Moving beyond the Framing Impasse in the Aral Sea Delta: Vernacular Knowledge of Salinization and Its Potential for Social Learning towards Sustainability

Abstract

The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that close to 9% of the world’s soils are affected by salinity. The purpose of this article is to discuss qualitative social science findings on alternative ways of conceptualizing salinization in Kazakhstan and how these findings could be leveraged for transformative knowledge towards sustainability. We highlight dimensions of land degradation that are doubly obscured: the under-represented issue of salinization, and vernacular knowledge on salinization. The article draws on qualitative data collection methods, including eighteen months of participant observation, workshop transcripts and archival records. Three research findings are presented. First, there is an analysis of the framing of environmental issues common among policymakers in the region. Second, these frameworks are contrasted with novel data on how local farming communities understand and deal with salinization. These two research results enable extrapolating a third finding: how such locally based knowledge could be harnessed towards solving salinization issues. Beyond the specific issue of salinization, the results of this research suggest potentially valuable design principles relating to specific ways that the environmental knowledge of expert farmers and scientific experts could be paired. In the case of Central Asia, models based on the local culture can be adapted, such as hosting and apprenticeship relationships. This example suggests transferable lessons on how to forge social learning towards sustainability that start from imperfect local tools (bottom-up) rather than from internationally promoted but socially distant blueprints (top-down).

1. Problem

Society faces multiple environmental crises, many of which are related to climate change [1]. While environmental degradation is often well understood, some forms of agricultural land and habitat loss receive significantly more attention than others. Salinization, for example, is a widespread problem, with massive ramifications for environmental health and human food security [2]. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that close to 9% of the world’s soils are affected by salinity. The cost of this expanding form of land degradation in irrigated areas is calculated at USD 27.3 billion per year [3] (this estimate does not include positive and negative environmental externalities, which are notoriously hard to quantify and often not taken into account.). The causes are well known, yet compared to more charismatic issues such as rainforest loss or desertification, this form of anthropogenic soil infertility receives little attention.

In the area of Kazakhstan’s Aral Sea delta, saline soils are a major concern for rural communities dependent on shifting agriculture, pastoralism and migrant remittances. However, national and international policymakers frame the shrinking sea as the only major ecological catastrophe. Given this disjuncture in the weighting of environmental crises, this article asks: how can decision-makers take into account local concerns? How can both local and formal scientific forms of knowledge on—and adaptations to—salinization be drawn on to solve the crisis? What does engaging this particular issue and place suggest about how to deal with other pressing catastrophes?

2. Perspective

This article presents three research findings on the problem: first, an analysis of the framing of environmental issues common among policymakers in the region. Second, these frameworks are contrasted with novel data on how local farming communities understand and deal with salinization. Third, the article discusses the effects of the disconnect in framing salinization and suggests how local agriculturalists’ expertise on salinization could be productively engaged. This analysis and discussion highlight dimensions that are doubly obscured: the under-represented issue of salinization, and vernacular knowledge on salinization that has yet to be leveraged sufficiently to attain greater sustainability.

In providing a nuanced understanding of how these different stakeholders in Kazakhstan articulate and navigate ecological challenges, the authors develop suggestions for locally realizable modes of incorporating local knowledge systems into state management systems. A general case for integrating lay and ‘expert’ forms of environmental knowledge has long been made and is widely affirmed as a goal [4,5,6,7]. However, how to achieve these aspirations is a much more difficult issue, one that is taken up here with a particular case study and a set of generalized propositions from the case. Drawing on the authors’ transdisciplinary experience of realizing such alternative modes in the Syr Darya River delta, this paper argues for creatively drawing on less-than-perfect, historically established models of interacting and learning. Two concrete models for Central Asia are suggested: hosting relations and craft apprenticeship (known as ‘ustat-shakirt’ relations). Both are widely recognized in the region and could serve as the basis of communication and social learning models. This format could be adapted to bridge the expert-lay knowledge divide on salinization and other agricultural issues. This paper concludes with transferable lessons on how to forge social learning towards sustainability from ‘imperfect’ local tools rather than merely relying on internationally recognizable, top-down blueprints.

3. Methodology

3.1. Qualitative Scholarship

This study takes a qualitative social science approach to an agricultural arena, where much research is from the applied and natural sciences. Qualitative social science generally pursues different research goals, which can complement the goals of research in agricultural and environmental science. It also employs different forms of validating and assessing research than the quantitative and experimental sciences. Qualitative social science approaches are suitable for pursuing questions on complex human behavior, societal values and contexts [8], where the system boundaries typically drawn in scientific studies are hard to define or remain permeable and flexible, such as villagers changing which crops they plant or which hamlet they live in, in response to rainfall or heat.

