The following review was contributed by NORM GOLDMAN

It is difficult to imagine that at one time the Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth largest inland water body, after the Caspian Sea, Lake Superior and Lake Victoria, will, according to some experts, be gone by 2020.

The Aral Sea is located in Central Asia in the lowlands of Turan, near the ancient Silk Road cities of Samarkand and Bukhara.

What is noteworthy is that at one time it had abundant resources of fish, a very active shipping trade between its northern port of Aralsk and the river ports of Amu-Darja, and even some as far as Tajikistan. Several hundred thousand people were given the opportunity to earn a good livelihood.

Unfortunately, during the 1960s the Sea’s water flow began to drop dramatically. The cause of the disaster has been attributed to many factors as pointed out by Rob Ferguson, author of The Devil And The Disappearing Sea: A True Story About The Aral Sea Catastrophe. “Hubris, greed, short-sighted autocratic planning, human folly, cotton, Russian colonialism, the Cold War, inappropriate cost-benefit analyses, a controlled news media, ignorance of the laws of nature, ignorance of scientific warnings, misguided technocratic engineering and patriotic sloganeering. These charges all have degrees of truth. But beyond the finger-pointing, the disaster was ultimately caused by the sort of mad obsession that lays claim to human conscience when it plots and carries out a murder.”

As a result of the dying out of the sea there has been a very profound climatic change in the region, degeneration of the delta ecosystems, increase of serious diseases such as cholera, typhus, gastritis, cancer, respiratory system diseases, total collapse of the fishing industry, birth defects, high infant mortality, and decreases in the productivity of agricultural fields.

In January of 2000, Canadian communication specialist Rob Ferguson embarked on a venture that he believed would aid in saving the Aral Sea. Ferguson joined a team of communication specialists, who traveled to Central Asia in order to educate people residing in the area about the catastrophe that was happening and why it was happening. Unfortunately, Ferguson returned home to Toronto, very disappointed and disillusioned. Perhaps, the task was foolhardy to begin with, when you consider that the Aral Sea Project Organization consisted of several layers of administrative bodies and many players, who were very often at odds with one another. Five different areas of Central Asia were represented, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The training team consisted of members of the BDPA, a Paris-based international consultancy group, of which the author was one of its members.

The principal objectives of the training group were to develop “communications capacity, undertake opinion research and analysis, build a long-term communications strategy, and advise upon and help implement critical public awareness activities.” Perhaps, they forgot to tell the team that the head of all of the components of the project was set in his old ways of acting like a dictator, who was also not immune to accepting bribes. Moreover, it is highly doubtful if the communications team were prepared to deal with the profound clash of cultures that they would face, and the in fighting among the various groups involved.

Ferguson tells a good story, however, I would have liked to have seen more maps scattered throughout the pages in order to grasp where he was traveling. The black and white photos of his team were useless, and I believe this space should have been devoted to more photos of the places he had visited.

At times, I also felt that the story dragged on and on with names and incidents that frankly turned me off. Nonetheless, the book has merit in that it calls attention to a disaster that many in the Western world have little knowledge. Lets hope the book will make people more aware of this tragedy.