Aral Sea Environmental Disaster and Human Catastrophe

The drying up of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan is one of our most shocking environmental disasters. U.N Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called it 'a shocking disaster' and has made an urgent appeal to the leaders of the Central Asian area to pay urgent attention to the problem and step up efforts to solve it.

The Aral Sea was once the world's fourth largest lake, but it has shrunk by 90% - all this the shocking result of  the heavy-handed agricultural policies of the old Soviet Union. A project intended to boost cotton production in the arid regions of Uzbekistan was responsible for diverting rivers away from their natural destination in the Aral Sea. The results of these short-sighted policies have been catastrophic for the environment and for the people living there.