The Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers of Central Asia flow across deserts to empty into the Aral Sea. Under Soviet rule, so much water was diverted from the rivers for agricultural purposes that salinity levels rapidly rose and the sea shrank. There was an upsurge in dust storms containing toxic salt residue, and a new desert began to replace the sea. At the same time, agricultural runoff rendered…
Many environmental problems cross national boundaries and can be addressed only through international cooperation. In this book Robert Darst examines transnational efforts to promote environmental protection in the USSR and in five of its successor states--Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania--from the late 1960s to the present. The core of the book is a c…