ABSTRACT
In 1992, the United Nations declared the Aral Sea Basin as a world “ecological disaster area,” which Glantz (1999) defined as a typical example of a “creeping environmental problem” – that is a slow-starting, low-grade, long-term, and cumulative environmental change that evolves so slowly that perceiving it and starting counterbalancing measures is difficult. The term “Aral Sea Syndrome” was introduced as “environmental damage caused by large-scale projects aimed at restructuring natural landscape” linked to a “tendency towards top-down project planning and purely technological solutions” (WBGU, 1998).
