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Location: Central Asia, north of Afghanistan
Geographic coordinates: 41 00 N, 64 00 E
Map references: Commonwealth of Independent States
Area:
total: 447,400 sq km
land: 425,400 sq km
water: 22,000 sq km
Area - comparative: slightly larger than California
Land boundaries:
total: 6,221 km
border countries: Afghanistan 137 km, Kazakhstan 2,203 km,
Kyrgyzstan 1,099 km, Tajikistan 1,161 km, Turkmenistan 1,621 km
Coastline: 0 km
note: Uzbekistan includes the southern portion of the Aral
Sea with a 420 km shoreline
Maritime claims: none (doubly landlocked)
Climate: mostly midlatitude desert, long, hot summers, mild
winters; semiarid grassland in east
Terrain: mostly flat-to-rolling sandy desert with dunes;
broad, flat intensely irrigated river valleys along course of Amu
Darya, Sirdaryo (Syr Darya), and Zarafshon; Fergana Valley in east
surrounded by mountainous Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan; shrinking Aral
Sea in west
Elevation extremes:
lowest point: Sariqarnish Kuli -12 m
highest point: Adelunga Toghi 4,301 m
Natural resources: natural gas, petroleum, coal, gold, uranium,
silver, copper, lead and zinc, tungsten, molybdenum
Land use:
arable land: 9%
permanent crops: 1%
permanent pastures: 46%
forests and woodland: 3%
other: 41% (1993 est.)
Irrigated land: 40,000 sq km (1993 est.)
Natural hazards: NA
Environment - current issues: drying up of the Aral Sea
is resulting in growing concentrations of chemical pesticides and
natural salts; these substances are then blown from the increasingly
exposed lake bed and contribute to desertification; water pollution
from industrial wastes and the heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides
is the cause of many human health disorders; increasing soil salination;
soil contamination from agricultural chemicals, including DDT
Environment - international agreements:
party to: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto
Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification,
Hazardous Wastes, Ozone Layer Protection
signed, but not ratified: none of the selected agreements
Geography - note: along with Liechtenstein, one of the only
two doubly landlocked countries in the world
Uzbekistan
Country
Formal Name: Republic of Uzbekistan.
Short Form: Uzbekistan.
Term for Citizens: Uzbekistani(s).
Capital: Tashkent.
Date of Independence: August 31, 1991.
Geography
Size: Approximately 447,000 square kilometers.
Topography: About 80 percent flat, desert; mountain
ranges dominate far southeast and far northeast and traverse middle
of eastern provinces, east to west. Fergana Valley in northeast
most fertile region. Few lakes and rivers; shrinking Aral Sea, shared
with Kazakstan, in northwest. Most of country seismically active.
Climate: Continental; hot summers, cool winters.
Annual rainfall very sparse in most regions, irrigation needed for
crops.
Data as of March 1996
Uzbekistan
Physical Environment
With an area of 447,000 square kilometers (approximately the size
of France), Uzbekistan stretches 1,425 kilometers from west to east
and 930 kilometers from north to south. Bordering Turkmenistan to
the southwest, Kazakstan to the north, and Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan
to the south and east, Uzbekistan is not only one of the larger
Central Asian states but also the only Central Asian state to border
all of the other four. Uzbekistan also shares a short border with
Afghanistan to the south .
Topography and Drainage
The physical environment of Uzbekistan is diverse, ranging from
the flat, desert topography that comprises almost 80 percent of
the country's territory to mountain peaks in the east reaching about
4,500 meters above sea level. The southeastern portion of Uzbekistan
is characterized by the foothills of the Tian Shan mountains, which
rise higher in neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and form a
natural border between Central Asia and China. The vast Qizilqum
(Turkic for "red sand"--Russian spelling Kyzyl Kum) Desert, shared
with southern Kazakstan, dominates the northern lowland portion
of Uzbekistan . The most fertile part of Uzbekistan, the Fergana
Valley, is an area of about 21,440 square kilometers directly east
of the Qizilqum and surrounded by mountain ranges to the north,
south, and east. The western end of the valley is defined by the
course of the Syrdariya, which runs across the northeastern sector
of Uzbekistan from southern Kazakstan into the Qizilqum. Although
the Fergana Valley receives just 100 to 300 millimeters of rainfall
per year, only small patches of desert remain in the center and
along ridges on the periphery of the valley.