For the field of sustainability, qualitative methods can, for example, analyze the motivations, beliefs, and experiences that drive environmental behaviors and policy decisions (see [9,10,11] for good examples). Data collection methods can include a variety of interview styles, focus groups, participant observation and content analysis. These methodologies allow researchers to gather rich, contextual data and gain a detailed understanding of complex phenomena. A number of data collection strategies are often combined to allow for triangulation and to enrich the kind of holistic understanding that is the goal of this approach. The research design for this article included eighteen months of participant observation, which involved living and participating in agricultural labor in the villages being studied; observing practices, discussing challenges with planting and harvesting, etc.; and the analysis of workshop transcripts and archival records.

In the discipline of social anthropology, participant observation is the core method: this methodology requires immersion of the researcher in a wide variety of day-to-day activities of research participants, usually over an extended period of time. While the approach often draws on a small sample size, it is uniquely able to document verbal as well as behavioral evidence, variance over time and between contexts (for a good example on sustainable energy, see [12]). The potential breadth of material coming from a larger sample size and the opportunity for statistical significance is sacrificed in exchange for depth of understanding of the mechanisms affecting daily life and decisions.

The bulk of participant observation data for this study is supplied by Aibek Samakov, who conducted eighteen months of fieldwork between 2016 and 2017, as well as several follow-up visits. He covered fourteen villages, engaging in everyday livelihood activities and conducting 101 semi-structured interviews. This effort was supplemented by analyzing policy and public communication records in four Kazakhstani archives (in the Russian language), covering data from 1938 to 1975 (timeframe based on limited archival holdings). Together with Aibek Samakov and Mohira Suyarkulova, Jeanne Féaux de la Croix ran a transdisciplinary workshop format with farmers and policymakers in the river delta (on this methodology, see Section 3.2).

Both the nature of qualitative research questions and forms of data collection require different forms of analytical assessment than the typical scientific or quantitative criteria of replicability, reliability and validity applied to experiments or numerical data analysis [13]. First, the criterion of reliability in qualitative research is measured by the trustworthiness of the research process. We employed detailed field notes, including documenting decision-making processes by farmers and researchers to provide evidence of dependability. Second, the criterion of replicability is replaced by the criteria of transparency in the research process. Researchers provide detailed descriptions of the methods and limitations of data collection and interpretation. For example, it is important to note that since Aibek Samakov is a man in his late 20s, local norms of gender segregation and work practices resulted in the majority of his interlocutors being adult men. Specifying research conditions in this way allows other researchers to assess the process and evaluate the findings in context. Third, in qualitative research, techniques to enhance validity include what are called ‘thick descriptions’, which provide detailed accounts of the context and participants’ perspectives. Additionally, ‘member checking’ provides a systematic means for participants to review and confirm findings [14]. In this study, both procedures were used regularly to help ensure that interpretations accurately represent participants’ experiences and views.

In sum, these methods allow for a comparison of different forms of salinization knowledge used by key stakeholders—farmers, scientists and government officials—and an assessment of their advantages and drawbacks. In addition to established qualitative methods, the analysis draws on theories of transdisciplinarity and social learning to demonstrate how the different forms of knowledge encountered could be fruitfully engaged in the pursuit of sustainable land management.

3.2. Concepts of Transdisciplinarity, Social Learning and Vernacular Knowledge

Across the spectrum of qualitative and quantitative sciences, transdisciplinarity defines a particular approach to research methods and goals. ‚It is understood here as the co-production of knowledge by scientists working with non-scientists, on relatively equal terms. At best, such collaborative research teams become a self-informing and self-reflexive collective that has a transformative effect on their surroundings [15,16]. Attempts to combine empirical research, theorization and social impact are not new in all fields and settings. Current collaborative, transdisciplinary and social learning approaches emphasize the advantages of science in a range of settings, particularly in relation to environmental challenges. These applications include the ability to harness multiple perspectives for the resolution of complex problems [17,18].

