Precious Water

Clean drinking water is a basic life necessity. Yet a shortage of this vital resource threatens to become the main ecological problem of our time, in urgency and significance even surpassing the uncontrolled decimation of forests and the melting of polar ice caps and glaciers.

Russia is far from immune to the most difficult water issues before us: desertification, pollution, shortages of clean drinking water, and the extinction of aquatic species. While the whole country has serious problems to grapple with, it is safe to say that nowhere in Russia has the problem reached such critical proportions as in the South.

When you drive through the Kalmyk steppe, you barely notice how fast you are going. Only rarely can you make out a lonely tree in the distance, latch your eyes onto it, and not let go until it recedes from view. Pale yellow, sun-scorched earth stretches to the horizon in every direction.