Water resources, which are unevenly distributed, are in short supply
in most of Uzbekistan. The vast plains that occupy two-thirds of
Uzbekistan's territory have little water, and there are few lakes.
The two largest rivers feeding Uzbekistan are the Amu Darya and
the Syrdariya, which originate in the mountains of Tajikistan and
Kyrgyzstan, respectively. These rivers form the two main river basins
of Central Asia; they are used primarily for irrigation, and several
artificial canals have been built to expand the supply of arable
land in the Fergana Valley and elsewhere.
Another important feature of Uzbekistan's physical environment
is the significant seismic activity that dominates much of the country.
Indeed, much of Uzbekistan's capital city, Tashkent, was destroyed
in a major earthquake in 1966, and other earthquakes have caused
significant damage before and since the Tashkent disaster. The mountain
areas are especially prone to earthquakes.
Data as of March 1996
Uzbekistan
Climate
Uzbekistan's climate is classified as continental, with hot summers
and cool winters. Summer temperatures often surpass 40°C; winter
temperatures average about -23°C, but may fall as low as -40°C.
Most of the country also is quite arid, with average annual rainfall
amounting to between 100 and 200 millimeters and occurring mostly
in winter and spring. Between July and September, little precipitation
falls, essentially stopping the growth of vegetation during that
period.
Environmental Problems
Despite Uzbekistan's rich and varied natural environment, decades
of environmental neglect in the Soviet Union have combined with
skewed economic policies in the Soviet south to make Uzbekistan
one of the gravest of the CIS's many environmental crises. The heavy
use of agrochemicals, diversion of huge amounts of irrigation water
from the two rivers that feed the region, and the chronic lack of
water treatment plants are among the factors that have caused health
and environmental problems on an enormous scale.
Environmental devastation in Uzbekistan is best exemplified by
the catastrophe of the Aral Sea. Because of diversion of the Amu
Darya and Syrdariya for cotton cultivation and other purposes, what
once was the world's fourth largest inland sea has shrunk in the
past thirty years to only about one-third of its 1960 volume and
less than half its 1960 geographical size. The desiccation and salinization
of the lake have caused extensive storms of salt and dust from the
sea's dried bottom, wreaking havoc on the region's agriculture and
ecosystems and on the population's health. Desertification has led
to the large-scale loss of plant and animal life, loss of arable
land, changed climatic conditions, depleted yields on the cultivated
land that remains, and destruction of historical and cultural monuments.
Every year, many tons of salts reportedly are carried as far as
800 kilometers away. Regional experts assert that salt and dust
storms from the Aral Sea have raised the level of particulate matter
in the earth's atmosphere by more than 5 percent, seriously affecting
global climate change.
The Aral Sea disaster is only the most visible indicator of environmental
decay, however. The Soviet approach to environmental management
brought decades of poor water management and lack of water or sewage
treatment facilities; inordinately heavy use of pesticides, herbicides,
defoliants, and fertilizers in the fields; and construction of industrial
enterprises without regard to human or environmental impact. Those
policies present enormous environmental challenges throughout Uzbekistan.
Water Pollution
Large-scale use of chemicals for cotton cultivation, inefficient
irrigation systems, and poor drainage systems are examples of the
conditions that led to a high filtration of salinized and contaminated
water back into the soil. Post-Soviet policies have become even
more dangerous; in the early 1990s, the average application of chemical
fertilizers and insecticides throughout the Central Asian republics
was twenty to twenty-five kilograms per hectare, compared with the
former average of three kilograms per hectare for the entire Soviet
Union. As a result, the supply of fresh water has received further
contaminants. Industrial pollutants also have damaged Uzbekistan's
water. In the Amu Darya, concentrations of phenol and oil products
have been measured at far above acceptable health standards. In
1989 the minister of health of the Turkmen SSR described the Amu
Darya as a sewage ditch for industrial and agricultural waste substances.
