitated the environmental disaster in the first place and warn the project will only cause more social, economic and ecological problems.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, rejected the scheme in the mid-1980s, but support has been growing in recent months.

According to a report in the latest issue of New Scientist, Moscow’s mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, a possible successor to Vladimir Putin as Russian president, is backing the idea together with central Asian leaders and a growing number of Russian scientists.

The scientific journal reports that one of the country’s most senior environmental scientists has resumed research on the project, which it says would be equivalent to irrigating Mexico from the North American Great Lakes.

The canal would take water from the confluence of the north-flowing Siberian rivers Ob and Irtysh to replenish the Amudarya and Syrdarya rivers near the Aral Sea.

Igor Zonn, the director of the Russian government agency in charge of water management and ecology, told New Scientist: "We are beginning to revise the old project plans for the diversion of Siberian rivers."

Each year the canal would transport 27 cubic kilometres of water - just 7 per cent of the Ob’s current flow - but would bring 50 per cent more water to the lower Aral basin.

Although the scheme might reverse the damage to the Aral Sea, it is mainly directed at supporting the region’s cotton-growing economy. Cotton is entirely dependent on free availability of water.

The region’s two biggest cotton-growing countries, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, have the highest water consumption in the world per capita.

But, despite the effects of the industry on the environment, Turkmenistan says it intends to double cotton production in the next ten years.

Hopes to bring economic recovery to north Afghanistan, which lies on the upper reaches of the Amudarya, are dependent on taking ten cubic kilometres of water from that river.

Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s president, re-introduced the idea of Siberian river diversion two years ago while visiting Mr Putin in Moscow.

"Although it seems ambitious, it appears to be the only tangible solution to the ecological and other problems caused by the drying of the Aral Sea," he said.