The North Aral Sea in 2005 (left) and 2018 (right) – credit: NASA

Efforts to restore the Aral Sea have seen Kazakhstan’s government increase the water volume in the northern portion by 42% in the last two years.

The volume is now determined to be 6.4 cubic miles, or approximately 30% more voluminous than Crater Lake in Oregon.

Furthermore, the salinity in the northern Aral Sea has declined four-fold, and annual fish catches have risen to top 8,000 tons. In 2024, Kazakhstan directed approximately 2.6 billion cubic meters of water—the equivalent of Scotland’s famous Loch Lomond—into the northern portion, a dramatic increase compared to 816 million cubic meters in 2022.

The figures are a stunning effort by a middle-income country that’s almost single-handedly reversing what is widely considered to be the world’s worst man-made environmental disaster.

Once the world’s 4th-largest lake straddling the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the shrinking and division of the Aral Sea is sometimes wrongly attributed to climate change.

In 1967 the Soviet Union began diverting water flows into the lake to irrigate cotton fields in these countries and Turkmenistan. Fed by the mighty Syr Darya and Amu Darya, rivers known by the Classical Greeks as the Jaxartes and Oxus, their diversion led the sea to empty, split into a northern and southern half, and shrink so dramatically that it desertified most of the land in the region.

The southern portion split into two separate arms, the vast majority of which lie within the territory of Uzbekistan, but the northern portion in Kazakhstan is looking a little more like a sea again.

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“These figures are the result of systematic work over the past two years. We [Kazakhstan] have reached a mutual understanding with neighboring countries on the conservation and fair distribution of water resources in transboundary rivers,” said Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Nurzhan Nurzhigitov during a meeting with residents of the Aral district.

As often as possible, the ministry is emptying the fullest possible force of the Syr Darya’s waters into the sea when they aren’t being diverted for modern uses as the river also flows through Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan who have rights to use its water as well.

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The minister emphasized that the project’s ultimate goal is to improve the region’s ecology, boost fisheries and tourism, and enhance the quality of life for local communities.

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