(1) Research objectives and background

 

   Historically, with the exception of those people who lived in oasis areas, people of the semi-arid region that extend across Central Eurasia once lived a predominately nomadic lifestyle. After a long transition marked by the rise and fall of various ethnic groups and countries, a tight and well-defined border divided the region between Russia and Qing China in the 18th century. At the same time, the people of this area experienced a great change in their lifestyle, caused by the migration of farmers, the settlement of nomads and development of agriculture. Settlement policies and borders prevented these people from following their way of adaptation. Finally, with the weakening of the Soviet Union, the Russian side of the political frontier was divided into many republics. Man-made trans-boundary issues, between countries or ethnic groups, religions, agriculture and nomadic pastoralism, commonly lie behind the various environment problems in the world. This is one of the keys to understanding the present environmental problems.

  

   This project aims to study and clarify the historical interaction between human activities and natural systems in the semi-arid region of Central Eurasia, with particular emphasis on trans-boundary issues. The project attempts to clarify historical changes, the rise and fall of nomadic groups and countries, their movements, changes in subsistence patterns, the use of natural resources, and climate change. At the same time, we will investigate the present status of the area and the effects of human activities on the natural environment, with particular emphasis on their historical, social and cultural background.

 

(2) Research methods

 

  The study area is the Ili River basin, which flows from China to Kazakhstan, terminating at Lake Balkhash as well as the surrounding areas, including Kyrgyz and Uzbekistan. Geographically, the Ili-Balkhash Basin is recognized as a fertile area with relatively high precipitation, lying to the north of the Tian Shan Mountains. Central Eurasia is an excellent location for tracing human reactions both to past climate changes and to anthropogenic activities. In this climatically sensitive area, which alternates between semi-arid and arid conditions, human influence can be traced historically. In the last two decades, many paleoclimatic records in this area were derived from ice cores, tree rings, lake sediments and glacier fluctuations (Thompson et. al., 1995; Marchenko and Gorbunov, 1997; Yao, 1997; Esper et. al., 2002, 2003; Narama, 2002a, b; Solomina and Alverson, 2004; Treydte et. al., 2006). These climate reconstructions provide a chance to describe and understand the full range of the natural climate system behaviour of this region. Also, there was an excellent research project, called “CLIMAN project”, including the collaboration of archaeology, geomorphology and geology on the human adaptation to lake level change in the Aral Sea (Boomer et al., 2009). However, Interactions between environmental changes and human reactions have rarely been studied in multi-disciplinary manner in Central Eurasia. So, we would like to investigate the area as follows;

 

a) Clarify historical changes, the rise and fall of nomadic groups and countries, their movements, changes in subsistence, the use of natural resources and climate change through the analysis of historical documents and archaeological investigations as well as various natural proxies such as ice cores, lake sediment samples, tree rings and wind-blown deposit.

 

b) Investigate the present status of the area and the effects of human activities on the natural environment, including their social, religious and cultural background.

 

c) Compare upstream and downstream areas in terms of historical changes and their present status, looking at both sides of the political border, which used to be the same but have developed differently, in order to understand the meaning of boundaries on environmental issues.

 

(3) Research organizations

 

   The project consists of two research groups: one has clarified historical changes in both human activities and natural systems and the other group has investigated the current processes of human activities and natural systems. In addition, we have been cooperating with various research institutions in overseas countries;

 

Kazakhstan: Institute of Geography; Institute of Archaeology; Kazakhstan Scientific Research Institute on Problems of the Cultural Heritage on Nomads; Tethys Scientific Society.

China: Cold and Arid Region Environment and Engineering Institute;

Others: Central Asia Deep Ice-Coring Project (CADIP); NESPI; CLAIMAN

 

(4) Significance as a RIHN Project

 

   Historically, human beings have strived to adapt to changes in the environment. This projects aims not to search for a so-called historical understanding of the rise and fall of the ethnic groups, but to find the history of adaptations by human beings in semi-arid regions of Central Eurasia, focusing natural resources use. On the basis of historical analysis, we have tried to investigate the present environmental problems caused by modern developments in both the former Soviet Union and China with special emphasis on man-made boundaries, which is one of the fundamental factors behind present environmental problems.

