The Aral Sea – A human-made disaster
The Aral Sea, a mammoth body of water which is located on the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, former parts of the Soviet Union and now the Commonwealth of Independent States, was once the fourth largest sea in the entire planet. The two major rivers that feed it are Amudarya and Syrdarya (darya meaning river). But the Aral Sea has been shrinking for over four decades. Now, it is only the eleventh largest sea on our planet. This disaster, like many others, is caused by man, but on a much larger scale.
It began when the U.S.S.R, determined to conquer the mountainous, desert terrain around the Aral Sea, came up an ingenious scheme. Moscow ordered water to be diverted from Amudarya and Syrdarya in large amounts to irrigate the cotton fields in the Central Asian desert. The plan worked. Where nothing had ever grown, now grew millions of tons of ‘white gold’. The economy was boosted and nature had been tamed yet again. However, this excessive use of water meant that by the time the water reached the Aral Sea, it was reduced to barely a trickle of water, polluted by harmful chemicals. Over the next years, this resulted in the shrinking of the Aral Sea. Recently, the sea began vanishing faster than ever expected.
