Original subtitles

- [Narrator] 2035, the Aral Sea Oasis, Central Asia.

Dubbed the miracle of the desert, the region

is now a haven of green in the middle of one of the most

arid zones of the globe.

(dynamic music)

For the whole world, this is the proof

that sustainable development does work.

In the mid-20th century the Soviet Union

decided to turn this remote and hostile region

into an experimental laboratory.

After decades of development, advanced irrigation techniques

made it possible to exploit the very last drop of water

and revolutionize agriculture.

Today the Aral Sea Oasis is a example to humanity

and is a shop window for sustainable development.

But, none of this ever happened.

In the 1950s, the Soviet Union was to launch

a major agricultural project in this region

and seal the fate of the Aral Sea.

(dramatic music)

Our history is no more than a series of incredible events.

Every one of us can influence its course.

(rock music) (crowd cheering)

(speaking in a foreign language)

- [Crowd] Heil Hitler!

- [Narrator] The most infinitesimal of our decisions

can influence the future of humanity.

To know the past is to foresee the future.

(somber chanting)

1954, the Soviet Union launches a project

of Pharaonic proportions,

the construction of the great Karakum Canal.

2002, a specialist American team goes to a secret laboratory

and destroys 300 tons of bacteriological material.

2003, in an attempt to save the threatened Aral Sea,

they built a huge concrete dike in its northern part.

These three events are the tragic steps

in one of the biggest ecological disasters

of the 20th century, the death of the Aral Sea.

(gentle music)

As these words are being written, robots made by humans

are moving across the surface of the planet Mars

millions of miles from Earth. (dynamic music)

They were designed and sent by men with a precise aim,

discover traces of water.

Why is this so important?

Because given our current state of knowledge,

liquid water is the main condition for the presence of life.

(dramatic music)

Our planet is called the blue planet.

Water covers 71% of its surface.

Of this gigantic mass, only 2.5% is fresh water.

Majority of this is trapped in glaciers

and the polar ice caps.

So, of all the water present on Earth,

only 0.5% is accessible and potentially drinkable

for all living creatures on the planet.

Not much, but enough.

(slow somber music)

The reserves of fresh water should be sufficient

to provide all with the means

to survive without difficulty.

(child laughing)

However, it so happens that these reserves

are very unequally spread across the surface of the globe.

Nine countries share 60% of the world's reserves

of fresh water.

(moving to dynamic music)

These reserves are the water table, the lakes,

and the rivers.

Often they extend over several countries.

The Nile, for example, crosses eight different states

before flowing into the sea.

The question of who owns the water is at the heart

of international relations.

With the explosion of the world's population

and climate change, access to fresh water

has become an issue of global proportions.

In the years ahead, this could turn into

one of the principal causes of international tensions

as is currently the case in Central Asia

in the region of the Aral Sea.

(somber music)

- [Narrator] Welcome to the memory of humanity.

Here, we can control time, analyze and compare

billions of events and alter them

to rewrite history endlessly.

All the events in our history, however minute they might be

are memorized and interconnected.

It only requires one to be changed for all the others

to be shaken to the core.

For example, let us go back 10,000 years

to witness the birth of the Aral Sea.

The Earth has just emerged from the Ice Age.

The warmer climate melts the ice,

the rains are increasingly heavy.

The water flows.

Streams form and then rivers.

In Central Asia, the Syr Darya swells

and starts to fill a depression which means a vast plain

that is lower than the surrounding land.

Gradually, a fresh water lake is formed.

Very soon, the waters of the Amu Darya also contribute

to the flow.

The lake reaches its maximum size 2,000 years later

and pours its excess waters into the Caspian Sea.

However, this is a fragile lake.

Not very deep, evaporation is high.

Over the following thousands of years, it experiences

its highs and lows and progressively becomes salty.

Today, we call it the Aral Sea, but scientifically

it is really a salt lake.

The water has turned an arid desert into a veritable oasis.

Let's resume.

(somber humming music)

- [Narrator] Nature is a free and abundant resource

that can be controlled and exploited.

