The Shrinking Aral Sea – World’s Worst Environmental Disasters
The Aral Sea formed about 5.5 million years ago in the area of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,
and Central Asia. Formerly one of the four largest lakes in the world with an area of 26,300
square miles, the Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking since the 1960′s.
The shrinking of the Aral Sea has been called “one of the planet’s worst environmental disasters”.
It devastated the area, the region’s once prosperous fishing industry was destroyed, unemployment and economic hardship followed.
The Aral Sea region is also heavily polluted, and as a consequence there were serious public health problems.
It all started in the early 1960s, when the Soviet government decided the two rivers that fed the Aral Sea,
the Amu Darya in the south and the Syr Darya in the east, would be diverted to irrigate the desert,
in an attempt to grow rice, melons, cereals, and cotton.
