The Aral Sea Disaster

The Aral Sea stands as one of the monstrous environmental catastrophes of the 20th Century.

Before 1960, it was the world's fourth largest inland sea – behind Asia’s Caspian Sea, North America’s Lake Superior and Africa’s Lake Victoria – with an area of 68,000 km². It had a vibrant fishing industry employing 40,000 people. Today discarded fishing boats lie on the sand 20 kilometers from shore.

In the 1950’s and 60’s Soviet engineers began diverting its two major inflowing rivers to irrigate cotton fields. As a result Uzbekistan has become one of the world’s major cotton producers. But this drawdown had a disastrous result as the sea lost most of the inflow of its source waters. The mighty Aral Sea began shrinking – and shrank steadily until, in 2004 it was only 25% of its original surface area, and by 2007 it had declined to 10% of its original size.

To Serve and Protect

In the Garden of Eden story in Genesis 2:5-15, Adam’s priestly task also included a protective role. He was to ‘tend’ the garden and to ‘watch over’ it. Other translations say to ‘keep’ it or ‘take care of’ it.

The Hebrew word for ‘keep’, samar, is a military term. It is exactly the same word used in the next chapter when the angel with a flaming sword ‘guards’ the way to the tree of life against intruders. It is used again in the fourth chapter in Cain’s retort, “Am I my brother’s keeper?

Garden of Eden - Vocation

Before the Garden of Eden was planted, the Book of Genesis describes the world as barren and uncultivated: “neither wild plants nor grains were growing on the earth. For the LORD God had not yet sent rain to water the earth, and there were no people to cultivate the soil. Instead, springs came up from the ground and watered all the land." Genesis 2:5-6 NLT

Great potential was going to waste. Parts of the earth were dry from lack of rain and other parts were drenched by the inundation of streams, but neither had yet been cultivated because there was no one to harness the waters and apply them to any useful agriculture.

Nile Nightmare

The nightmare jolted him awake. Pharaoh stood beside his beloved Nile as seven fat cows climbed out of the river and begin grazing along the bank. All was well until, ominously, seven scrawny cows came out of the same river, stalked the healthy cows and devoured them.

Cannibal cows! – a bad portent – something nasty was afoot on the banks of the sacred Nile.  Pharaoh woke with a start.

Rain Forest

Forests are the lungs of planet earth.

They consume our CO2 and exhale oxygen.

They filter our pollution and purify the air; they re-cycle back to the atmosphere vast amounts of water through transpiration and thus help to regulate the climate patterns for the world.


Deforestation is like planetary lung cancer; it takes our breath away. We simply can’t survive without the forests; they breathe for us. We didn’t plant them but they sustain us. Reckless logging and large-scale burning for agriculture destroys a crucial balance of soil, water and air. And we all pay the price of that wanton short-sightedness.