The research drawn on here is partially transdisciplinary in nature, while the thrust of the article’s argument embraces and goes beyond transdisciplinarity into a more all-encompassing vision of ‘social learning’. Like many places and issues in the world, the possibility for transdisciplinary working modes to address environmental degradation and agricultural policies in Kazakhstan is constrained by freedom of speech and precautionary principles of research. Even in the most auspicious socio-political settings, fully equal sharing of the research process and enactment of transdisciplinary ideals is a rarity. While the field data discussed here were not generated as full co-production of knowledge in the deepest sense of transdisciplinarity, the broader group research project did employ a transdisciplinary approach where possible, including work in the Syr Darya delta with local farmers and policymakers. We argue that the well-developed ideals of transdisciplinarity can be powerfully connected to the idea of ‘social learning’ as a useful way to approach transformative science and policy. The idea of social learning points to a broader, collective learning process among communities, experts and governments [19,20,21,22]. It builds on transdisciplinarity by setting a more ambitious goal. Social learning means moving relatively passive knowing into the use of knowledge ias(collective) doing. Information in this mode becomes the junior cousin of knowledge, which comes into full existence as ‘knowing-in-action’, which no single stakeholder or form of expertise can adequately reflect [23]. Full knowledge then means the ability to make use of different kinds of knowing and then act on our collective understanding to transform ways of living and working. Needless to say, stimulating such social learning represents a complex ambition [24].

Because of the broad scope and variations in global social and environmental conditions and issues, transdisciplinary methods and the social learning goal need to be creatively adapted to gain local traction, to communicate successfully and to create a sense of ownership. While basic principles may be widely validated, detailed blueprints for these processes are unlikely to work well. This context-dependent approach is needed whether international non-government policy units hope to engage businesses producing agricultural inputs or whether elected government representatives want to persuade local farmers to adopt particular farming practices. All of these actors must practice tactics of translation and reframing to approximate the language and relate to the interests of particular stakeholders. The research described here presents vernacular farming knowledge and coping practices to demonstrate the intricacy and applicability of this expertise. We then suggest adapting an ‘Indigenous’ mode of communication and understanding of apprenticeship.

Traditional farming systems still cover 10 million ha worldwide [25]. The role of traditional agricultural knowledge in designing more sustainable agricultural systems is now widely recognized [26,27]. Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is useful in terms of providing not merely information but a form of understanding that is complementary to scientific knowledge [28]. The separation between official and vernacular (partially traditional) knowledge is often very permeable, as scholars frequently learn from locals (a role that is rarely acknowledged) at various moments of knowledge production [29]. As outlined here, in the Syr Darya delta, farmers rely greatly on local experiential knowledge as a practical, personal and community resource [30]. Below, this article first introduces the Kazakhstani case study and then presents data on official and vernacular knowledge of salinization. Finally, the article concludes with an evaluation of these knowledge forms and identification of ways that vernacular knowledge could contribute to sustainability goals.

4. Findings

4.1. Framing Salinization and Other Disasters in the Aral Sea Region

Just as some environmental issues receive more attention than others, some regions receive more attention than others, or are characterized by ‘flagship problems’. Such is the case with the melting ice in the Arctic, the desertification in the Sahel zone, or the destruction of the Amazon. (For an example of how flagship species such as whales can be used to argue for broader conservation measures, see ([31] in this Special Issue). Soils—and their microbial inhabitants—seem to have difficulty gaining imaginative traction in this way, compared to perhaps more ‘charismatic’ settings, such as aquatic life. Sitting at the crossroads of ‘great powers’ such as China, Russia, Iran and South Asia, Central Asia remains an environmentally understudied region. Post-Soviet Central Asia is world-famous, however, for one environmental disaster zone: the Aral Sea (Figure 1). Trying to stop this inland sea from drying up, by ensuring its river feeders are not overused, has been the focus of hundreds of policy initiatives and documents—to little avail. One closely connected catastrophe that receives far less attention but may have equal or even greater import for people in the Aral region, is that of salinized soil. As discussed below, in Kazakhstan’s Aral Sea delta, salinization is considered the major concern by rural communities dependent on shifting agriculture, pastoralism and migrant remittances. However, national and international policymakers frame the shrinking sea as the only major ecological catastrophe, largely ignoring local concerns, knowledge and adaptations around this more particular form of slow violence.

Soil salinity adversely affects more than 20% of global irrigated agriculture areas [32], predominantly in arid and semiarid regions. Soil salinity is documented in more than 100 countries and poses major challenges to agriculture in India, Pakistan (Indus and Ganges basins), China (the Yellow River Basin), the Middle East (the Euphrates basin), Egypt (Nile basin), Australia (Murray-Darling Basin) and many other countries, such as Iran, Thailand, Argentina, and Russia [3]. The salinization challenge affects more than 800 million hectares of land globally, in other words, nearly 6% of the world’s total land area [33]. Climate change is likely to further exacerbate soil salinity and overall land degradation in Kazakhstan ([34,35]).

