THE ARAL SEA

Uzbekistan, along with Liechtenstein, is one of only two double landlocked countries (that is, a landlocked country surrounded by other landlocked countries).

The Aral Sea – situated between the southern part of Kazakhstan and northern Uzbekistan – used to provide the country with fresh water and supported a fishing industry. Today however, the lake is a tenth of its former size. Soviet policies of the 1960s deliberately deprived the Aral Sea of its two main sources of water with the aim of diverting these to the desert to promote agriculture, especially cotton. What was once the fourth-largest lake on earth was decimated. Today, with the Aral Sea largely dried up, fisheries and the communities once dependent on them have collapsed. The water is polluted with fertiliser and pesticides, while dust blowing from the exposed lakebed, contaminated with agricultural chemicals, is a public health hazard. A rescue project in Kazakhstan has seen some success. Funded by the World Bank, the country constructed a 12km-long dyke across the channel that connects the North Aral Sea to the south, and saw a 3.3 metre increase in water level. The story is very different in Uzbekistan. The World Bank has worked on projects to restore the South Aral Sea but it has had far less success, partly because of the county’s greater reliance on water for cotton production.