   We reconstructed the change of the climate in the area by using various proxies during the past 1,000 years as the basis for understanding the historical interaction between human activities and the environment. At first, we reconstructed a series of air temperature variations from tree ring width records in Kyrgyz (Esper et. al, 2002) and precipitation from the accumulation date at the Guliya ice-cap in China (Thompson et. al., 1995). Reconstructed temperature and precipitation, and estimated river discharge, indicated that the period from AD1000 to AD1500 was warm and dry, while the Little Ice Age (LIA), from 1500 to 1850 was cold and wet. After the LIA, the climate became wet and warm. This long-term trend well corresponds to the reconstructed lake level of Lake Balkhash represented by the ratio of saline and planktonic diatoms, indicating that there was a trend of decreasing lake level from the 10th to 13th century, as well as those of the Lake Issyk-Kul (Giralt et. al., 2002) and the Aral Sea (Boroffkka, et. al., 2006). After this significant regression, the lake level showed rapid recovery, and remained relatively high. Results from other proxies, such as dust and retrieval of glaciers supported this long-term trend.

 

   We developed a chronological database, showing the rise and falls of settlements. In the northern piedmont of the Tian Shan Mountains, oasis cities, which were the agricultural centres and trading bases in the Syr Darya basin of western Turkestan, flourished from the 7th century, while settlements in the Ili River basin were the next to be blessed with prosperity. Most of the settlements were not agricultural bases, but nomadic and trading bases with military use. In medieval times, agricultural and nomadic peoples lived separately, making full use of eco-environment variations. Their interactions were a complementary relationship in terms of natural resources use. The climate change caused not only negative, but also positive effects for agricultural/nomadic production. The warm and dry climate in the early medieval times might have accelerated the development of agricultural and trading activities, consequently contribute to the flourishing of the area, especially oasis cities in the Syr Darya basin of western Turkestan. Also, the cold and wet climate in the early LIA, might have affected the declines of oasis cities and the increase of nomadic activities in the Ili river basin and Dzungaria. Relocations and changes of subsistence complex patterns were major ways of adaptation.

 

   After the division of the area between Russia and Qing China, the balance between human capability and the impacts of environmental change, such as climate change, drastically altered. The establishment of a clear political border between Russia and Qing China shifted patterns of human-environmental interaction in the region.

 

   In Kazakhstan, this process could be divided into several stages. After the expansion of Russia, the first attempt at changing subsistence from nomadic pastoralism to agriculture, in association with the settlement of nomadic people started from the late 19th century. The collectivization of the agricultural sector from 1929 triggered serious social confusion in Kazakhstan, resulting in the loss of a large number of nomadic populations. In the Virgin Lands Programme of Khrushchev's Agricultural Policy, Kazakhstan was forced to become one of the major crop production areas in the Soviet Union, causing excessive development which ignored environmental capacity and exerted significant impact on the area. In addition, these development policies were applied while ignoring and destroying traditional social systems. Especially, newly applied production system including the division of labour, together with the migration of skilled peoples from other countries as leaders for collective farms, prevented the accumulation of agricultural knowledge, and also caused the loss of traditional knowledge of nomadic pastoralism. The collapse of the Soviet Union caused the deterioration of terms of trade in the agricultural sector. The amount of state purchase and subsidies was reduced. Consequently, many farmlands developed during the planned economy were abandoned. This reduced the pressure on natural resources, ironically resulting in the recovery of the ecosystem. At the same time, peoples labouring in divided systems were provided rather small farmlands as a result of privatization. But they could not manage their own privatized land because of their limited knowledge of subsistence. This caused a serious economic crisis, and made recovery to difficult.

 

   In China, the commencement of modern development had been delayed, not starting until the 1950’s. Agricultural development led by the Chinese Qing Dynasty was limited. After the first development period in the 1960’s in which grassland in plain areas was converted into farmland for growing cereals, the traditional nomadic pastoral system was well preserved by using natural grassland in the mountains. The second development was made by converting cereals to other cash crops, causing no serious damage to natural resources, such as land and water. Recent development after 2000 including industrial development, however, has been very active. The increasing demand for natural resources and consequent pollutions is projected.

- Reconstruction of the climate changes and human activities concerning the use of natural resources such as land and water will be finalized. This work will be accomplished through quantitative validation using the hydrological model which includes anthropological processes such as irrigation. We plan to apply our model not only on the Ili-Balkhash basin, but also the Aral Sea basin.

 

- We plan to investigate decision making processes of the development plans in the Ili River basin and the Aral Sea under the planned economy in the USSR era using historical documents. Detailed analysis about these processes would contribute how we establish proper environmental governance.

 

- We will publish the outcomes of our researches as a book series in three or four volumes. Each volume will be collectively written by several authors. This work should contribute to knowledge not only by dispatching the results to academic societies, but also for integrating outcomes.

 

- We plan to hold a workshop/symposium in Almaty, Kazakhstan, inviting cooperative researchers from overseas countries. The main purpose of this workshop/symposium is to feed back our findings and outcomes to the public, and especially to local researchers, engineers and planners.