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UN: Shrinking Aral Sea underscores need for urgent action on environment

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News release: “Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday witnessed one of the world’s worst environmental disasters as he flew over the shrinking Aral Sea – a sight which he said underscores the need for collective action to save the planet’s resources. The Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth largest lake, has in recent decades shrunk in size by more than 70 per cent after tributary rivers were diverted for irrigation projects. The salinity of the region’s soil has soared and the area is also heavily polluted.

  • It was shocking,” Mr. Ban told reporters in Nukus after a helicopter tour of the area with Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan, the latest stop on his visit to Central Asia. “It is clearly one of the worst environmental disasters of the world. It really left with me a profound impression, one of sadness that such a mighty sea has disappeared,” he stated. The Secretary-General said that, standing on the shores of a vanished sea, he could not see anything except a “cemetery of ships marooned in the sand.” As a result of the disaster, people are getting sick, the land is poisoned, and storms blow dust and salt as far as the North Pole.”
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