Such is the slogan of the leaders of the Soviet Union.

(singing in a foreign language)

A union of several republics, the Soviet Union

is a federation.

And, at the beginning of the 1950s, its aim is clear.

Make up its economic lag

on the Western capitalist societies.

On all fronts, in all regions, they produce,

build, extract, exploit, harvest.

Their objectives set by Moscow are always ambitious,

sometimes unattainable.

Production is regionalized.

This region is responsible for mineral extraction.

That for steel.

Another for tractor production.

Historical and natural boundaries now only exist on paper.

Populations, like the wealth beneath the ground,

are considered as resources and reviewed on the map.

In Moscow, they decide on vast plans

for territorial development

and rationalization of resources.

Human and environmental factors are of secondary importance.

Everybody contributes to the collective effort.

To oppose it is to oppose the forward march of the regime.

Industry and exploitation reach formidable sizes

commensurate with the country.

Resources are in proportion.

In 1919, the Soviet Union selects the Fergana Valley

in Central Asia to launch its cotton offensive.

Planting soon spreads to three Soviet republics,

then to five.

Even though dry, this region becomes a vast cotton field

to the detriment of wheat, now grown in Southern Siberia,

another Soviet region.

The fields are rapidly collectivized

into huge state farms, the sovkhozes.

In the 1950s, huge canals are constructed

to irrigate these vast fields.

Tons of fertilizers and pesticides are used.

(singing in a foreign language)

They have to produce, always produce more.

The cost doesn't matter.

In 70 years of Soviet domination, Central Asia

goes from a production of several hundred thousand tons

to nine million tons of cotton,

an increase of 1200%.

To achieve this incredible figure, it was necessary

to irrigate a desert.

Millions of cubic meters of water are taken

from the Syr Darya and Amu Darya, the two rivers

that have always fed the Aral Sea.

This decision, taken in full awareness

by the Soviet leaders, signed the death warrant

of the Aral Sea.

- [Narrator] We have just reached a turning point.

(dynamic music)

A turning point is a key event, a crossroads in our history

where the world swings one way or the other.

The Soviet leaders, aware of the consequences,

decide to sacrifice the Aral Sea, which is considered

as a useless resource.

This decision is taken without any consideration

for local populations living directly off the sea

such as the fishermen in the towns on the shores.

But, it also represents a way of thinking.

(lively music)

Nature is a resource.

It has to be useful.

However, the Aral Sea is seen by Soviet leaders

as an aberration.

Not very deep, and therefore spread wide,

it's evaporation is high.

All this water is considered as lost.

This is to misunderstand the complex mechanisms

that govern the climate,

because this water necessarily falls as rain

somewhere else feeding another ecosystem.

Today, we know this.

Nature's balance is complex and you cannot alter one element

without disturbing another.

It's a domino effect.

By opting for cotton, Moscow signs

the Aral Sea's death warrant.

(slow somber music) - At the beginning

of the 1940s, the Aral Sea has an average surface area

of 67,000 square kilometers which makes it

the fourth largest lake in the world.

(birds squawking)

Fishing vessels come and go.

Fish abound.

Gradually, cotton production is intensified.

Like all other plants, cotton needs sun and water.

The sun may be abundant in Central Asia,

but water must be provided by irrigation.

However, intensive irrigation creates salinization

of the soils which become sterile.

The more you irrigate, the poorer the soils become

and the more you must find others.

It's a headlong race.

And, so they build larger irrigation canals

which divert more water.

In 1954, construction is begun on the Karakum Canal.

At 1,375 kilometers long, it remains

one of the longest irrigation canals in the world today.

Taking 11 cubic kilometers of water

from the Amu Darya each year, they carries it

across the Karakum Desert as far as the Caspian Sea.

All along its course, it irrigates vast fields of cotton.

A very rudimentary construction, it leaks at least 30%

of its water which is lost into the desert.

Along the two rivers, they divert the water,

dig canals, build dams, reservoirs.

