The Aral Sea disaster began in the 1960s, with the introduction of inadequate irrigation systems to support increased agriculture in the region during the Soviet era. Over time, ageing and ...

"For the first time in modern history, the eastern basin of the South Aral Sea has completely dried." That's the word from NASA, which has released images showing the progressive decline of the water ...

Afghanistan is rapidly constructing the Qosh Tepa Canal, a waterway meant to help irrigate more than 500,000 hectares of its arid northern regions, for which it will redirect 20–30% of the Amu Darya ...

The Aral Sea has been dying a long, slow death. This summer, another nail was driven into its coffin. Starting in the 1950s, when Soviet authorities began programs that diverted water from its ...

Entering the Anthropocene, humans are confronted with a grim yet peculiar state of increasing natural landscapes inching closer to extinction. Notably, the Aral Sea retains a mere 10% of its original ...

Akshabak Batimova, 67, stands by the now mostly dried-up bay along the former port in Aral, Kazakhstan. After the Aral Sea dried up, it devastated the livelihood of locals like Batimova who worked as ...

Average temperatures in the Aral basin have increased by around 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit since 1968. And the shrinking of the Aral Sea itself has affected the climate; as the water disappeared, the air ...

MUYNAK, Uzbekistan (AP) — Toxic dust storms, anti-government protests, the fall of the Soviet Union — for generations, none of it has deterred Nafisa Bayniyazova and her family from making a living ...

Multiple international actors have become involved in helping Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan alleviate the devastating consequences of one of the worst human-made environmental disasters across the Central ...

MOYNAK, Uzbekistan (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited the shrinking Aral Sea on Sunday and urged regional cooperation to tackle what environmentalists describe as one of the worst ...

ARAL DISTRICT, Kazakhstan — When Akshabak Batimova was growing up, her father left their village in western Kazakhstan each morning to fish in the Aral Sea — until recently, one of the world’s largest ...