After 5m years the ancient Aral sea is now in it's death throes
Once the world's fourth largest lake, the mighty Aral Sea is now in it's death throws. Starved of it's lifeblood of the waters of the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya rivers, the sea has been shrinking for the last 40 years.
From the 1930s, the former Soviet Union started building large scale diversion canals to irrigate vast cotton fields in a grand plan to make cotton a great export earner. This was achieved, and even today Uzbekistan is still a large exporter of cotton. But the cost in ecological and human terms have been astronomical.
[The Aral Sea is one of less than 20 ancient lakes in the world, and is estimated to be more than 5 million years old.]
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