Desiccation of the Aral Sea

"The lake was used for fishing and we could see sailing and fishing boats. Now, we still can see them, but they are stuck in the sands." —Aksoltan Ataeva, Turkmenistan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations The Aral Sea was once the world's fourth largest lake, which supplied a booming fish industry and critical water source to local settlements in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The Soviet Union began diverting large amounts of water for irrigation in the 1930s, as part of its efforts to transform the region into a cotton exporter. By the 1960s, the lake began to rapidly and steadily shrink. Today it covers around 10% of its historic size. Its disappearance is considered a total ecosystem collapse, and has been called "one of the planet's worst environmental disasters" by the United Nations.