4.1.1. Case Study Setting

Delta inhabitants live in an area officially designated by law since 1992 as a Zone of Ecological Catastrophe. This designation acknowledges the deterioration of the local environment, high mortality rates and harsh social-ecological conditions. While in this law, the drying up of the Aral Sea is mentioned as a concrete problem, salinization is not explicitly mentioned [36]. It is, however, a major issue in the region and for Kazakhstan as a whole: around 60% of its land (1,619,584 km², an area several times the area of Germany) has been classed as degraded, including 57% of croplands, 21% of forested areas and 38% of grasslands [34]. The main drivers of land degradation are wind and water erosion, salinization, water-logging and industrial pollution of soils [37].

Primary salinization refers to the natural accumulation of salts in soil and water, while secondary salinization is caused by human activities, such as irrigation or mining. If groundwater levels are altered by human activity, salts in the soil can become dissolved in groundwater and may rise to the surface, where the water evaporates and leaves behind a salt-laden crust [38,39]. These salts then interfere with the water and nutrient balance and uptake in plants, effectively making soil increasingly infertile [40,41]. The delta district Kazaly classifies 64.3% of its area as moderately salinized, 22.6% as ‘slightly salinized’, and 13.1% as ‘extremely’ [42].

Adjoining the northern shore of the remnants of the Aral Sea, the Kazaly district is quite ethnically homogenous, with over 99% of the population identifying as Kazakh (2019 census). The area is an important railroad hub for Central Asia, providing most of the available wage jobs in the district. Alongside local shops, other wage jobs are limited to rice-growing corporations, government offices, and services like schools and the post office. Labor migration to big cities or the oil and gas fields of western Kazakhstan is ubiquitous [43,44]). The majority of households have at least one family member working as a migrant. Many households also depend on government pensions provided to elderly family members.

The local rice-growing corporations are privately-owned businesses that rent village and government land to grow rice. As of 2016, there were eight such rice-growing companies—the larger ones also keep dairy cattle. The yields of the rice corporations make up most of the official agricultural output of the district and are supported by governmental subsidies. Some of the local villagers are employed by these rice-growing companies as irrigators, tractor drivers, and managers. However, the number of people employed in each village is not substantial. For example, the company, RZA Agro, cultivated alfalfa in Alga village and in 2018 employed about 20–30 locals out of more than 1000 villagers.

Most villagers try to get a wage job and complement it with herding, gardening, reed mowing, and fishing. These livelihoods are often subsistence-oriented, with only a fraction of produce being sold for money. Such combinations of livelihoods are somewhat typical in all rural areas of Kazakhstan [45]. Because dealing with salinization is so crucial, local farming communities in the Syr Darya River delta have developed their own classification system of soil salinity. This system is used to evaluate and choose shifting cultivation sites that are managed as a commons. Before turning to a detailed analysis of these forms of local salinization expertise, a content analysis of government environmental problem framing in the area is presented and its effects are examined.

4.1.2. Science and Policymaking Frameworks

The language of Kazakhstan’s 1992 Law on the Zone of Ecological Catastrophe, as well as international institutions such as the International Fund for Saving Aral Sea [46], foregrounds the need to sustainably share the limited water resources of Syr Darya and Amu Darya Rivers. In other words, water scarcity and overuse, resulting in the near total destruction of the Aral Sea are the main frameworks for identifying environmental degradation in the study area. As a consequence, soil salinity issues in the Syr Darya Delta have often been communicated as a water scarcity issue. This framing has been established despite the fact that salinity has long been one of the major challenges for agriculture in Central Asia and has been mentioned in government reports on the area from at least the 1940s onwards.

In fact, supplying more irrigation water can exacerbate soil salinization. Firstly, diverting water from the river for irrigation raises groundwater levels, which is one of the main catalysts of soil salinization. Second, the Syr Darya’s river water is polluted with a high concentration of dissolved salts and fertilizers originating from agricultural discharges upstream [47]. Thirdly, water diversions for irrigation further contribute to the drying of the Aral Sea and the accrual of salt on the former seabed, which is then blown onto surrounding fields ([48,49,50]). Lastly, leaching—as one of the prime methods of alleviating salinization in the short term—exacerbates the problem in the medium- and long-term. Leaching means flooding fields to wash away surface salt and is used both by small-scale farmers and larger rice-growing corporations. This method both raises the groundwater level and washes salt to fields further downriver.