Experts who monitored the river in 1995 reported even further deterioration.
In the early 1990s, about 60 percent of pollution control funding
went to water-related projects, but only about half of cities and
about one-quarter of villages have sewers. Communal water systems
do not meet health standards; much of the population lacks drinking
water systems and must drink water straight from contaminated irrigation
ditches, canals, or the Amu Darya itself.
According to one report, virtually all the large underground fresh-water
supplies in Uzbekistan are polluted by industrial and chemical wastes.
An official in Uzbekistan's Ministry of Environment estimated that
about half of the country's population lives in regions where the
water is severely polluted. The government estimated in 1995 that
only 230 of the country's 8,000 industrial enterprises were following
pollution control standards.
Air Pollution
Poor water management and heavy use of agricultural chemicals also
have polluted the air. Salt and dust storms and the spraying of
pesticides and defoliants for the cotton crop have led to severe
degradation of air quality in rural areas.
In urban areas, factories and auto emissions are a growing threat
to air quality. Fewer than half of factory smokestacks in Uzbekistan
are equipped with filtration devices, and none has the capacity
to filter gaseous emissions. In addition, a high percentage of existing
filters are defective or out of operation. Air pollution data for
Tashkent, Farghona, and Olmaliq show all three cities exceeding
recommended levels of nitrous dioxide and particulates. High levels
of heavy metals such as lead, nickel, zinc, copper, mercury, and
manganese have been found in Uzbekistan's atmosphere, mainly from
the burning of fossil fuels, waste materials, and ferrous and nonferrous
metallurgy. Especially high concentrations of heavy metals have
been reported in Toshkent Province and in the southern part of Uzbekistan
near the Olmaliq Metallurgy Combine. In the mid-1990s, Uzbekistan's
industrial production, about 60 percent of the total for the Central
Asian nations excluding Kazakstan, also yielded about 60 percent
of the total volume of Central Asia's emissions of harmful substances
into the atmosphere. Because automobiles are relatively scarce,
automotive exhaust is a problem only in Tashkent and Farghona.
Government Environmental Policy
The government of Uzbekistan has acknowledged the extent of the
country's environmental problems, and it has made an oral commitment
to address them. But the governmental structures to deal with these
problems remain confused and ill defined. Old agencies and organizations
have been expanded to address these questions, and new ones have
been created, resulting in a bureaucratic web of agencies with no
generally understood commitment to attack environmental problems
directly. Various nongovernmental and grassroots environmental organizations
also have begun to form, some closely tied to the current government
and others assuming an opposition stance. For example, environmental
issues were prominent points in the original platform of Birlik,
the first major opposition movement to emerge in Uzbekistan . By
the mid-1990s, such issues had become a key concern of all opposition
groups and a cause of growing concern among the population as a
whole.
In the first half of the 1990s, many plans were proposed to limit
or discourage economic practices that damage the environment. Despite
discussion of programs to require payments for resources (especially
water) and to collect fines from heavy polluters, however, little
has been accomplished. The obstacles are a lack of law enforcement
in these areas, inconsistent government economic and environmental
planning, corruption, and the overwhelming concentration of power
in the hands of a president who shows little tolerance of grassroots
activity .
International donors and Western assistance agencies have devised
programs to transfer technology and know-how to address these problems
. But the country's environmental problems are predominantly the
result of abuse and mismanagement of natural resources promoted
by political and economic priorities. Until the political will emerges
to regard environmental and health problems as a threat not only
to the government in power but also to the very survival of Uzbekistan,
the increasingly grave environmental threat will not be addressed
effectively.
Data as of March 1996
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