The Aral Sea Story — How Humanity Uses and Misuses Water
The Aral Sea is just one example of water shortage and humanity’s role in wasting this prime commodity.
The Aral Sea Story
“Next on the menu, food from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and water from the Aral Sea, and souvenir T-shirts for everyone,” Galacti says, as the structure of the Water Cycle Café expands to accommodate the ancient lake. The problem is, the Aral Sea is shrinking, its water pumped out of the Water Cycle Café into cotton fields worked by Uzbekistan farmers.
One of less than twenty existing ancient lakes in the world, the Aral Sea borders Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Still, its impact is significant: Like the drying up of Lake Chad, once one of the largest lakes in the world, straddling Niger, Chad, and Sudan, the shrinking of the Aral Sea has complicated other problems of the region.
During the past 60 years, the Aral Sea has diminished to one-fifth of its historic size and former volume. The mighty sea in our Water Cycle Café fractures into three smaller bodies of water totaling 13,000 square kilometers — ponds compared to the Aral Sea’s 64,500 square kilometers in 1957. Kazakhstan has turned the Northern Aral Sea around and whereas its shoreline was 100 kilometers from the port…