In response to these issues since Soviet times, agricultural scientists have urged improving the irrigation and drainage infrastructure, adopting water-saving irrigation techniques, strictly adhering to crop rotation, and using chemical remediation approaches such as applying calcium, zinc or gypsum [51,52]. Agricultural scientists have more recently also recommended phytoremediation approaches, such as planting salt-resistant plants and shrubs and certain tree species that can serve as biological pumps to lower elevated groundwater levels in waterlogged areas [36,52].

A number of specialists recognize the wicked problem of salinization being both exacerbated by and begging for more irrigation water. However, regional policymakers and water experts do not often consider the connection between the goal of supplying more irrigation water and exacerbating soil salinity in the delta. It is usually implied that if the water issues are resolved, then soil salinity issues will be resolved as well. Moreover, INGOs, scholars and governments typically tend to see solutions for river water issues on a transboundary scale [53,54]. They thus focus on growing an integrated water resource management approach across the region [55]. These approaches may indeed be beneficial. However, such a water-supply-centric framing of environmental degradation, with a strong preference for transboundary solutions, often effectively excludes local communities in the Syr Darya Delta and elsewhere as agents in the conversation. This approach also ignores the more sustainable, small-scale practices and expertise that local agriculturalists have, in fact, already developed to cope with salinization.

The following section provides data from the Kazaly district to reveal how local perceptions and classifications contrast with the scientific and management-oriented narratives of soil salinity. Then, the question is addressed of how these diverging forms of knowledge could be effectively related to support more sustainable agricultural and natural resource management practices.

4.2. Vernacular Typologies of Soil Salinity and Coping Mechanisms

As depicted above, scales of expertise and framing are not unified and already diverge in the policy and science arena. Data obtained through participant observation and interviews by Aibek Samakov in 2017–2018 show that there is some overlap in how the salinization problem is understood and acted upon between government agencies and local farmers (for a more complete documentation of sources and research processes, see [56]).

Local farmer observers agree that the drying up of the Aral Sea has greatly exacerbated the soil salinity problem. They comment that soil salinity gradually increased during the Soviet period, with a slight decline after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when a lot of agricultural land was abandoned and could recuperate. At the same time, local agriculturalists also have quite a distinct understanding that departs from all official concepts and framings. For example, scholars and governments talk about soil salinity in terms of the percentage of salts in soils and use such labels as ‘mildly saline’, ‘moderately saline’, ‘extremely saline’ and ‘salinization and sodification’, (e.g., Na or K-based soil salinity or salinization versus sodification [39]).

In contrast, delta communities use their own local typology of soil salinity that distinguishes between ‘white’ and ‘black’ salinity. Differentiating types of salt is a key criterion to communicate which plot is suitable for cultivation and which one is not. This distinction is particularly vital in the Syr Darya Delta, where local communities and rice corporations use shifting agriculture, i.e., the cultivators move from one plot to another every few years. Assessments of soil salinity levels are performed by local gardeners and rice-corporation agronomists (who are usually also local villagers).

There are layers to the meanings of ‘black’ and ‘white’ salt that deserve attention because they articulate a sophisticated means of coping with land degradation. On the most superficial level, farmers discuss a visual difference between areas affected by ‘white salinity’ and ‘black salt’. Some areas have patches with a thin layer of salt on them, and these areas are called ‘white’ areas because the top shines white. Other areas, which are muddy and dark in color or have a hard dark crust on the surface, are identified as ‘black salt’ areas. This typology is, however, not based solely on a simple visual marker: as discussed below, the assessment is more complex. In everyday communication, the distinction between white and black salinity may also refer to the severity of salinity, rather than the color of crust. If an area has a really thick layer of white-colored salt on it, it is called a ‘black salinity’ area, even though it may shine white (Figure 2).

While it is extremely difficult to find a plot completely unaffected by soil salinity in the river delta, the body of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) on black and white soil salinity allows farmers to select the least affected plots for cultivation, thus investing less effort and resources to secure the harvest. Delta farmers do not cultivate areas affected by black salinity, as it is seen to be a waste of time. Often locals communicate this idea by saying ‘plants can grow on white salt and nothing can grow on black salt’. The statement about ‘nothing’ growing on the black salt is not always literal; quite a few such plots have salinity-tolerant vegetation, such as Anabasis salsa, Bergenia, Aeluropus lagopoides, and Dodartia orientalis. These plants act as phytoremediation agents and eventually reduce black salinity. If an area appears to have soil salinity but hosts such plant species as camel thorn (Alhagi) and/or licorice, that area is considered to be ‘white’, which means that one can manage to secure a harvest there. Thus, ‘nothing grows on black salt’ means rather that ‘we cannot grow any crops there’. In other words, the ‘black’ and ‘white’ salt distinction may also mean that the area affected by ‘white’ salinity is still manageable for crops (Figure 3), whereas the areas plagued by ‘black salinity’ are not.

