Synopsis

Once the world’s fourth-largest inland body of water but now a byword for ecological calamity, the Aral Sea has been retreating over the last half-century after rivers that fed it were diverted for Soviet cotton irrigation projects. Around two decades ago, it split into the Small Aral Sea in the north, located in Kazakhstan, and the Large Aral Sea, shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Today it is covers half of its original area of 66,000 square kilometres (25,500 square miles) and the volume of water has been reduced to a quarter, said the Foundation, an organisation that seeks “to enable the equitable development and sustainable management of the world’s water resources“.
The dessication has changed the climate conditions of the region and the quality of the water that remains and led to chronic illness, it said.