Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Aral Sea 2014: Can we still hope for it's resurrection?






Remember during historical times how Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world? When it was giving livelihoods to millions of Turkic to Russian speaking peoples for it's rich fisheries and somehow, a wildlife preservation? When the Syr Darya and Amu Darya flows continuously?

Not anymore. Since Stalin's time, the Soviet government decided to divert the two rivers for the irrigation of cotton and other agricultural products, which simply spells DOOM to those who lived around the sea. As time goes on and passes by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the sea staggered and goes down like the world doesn't knew about it since it's thousand years history. What could we do to restore the sea's former boundaries?

Only the Kazakh part of the Aral sea tries that, thanks to the modernization efforts of Kazakhstan and the need for the former port city of Aral'sk could be meters away if successfully continued to major phases. The Southern part completely dried out because of Islam Karimov's policy of finding oil in the dried up basin, which contributes to hot summers and cold winters in the region as whole.

I grew up seeing it on books. Now, i see it's continuous death. Can we stop it before it's too late?

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