Since visually telling whether a particular plot is affected by black salinity can be tricky (see Figure 2 and Figure 3), local gardeners and rice cultivators have developed a few strategies to determine the soil salinity of the areas. For example, gardeners water the area in question or visit a particular plot immediately after rainfall. If the plot turns muddy and develops a glittery surface, it means that it is salinized. The gardeners claim that the glitter comes from salt crystals reflecting the sunlight, which can be noticed by an experienced eye. Another strategy is to observe the prospective plot at dawn or sunset in autumn. The areas affected by black salinity “puke out” water or moisture, meaning that some areas of land secrete water (i.e., water comes from beneath the soil and makes it wet) on its surface, whereas the land around it stays dry. “Puking” water is a clear sign that the area has hidden black salt and will not be suitable for growing crops.

A look at this categorizing scheme in more detail reveals more about what makes black salinity unmanageable and white salinity manageable for farmers. Their assessment is related to how a particular type of salinity affects the plants. ‘White’ salinity is only present in the soil top layer, often forming a visible powder-like layer and sometimes a crust (Figure 3). ‘White salt’ is often the salt and dust residue from the former Aral seabed brought by winds. Hence, it can be physically removed by a hoe or leached with sufficient amounts of water to make it suitable for cultivation. In farmers’ understanding, white salinity is only dangerous at the beginning of a plant’s growth cycle, because constant contact with salt affects the plant’s stem and leaves and impedes water intake. Delta farmers say that ‘white’ salinity ‘burns’ newly emerging sprouts. If a farmer manages to get rid of this layer of salinity on the surface (e.g., by leaching or physically removing it with a hoe), then plants can grow normally there. When the plants grow bigger and their stems thicken, surface-level salt (salinity) has little effect on them, and white salinity is no longer considered dangerous for plants. To manage salinization on such viable plots, currently, the rice corporations and local farmers employ only a few soil salinity reduction methods, such as leaching, and choosing salt-resistant crops, such as melons.

On the other hand, what makes the ‘black’ salt unmanageable is that it is mixed with soil on all levels; it cannot be physically removed. According to locals, the excess of salt in the soil traps moisture and impedes the water intake by plant roots, leading to crop failure. Black salinity originates from rising groundwater levels when highly mineralized groundwater seeps to the surface. Thus, excessive irrigation and/or continued leaching of white salinity areas can create or exacerbate black salinity. In other words, a more generous water supply can easily exacerbate the problem in the medium- and long-term.

These management approaches by farmers reflect examples of the complex body of local soil knowledge related to soil salinity. Evolved in a harsh environment where almost all areas of land are affected by soil salinity to a varying degree [51], the local classification of white and black salinity serves the purpose of avoiding the worst affected land and cultivating plots on which the salinity-type and level are manageable.

In conclusion, the fieldwork data on vernacular typologies and coping mechanisms demonstrates an active body of knowledge on secondary salinization. Like the characterizations of sodification by agricultural scientists, this locally-based insight is a differentiated and complex body of knowledge. It is characteristically different from agricultural science knowledge in several aspects. First, it has not been formally tested or documented to date. The vernacular scheme includes some understanding of both the origin of salinization and its effects, though this understanding is not as thorough as the scientific remit on searching for causes allows for. Second, a major difference to the classifications used by soil scientists is that the differentiation of ‘black’ and ‘white’ salt takes into account locally available coping practices (‘white’ salt can be managed, ‘black’ cannot). Third, these characterizations provide more action-oriented and applicable forms of assessment than government soil scientists can currently provide for small-scale farmers. Fourth, the vernacular salinization vocabulary also points to the problem of leaching as a short-term solution, which scientific classifications in themselves do not highlight. The next section discusses techniques for relating this vernacular knowledge-in-practice to broader government and international policies on land degradation.

