CHAPTER 20 WHOSE DISASTER IS IT ANYWAY: ROMANCING THE WORLD HERITAGE STATUS IN UZBEKISTAN Flavia Alaya ABSTRACT Over the past two decades, four Uzbek historic cities and four ‘‘intangible cultural heritage’’ traditions have been raised to the World Heritage List. Yet none of these is in Karakalpakstan, and a painful disconnect appears between the zeal to protect the cultures and monuments of southern Uzbekistan and inaction in identifying and addressing the huge cultural as well as environmental losses most directly associated with the death of the Aral Sea. In this chapter, a U.S.-based cultural historian and conser- vation-preservation practitioner offers impressions and cultural and spatial material analysis of some of the historic places included on a recent study team tour of Uzbekistan to explore the impacts of the Aral Sea disaster. It is apparent that three-term president Islam Karimov has made culture a linchpin of his program of Uzbek growth and security, cultivated a higher and higher profile for his regime within UNESCO, and 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 Disaster by Design: The Aral Sea and its Lessons for Sustainability Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Volume 20, 311–329 Copyright r 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0196-1152/doi:10.1108/S0196-1152(2012)0000020031 311