Kazakhstan indebted to save the dead sea

The Kazakhstan government has secured a multi-million dollar loan from the World Bank to save the Aral Sea - the worst man-made environmental disaster in history. The money will be used to promote the second phase of the project to save the northern part of the inland sea.

The Aral Sea disaster is considered to be the largest artificial ecological disaster on the planet, starting from the Soviet era, when water from rivers was fed to cotton fields in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, instead for pouring into the Aral Sea.

The fisherman next to the boat ran aground in Aral.(Photo: BBC)

Lack of water, the sea began to die slowly. The desert spreads, climate change destroys the economy and ecosystem, kills species and forces thousands of people to migrate.

In the mid-1990s, only a quarter of the Aral Sea remained, but recently, thanks to the World Bank's $ 68 million loan, the Kazakhstan government built a giant dam to separate the two parts forever. The relative relative of this sea: the northern part of the country is relatively deep and the southern region has been nearly inert to the bottom.

This dam does not solve the problem completely. On the Uzbek coast, the southern part of the sea is still running out, but on Kazakhstan, officials said 40% of the sea has recovered. Now, with a new loan of $ 126 million, they plan to build a second dam in hopes of bringing water back to the deserted port of Heralsk.

The local community has felt this change. Fishermen have returned to their boats, clouds and rain have appeared and many people say the future is no longer hopeless.

T. An