5. Discussion: Social Learning Techniques for Pairing Understandings of Salinization

In 2017–2018, Kazakhstan recognized the importance of halting land degradation and developed a national plan for achieving Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN), which stipulates that ‘the Republic of Kazakhstan strives to achieve land degradation neutrality by 2030’. (Kazakhstan has set its LDN Targets in 2017 and 2018. URL: https://www.unccd.int/our-work-impact/country-profiles/kazakhstan. Accessed on 3 October 2024). Land Degradation Neutrality, or LDN in short, is a state whereby the amount and quality of land resources necessary to support ecosystem functions and services and enhance food security remains stable or increases within specified temporal and spatial scales and ecosystems. It focuses on conserving, sustainably managing, and restoring land in the context of land use planning and aims at counterbalancing the expected loss of productive land with the recovery of degraded areas. UNCCD, URL: https://www.unccd.int/actions/achieving-land-degradation-neutrality. Accessed on 3 October 2024. Kazakhstan’s promise to undertake major research on soil quality has, to date, not yielded any visible results). Soil salinization, drought and uneven use of pastures are some of the issues this policy seeks to address. The government intends to implement an array of measures, such as the inclusion of fallow and abandoned lands in their assessments, the creation of woody and shrub plantations to protect the land from water and wind erosion, investment in irrigation infrastructure, and commissioning soil quality research on 30 million hectares of agricultural land. Much of the policy emphasis is on carbon sequestration, a current flagship issue of the UN Climate Change Convention. Just as soil salinity is viewed and communicated through a water-centric lens in the case of the Syr Darya Delta, in climate policy, soil salinity is currently overshadowed by the issue of carbon sequestration.

At this level of abstraction, and when salinization—so important to farmers—is just one minor factor among many, what options exist to stimulate productive social learning among the array of stakeholders involved? How could the successfully applied experiential knowledge of farmers be integrated with other bodies of knowledge—or at least be considered on an equal footing? The first steps are to a) highlight the importance of the salinization issue and b) document vernacular knowledge-in-practice of agriculturalists as a valid alternative framework for working with saline soils—as is offered in this article.

There are many attempts to integrate traditional ecological or vernacular knowledge into ‘normal’ environmental science. For the Kazakhstani context, a different strategy is more promising. Attempting a smooth integration of vernacular knowledge within scientific frameworks can easily result simply in its subsumption into more powerful paradigms and voices. One alternative possibility is to make use of the North American Indigenous concept of ‘two-eyed seeing’ [57]. Two-eyed seeing means holding two forms of knowledge in mind when considering a problem, for example, the vernacular and the scientific understanding of salinization. Rather like farmers often do themselves, scientists and policymakers could pair several ways of understanding the problem and seek means to creatively relate them to each other to put these understandings to work.

Two concrete examples follow that demonstrate situated opportunities for this kind of social learning. The first is an unusual event that the authors experienced first-hand: a moment of refuting authoritative forms of knowledge. The second is a suggestion drawing on Central Asian life-worlds relevant to farmers and government officials alike. Both examples are proposed for further testing.

5.1. Observed Example: Vernacular Knowledge Sharing with Water and Agricultural Policymakers

In 2018, the authors hosted a workshop for water policymakers. The setting was unconventional since our hosts were the local farming households of a delta village. The content was also unconventional for Kazakhstan. Rather than demonstrating technical expertise, e.g., on drip irrigation, participants went out to learn methods such as reed-harvesting from locals. The workshop organizing team had tried very hard to avoid framing the visit as a moment for outside experts to teach farmers how to do things better. That is not to say that scientific expertise and policy information would not be useful. Rather, the reason for de-emphasizing this direction of knowledge sharing was simply that it has often been conducted in a very rough-shod manner in the region and that opportunities for the inverse direction of knowledge exchange are extremely scarce.

Despite the stated goals of the workshop, one group of participants insisted on drawing up recommendations for the farming community. This insistence proved unexpectedly useful for the farmers, but not in the way imagined by visiting policymakers. After presenting their recommendations and discussing the advantage of particular government subsidies, workshop participants were faced with their village hosts’ responses. The local farmers made clear that they knew of these government subsidies, and they carefully explained why the subsidies and marketing strategies recommended by development agencies did not work for them.

Considering the strength of authority and deference patterns towards policymakers in the region, this workshop moment provided a highly unusual opportunity for farmers to share their perspectives. It is very unlikely that they would have been able to voice these objections and counter-positions with anything like such frankness in a government office. This kind of rare and precious communicative moment was enabled by the farmers’ role as authoritative hosts amid their own house guests (the policymakers). This fortuitous moment could only happen at the juncture of enacting (a) established Qazaqstani host–guest relations and (b) local expert knowledge.

