Aral Sea: Central Asia's biggest environmental disaster

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan – The meeting held in Tajikistan by the Executive Committee International Fund of Saving the Aral Sea brought up the biggest environmental disaster of Central Asia, which occurred with the drying up of the lake, on the agenda again.

Studies have shown that Aral, once the world's fourth-largest lake, is just a ninth of its former size 60 years ago and only a third as deep, with its total volume a 15th of the level in the 1960s.

Then, the Aral Sea covered 68,000 square kilometers (about 26,255 square miles) and housed 1,083 cubic km (about 260 cubic mi) of water. It was 426 km (about 265 mi) long, 284 km wide, and 68 meters (223 feet) at its deepest point.

In recent years, the lake's surface area has shrunk to just 8,000 square km, its water volume to 75 cubic km, and its deepest point to 20 m, with the fresh-water sea bifurcated due to its falling level.

This coincided with a vast expansion of irrigated agricultural land in the region by the Soviet Union from 4.5 million hectares (11.1 million acres) to 7 million hectares for cotton cultivation.

Between 1960 and 1990, this increased water demand led to the decline in the Aral Sea's main tributaries, the Seyhun (Syr Darya) and Ceyhun (Amu Darya) Rivers.

Former seabed becomes desert

Located between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the Aralkum Desert was left in the wake of the sea's retreat of up to 170 km from its old shores by 2020.

Described as the "youngest desert in the world," the desert formed across 60,000 square km where the water had receded.

To make matters worse, approximately 100 million tons of salty dust dragged away from the desert by wind has left the region in the face of major environmental disaster.

These dusts spread across Central Asia, with