By the time they reach the Aral Sea,

their flow is considerably diminished.

Between 1960 and 1970, the level of the sea

drops by an average of 20 centimeters per year.

In the following decade, the average rises

to 50 centimeters.

Wells start to dry up.

Boats are stranded.

(moving to lively piano music)

In 1975, the increasingly sterile soils

demand ever higher uses of fertilizers and pesticides.

The Port of Aralsk, having no water, is closed.

In 1980, the construction of the highest dam

in the world is completed on the course

of the Amu Darya.

The sea level drops by more than 80 centimeters per year.

Totally paradoxically, it is planned to replenish

the Aral Sea by diverting major Siberian rivers.

They dig navigation canals in the sea bed

to allow ships to sail.

Around 1987, the level reaches a critical point

and the sea is cut into two.

To the north, the Lesser Aral Sea,

to the south, the Greater.

(somber music) In 1991,

the Soviet Union breaks up.

The five republics are now autonomous.

Faced with the new economic challenges

and deprived of support from Moscow,

the cotton industry increases even more.

By 1998, the sea has lost 80% of its volume.

The remaining water, too saturated with salt, becomes toxic.

Fish and weed disappear.

By 2003, nothing can now save the Greater Aral Sea.

However, the Lesser, fed by what remains

of the Syr Darya is not yet condemned.

They decide to save what they can.

A concrete dike, 12 kilometers long,

cuts it off permanently from its big sister.

The Greater Aral Sea is abandoned and left to its fate.

(delicate piano music)

A mere few decades will have been sufficient

to reduce it to 10% of its initial surface.

Its salt level is over 100 grams per liter.

Saturated with salts and pesticides, the remaining water

is now a poison.

The Greater Aral Sea is in its death throes.

By 2020, it will no longer exist.

They're already talking of the Aral Desert.

- [Narrator] Little by little

drop by drop (dynamic music)

a sea has dried up.

And, yet a sea is vast.

The amount of water is incredible.

The fish stocks appear inexhaustible,

but that is exactly the problem.

Because this is not the case.

Everything comes to an end.

Certainly taking one bucket of water

from the ocean or killing one whale

will not change the balance.

However, it's the repetition of the act over decades

thousands of times by millions of individuals

that creates the problem.

Although some major disasters are obvious

such as Chernobyl, others are less so.

Like the hundreds of millions of cars

that are driven every day, but both are equally polluting.

In environmental matters, each action counts.

Let's go back in time.

In antiquity, the Roman Empire over-exploits the forests

of North Africa to the point of causing their disappearance.

To our day, they have still not returned.

During the Middle Ages in Europe,

the intensive use of blast furnaces

threatens the existence of entire forests.

Craft and industry have always had to deal

with the pollution created by their activities.

This is not new.

And, for our contemporary societies,

it has even become normal.

But, pollution has evolved over time.

It is now more massive, more irreversible.

- [Narrator] The Soviet Union was a powerful

but destructive machine.

(dark music)

It managed everything and oversaw the proper division

of tasks and resources.

When it broke up in the early '90s, after 60 years

of supervision, it left the satellite republics

to face their problems alone.

Far from fixing itself, the situation was to get worse.

Whole regions had been specialized in precise fields

making them depend on each other for their essential needs.

In Central Asia, the five cotton-producing republics

rapidly withdrew upon themselves,

each looking to its own interests, its own survival.

1/3 of the Uzbekistan economy depends on agriculture.

For this, the country freely pumps from the rivers

that run through its territory.

(speaking in a foreign language)

However, these had their sources in two other republics:

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

These two mountainous countries

inherited from the USSR the majority

of the region's dams and reservoirs.

They also intend to exploit their resources

as best they can.

They're increasing production of electricity

by holding more and more water in their dams.

Uzbekistan suffers drought in the summer,

floods in the winter.

Tensions mount as the levels of the rivers drop.

(speaking in a foreign language)

Previously, the Soviet Union acted as interstate policemen.

