The Aral Sea straddles Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and for thousands of years was fed by two major rivers, the Amu Darya and ...

MUYNAK, UZBEKISTAN — Weddings, school dances, music festivals — in small pockets along the Aral Sea, there are signs of life. The Aral has nearly disappeared, and the large communities it once ...

Tastubek is a small fishing village located on the coast of the Aral Sea. When the waters of the sea receded due to Soviet-era irrigation projects, life here effectively stopped. After the completion ...

Most of this inland sea is a dry lakebed the size of Ireland, and it has already released 748 million metric tons of CO2. But ...

There has been plenty of negative news of late about the damage done by global warming in Kazakhstan, but the Ministry of Water Resources recently had a positive tidbit to announce: the Northern Aral ...

Once one of the worlds largest inland lakes, Asia's Aral Sea has evaporated into desert, dried by Soviet era irrigation plans. One village in Kazakhstan sits on the shrinking shores of the Aral Sea.

Where water once stood is now an arid, dry, open landscape in western Kazakhstan punctuated with low-lying shrubs. Only when you finally reach the Little Aral Sea, known as Kishi Aral, can you feel ...

The Aral Sea’s story demonstrates how human actions can profoundly alter natural systems, yet it also shows that determined cooperation can begin to repair environmental damage that once seemed ...

This post is part of Global Voices’ May 2026 Spotlight series, “Global crisis, local solutions.” This series will offer stories of resistance and successful climate action, insight into how ...

Aral District, Kazakhstan • When Akshabak Batimova was growing up, her father left their village in western Kazakhstan each morning to fish in the Aral Sea — until recently, one of the world’s largest ...

MUYNAK, Uzbekistan (AP) — Toxic dust storms, anti-government protests, the fall of the Soviet Union — for generations, none of it has deterred Nafisa Bayniyazova and her family from making a living ...

For decades the shrinking Aral Sea has been the poster child for environmental catastrophe. Behind images of rusty fishing boat shells sitting awkwardly among the sand dunes lies a story of human ...