ARMENIAN FARMERS’ WATER WOES
By Galust Nanyan
Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) UK
CAUCASUS REPORTING SERVICE, No. 606
August 31, 2011
Pollution and diversion of water resources blamed for driving farmers
from their lands.
“The earth has lost its strength,” Alvard Arakelyan said. “Whatever you
plant, it won’t grow and there won’t be anything to take to market.”
Arakelyan moved to the Armenian capital Yerevan after the farmland
around her home village Armavir region dried up.
“The land is turning to desert, yet the government doesn’t even
consider addressing it. All they can do is chatter on television
about how unused land should be tilled.”
Arakelyan blamed local fish farms for diverting irrigation water. The
general problem she describes is much more widespread. All across
Armenia, farmers are leaving their land because they cannot irrigate
it, or because the water available is polluted.
Some, like Arakelyan, move to urban areas, while others head off
abroad.
Simon Karapetyan, for example, plans to emigrate because the water
reaching his village in the northern Lori region is so polluted by
a metal mine in the area that it is no longer fit for irrigation.
“If they take away our water, then how can one talk about working
the land?” he said.
Speaking to IWPR while waiting at Yerevan’s airport for a flight to
Russia, Karapetyan, “I’m going, and if it works out, I’ll bring my
family too.
Environmentalists warn that many others will follow in the next few
years, particularly in the Syunik, Kotayk and Lori regions where
mining operations are expanding.
Government officials say they are unaware of whether mining-related
pollution is forcing people off the land.
Residents of Qajaran, a village in the southern Syunik region,
have sent letters bearing more than 1,000 signatures to Armenia’s
president, prime minister, and members of parliament, following a
government decision in April to assign their area to the Zangezur
Copper-Molybdenum Plant, which plans to begin mining there. So far,
they have heard nothing back from the political leaders.
Village council leader Rafik Atayan said local people were given no
advance warning, and the 131 families there were at a loss about what
to do.
“Where are we to go? The graves of our parents and ancestors lie here.
This is our land, our water, our home,” he said.
The Zangezur firm has already faced allegations relating to effluent
discharges, following a leak from a waste dump containing mercury
and cadmium into a tributary of the Voghji river in Syunik region.
Farmers in the area said they stopped watering their crops because
of the risks.
“Eighty hectares of land were put out of action, and yields from the
pasture fields were very low,” Samvel Sargsyan, an elder from the
village of Syunik, said.
Levon Petrosyan, head of the inspectorate for nature protection at
the regional governor’s office, told IWPR that the company had to
pay a fine of 150,000 drams, around 410 US dollars, and 800,000 drams
in compensation.
But as he pointed out, “All this money went into the government budget
and didn’t help really help the villages.”
No one from the Zangezur company was available for comment.
Also in Syunik, residents of Lernadzor have voiced concerns about
plans to prospect for uranium. They fear that exploratory drilling
and any subsequent mining will contaminate ground water and pose a
serious risk to human health. (IWPR reported on this issue last year;
see Armenians Fight Uranium Mine Plans.)
Environmentalists are now concerned about a proposed iron ore mine
in the Kotayk region of central Armenia.
Karine Danielyan, who heads the Association for Stable Human
Development, said the mine would pollute the Hrazdan river, which
flows into the Ararat valley, a major agricultural area, and also
provides the capital with its water.
“When the Hrazdan seam is developed, Yerevan stands to lose more than
40 per cent of its drinking water, since the area where the Abovyan
and Hrazdan deposits are located generate that percentage of the
water that reaches the capital,” he said.
Ecology groups have also raised the alarm over reports that an
ore-processing plant is to be built at Hrazdan as an adjunct of
the mine.
Deputy environment minister Simon Papyan insisted this was not going
to happen.
“We realise perfectly well that it wouldn’t be right to set up a
factory in that area,” he said. “We understand the situation and the
concerns that NGOs are raising.”
Official statistics indicate that two-fifths of the arable land
in Armenia is lying unused. Some 530,000 people have left their
home villages since the late 1980s, many of them as a result of a
devastating earthquake in 1988.
Armenia also faces an alarming trend towards desertification of
the land.
“Eighty per cent of Armenia’s territory is undergoing desertification,
and 30 per cent is undergoing serious desertification,” Professor
Ashot Khoyetsyan, a member of the International Academy of Ecology
and Environmental Sciences, said. “This is largely a consequence
of the unplanned use of pasture lands, and failure to use water
resources rationally.”
In the last two years, the government has spent more than 700,000
dollars attempting to halt desertification.
“I can count about 20 programmes to combat desertification,” Ashot
Vardevanyan, deputy head of bioresources management at the environment
ministry, said. “At the moment, 80 per cent of rural land cannot be
irrigated. Programmes must be implemented on a constant basis if we
really want to see better results.”
Galust Nanyan is a freelance reporter in Armenia.