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 ...

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 ...

The Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth-largest lake, continues to show signs of geological changes long after its environmental collapse. The geological research conducted recently shows that the dried ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

MUYNAK, Uzbekistan (AP) — Brushing the dust from his hat and lying on the floor inside his home, Ali Shadilov recalls how he and other fishermen used to laugh at town elders who warned that the ...

Where water once stood is now an arid, dry, open landscape in western Kazakhstan punctuated with low-lying shrubs. Only when you finally reach the Little Aral Sea, known as Kishi Aral, can you feel ...

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 ...