Can the Aral Sea recover? Is the Caspian Sea climate change's next victim?
A former resident of Moynaq, in the autonomous region of Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan, remembers a time when the Aral Sea meant bustling fishing villages and days spent by the sea’s shore. “I was five or six the last time I saw ships in the sea when we went swimming,” says Marat Allakuatov. The ships are long gone, like much of the lake. Soviet mismanagement This is largely down to years of Soviet-era mismanagement on a truly monumental scale. In 1960, the USSR took the decision to use the vast, arid plains of the region surrounding the Aral Sea for cotton farming, a water-heavy crop. La...
Source: emerging-europe.com