5.2. Extrapolating from the Case Study: Using Cultural Repertoires for Social Learning

While the workshop design that the authors enacted by no means guarantees such social learning moments, it does open gaps for going beyond conventional modes of hierarchical (knowledge) relations. There are myriad ways in which one might scaffold such opportunities, whether drawing on widely recognized Soviet models of education in the region, or other cultural repertoires that can intersect in recognizable ways with local or global science and policy communities.

A second model is the Central Asian apprenticeship to craftspeople. The relationship between a master (usta) and disciple (shakirt) holds widespread resonance. It applies equally to relatively prestigious crafts, such as pottery [58,59], with long guild pedigrees in urban Central Asia, as well as more rural pursuits, such as building yurts. An apprenticeship is also recognized in more female domains of expertise, such as making patterned felt carpets [60], as well as the spheres of spiritual and religious learning.

The idea of an apprenticeship travels well across Central Asian sections of society, is recognizable globally, and confers a measure of value and prestige to ‘masters’ and the learning process. The title of ‘usta’ inspires a measure of respect and recognition, something that local farmers who are already lending their expertise on salt to subsistence and rice production in the delta, could benefit from. A program of awarding recognition and pairing learner–policymakers or learner–scientists and master–farmers could go a long way toward enabling the kind of pairing of environmental knowledge envisioned above. For example, adding the white/black salt perspective could shift policies centered on expanding water supply to addressing the practice of leaching, which contributes to both water scarcity and soil deterioration. Conversely, since farmers are already experienced in a limited way in phytoremediation (recognizing wild, salt-resistant plants that improve soil, growing salt-resistant crops), newer scientific phytoremediation methods, such as the introduction of particular shrubs (see Section 3.1), would likely be appreciated in this population.

Together, these modes of social learning include diverse elements, such as Kazakhstani social norms of hosting as well as apprenticeship practices. The spaces that are chosen to foster social learning may significantly affect outcomes, as demonstrated by the example of the unconventional social context for the workshop described above. The two suggestions on hosting and crafting relations are not intended as the all-out solution for social learning on soil degradation and water scarcity in the region. Rather, they are proposed as promising ideas that have traction with our interlocutors and thus should be tested more broadly and in other settings.

6. Conclusions

This article illustrates the importance of framing sustainability-related issues by analyzing dimensions of land deterioration that are doubly obscured: the under-represented issue of salinization and vernacular knowledge on salinization. The case of soil salinization in the Syr Darya Delta and Aral Sea demonstrates how vernacular and scientific knowledge about the same issue (e.g., soil salinity) may exist in parallel without much interaction and cross-pollination.

These findings show, first, that the water-supply-centric and Aral-Sea-centric policies and the focus on carbon-sequestration in Kazakhstan’s LDN targets place less emphasis on soil salinization, which is of highest concern to the local communities. Second, this article introduces new data on how local farming communities understand and deal with salinization. The scientific novelty of the results lies in the documentation of local agricultural knowledge. There is also an extrapolation of how this knowledge could be harnessed towards solving salinization issues.

Highlighting these valid local concerns could enhance scientific authority on salinization and, for example, generate more funding and programming attention to this major, yet neglected, issue. Thus, pairing forms of knowledge may contribute to future target setting in the context of national, regional or global sustainability goals. Moreover, addressing farmers’ most immediate concerns with salinization, rather than the shrinking Aral Sea, could also be a much stronger motivational argument for enrolling farming populations in sustainability initiatives, such as LDN targets. This kind of consideration and process is surely a crucial element of social learning, which includes reframing and alternative acts of communication, such as giving more voice to local participants in a workshop with government policymakers.

Drawing on findings in the literature on social learning and transformative knowledge, it seems evident that pairing these two bodies of knowledge, as opposed to integrating one into another, can create grounds for social learning. Moreover, such pairing of several ways of understanding the problem can help in addressing pre-existing power relations and issues of data/knowledge sovereignty. Providing a nuanced understanding of how these different stakeholders in Kazakhstan articulate and navigate ecological challenges enables us to develop suggestions for locally realizable modes of social learning, connecting vernacular and formal knowledge systems on salinization. Further research is needed on how to operationalize social learning opportunities that require reducing social distance and balancing out social hierarchies. These elements are both locally specific, as well as potentially translatable into other settings in international development and science policy. These findings put forward new research avenues on retooling scientific and policymaking forms of knowledge production towards more citizen-centric methods that can stimulate sustainability action.