ENVIRONMENT-CENTRAL ASIA: New Steppes To Development (1) An Inter Press Service Feature

BEIJING, Nov 08 (IPS) - The voracious appetite for oil, minerals and timber of fast-growing economies elsewhere in Asia are threatening the ecosystems of Central Asia's fragile steppes, lakes and deserts.

The collapse of the former Soviet Union ended the exploitation and massive misuse of Central Asian resources, but development analysts say the rapid growth of Eastern Asia may seriously threaten the peoples' nomadic way of life and put further pressure on the region's already limited water and forest resources.

"Of course, we need to attract foreign investment, develop the export sector and enter international markets, especially because there is no way back," says Dutch banker Sander Tideman, who is a director of the Shambhala Foundation, a non-governmental agency promoting education and sustainable development in the region.

But he says this should not be at the expense of the region's traditions and environment.

"(Development programmes should) benefit the people in rural areas without upsetting their traditional ways of living but actually improve the quality of their lives," says Tideman.

Already, experts from Russia and China say their Central Asian possessions are under severe ecological pressure. For example, the Aral Sea, the world's fourth largest inland body of water, has shrunk by two-thirds in 20 years, destroying a thriving fishing industry and rendering once-busy ports inoperable.

"In a number of Russian regions, there are now many zones of serious damage to the soil due to overgrazing and drying up of the wetlands," says a report from the Russian Academy of Science.

In China, experts note that creeping deserts in the western regions of Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia and Xinjiang have become so widespread that they are undermining agriculture and grazing, the economic mainstays.

"China is one of the countries suffering from severe desertification, which is mainly caused by the excessive human economic activities and the process of wind and water erosion and salinisation," says Wang Tao of China's National Environmental Protection Agency.

Experts on Mongolia say the nomadic culture and traditional lifestyle of animal herding are fast disappearing as urbanisation spreads and the people are lured away by one-dimensional depictions of development.

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