(speaking in a foreign language)

Today, each country wants to achieve economic stability

while sharing a single and unique resource, water.

It's every man for himself.

(dynamic music)

- [Narrator] The water war.

We talk of water shortage or hydric stress

when the demand for water exceeds available resources.

The Aral Sea region currently fits this definition,

but it is far from being the only one.

The countries of the Near and Middle East

of Africa and Asia are especially affected

by this phenomenon.

It often creates tensions, even conflicts

between the states concerned.

Examples are increasingly numerous.

The case of the Dead Sea is emblematic.

Its tributary, the Jordan, is shared

between Israel, Jordan, and Palestine.

Intensively used for the needs of cities

and for crop irrigation, it now barely feeds

into the Dead Sea which has lost a third

of its surface area over the last 50 years.

Water has become one of the main causes of tension

between those countries.

On the other side of the world, on the west coast

of the United States, Nevada is also on the brink

of the abyss.

Located in the middle of the desert in an environment

totally unsuited to human activity, the city of Las Vegas

has two million residents and 55 golf courses.

An artificial oasis, the city is on a drip feed

from the waters of the Colorado.

Dubai and Barcelona are equally starved of water.

Guaranteeing populations access to drinking water

is now a challenge of the first order.

And, to achieve this, anything goes.

- [Narrator] More than 60 million people currently live

in the Aral Sea region, four times more

than in the 1960s.

The ecological disaster is slowly

turning into a humanitarian disaster.

(gentle music)

The climate has turned hostile.

The winters are harsher, the summers hotter, drier.

The Aral Sea is now no more than a vast sterile expanse

contaminated with millions of tons of salt and pesticides.

Dust storms laden with chemical substances

sweep the former sea bed now laid bare.

Neighboring regions are seeing their soils

contaminated in turn.

Pasture land has shrunk by 80%.

(goats bleating)

Cattle breeding is in full decline.

Pesticides are present throughout the food chain.

Fishing has almost entirely disappeared

through lack of fish and water to sail on.

For five million inhabitants, drinking water

is really no longer drinkable.

In some places, the cancer rate is 25 times higher

than for the rest of the world.

Women suffer from anemia.

Infant mortality is soaring.

It's now about survival.

And yet, the story doesn't end there.

(somber rhythmic piano music)

In 1936, on the island of Vozrozhdeniya, the Soviet Union

set up a scientific institution that in the 1950s

was to become a vast research lab

into bacteriological weapons.

Thousands of animals will serve as guinea pigs

over the decades.

Smallpox, leprosy, cholera, bubonic plague, anthrax.

(speaking in a foreign language)

At the twilight of the USSR, the lab was closed

and the infected materials sealed in stainless steel drums,

then left there on an island supposedly inaccessible.

Except that in 2001, the island is no longer an island

and so anybody can walk to the lab.

Anthrax free for the first terrorist to come along.

(speaking in a foreign language)

In 2002, an American expedition arrives

to neutralize 300 tons of pathogenic products.

Perhaps the Aral Sea disaster will allow humanity

to become aware of its fragility

and to be able to draw the necessary lessons from it.

But, that is another story.

(dynamic music)

- [Narrator] Water is worth its weight in gold.

Global warming is now an admitted fact and recognized

by the scientific community.

For all the regions already in hydric stress,

there is no way that things can improve by themselves.

We can live without oil, without gas, without gold.

But, water is the essential minimum for life.

For many countries, water will soon become

more precious than oil.

These countries will have only two options:

adapt or seize more water by force.

Adapting takes time.

(dramatic music)

Fortunately the process is already underway.

Throughout the world, increasingly ambitious initiatives

are seeing the light of day.

New irrigation techniques, desalination plants,

political commitment.

In 2015, the 21st Conference on Climate Change

was held in Paris, better known as COP 21.

Despite the announcement by American President Donald Trump,

it cannot be denied that for the first time,

the majority of countries manage to agree.

It all remains to be done.

But, it appears that we have finally understood

that we all live on the same planet.

(dynamic music)