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Environment: The Aral Sea has become a desert in 60 years
Environment: The Aral Sea has become a desert in 60 years
(FRANCE 2)
A symbol of the threat weighing on many seas, the Aral Sea, located between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, has almost dried up in sixty years. A worrying phenomenon.
You have to imagine that the sea was there. More than ten meters of water covered the vast expanses of the Aral Sea, between Kazakhstan to the north and Uzbekistan to the south. In a former small port town, an 85-year-old former fisherman remembers the Aral Sea: “There is not a place I have not been on this sea”he assures, with photos to support his claim.
In the 1950s, fishing nets in the Aral Sea were hauling up 40,000 tons of fish in one season. The Aral Sea is fed by only two rivers: on the Uzbek side, water comes from the Pamir glaciers. The Amu Darya meanders throughout Central Asia before reaching the Aral Sea.
Since the 1960s, these waters have been diverted by the Soviets to supply cotton cultivation. Even today, all economic growth depends on this water. In sixty years, the Aral Sea has lost 90% of its volume.