As per the statement of the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Aral Sea is a perfect example of the most shocking disasters and urged Central Asian leaders to step up efforts to solve the problem. Aral Sea was one of the world’s fourth-largest lake but now it has shrunk by 90 percent since the rivers that feed it were largely diverted in a Soviet project to boost cotton production in the arid region.
The impact of the shrunken sea has badly affected the fishing economy and left fishing trawlers stranded in sandy wastelands, leaning over as if they dropped from the air. The sea’s evaporation has left layers of highly salted sand, which winds can carry as far away as Scandinavia and Japan, and which plague local people with health troubles.
UN Secretary-General has done sky survey of the sea saying that on the pier, he wasn’t seeing anything, he could see only a graveyard of ships. He told that it is clearly one of the worst disasters, environmental disasters of the world. The Aral Sea catastrophe is one of Ban’s top concerns on his six-day trip through the region and he is calling on the countries’ leaders to set aside rivalries to cooperate on repairing some of the damage.
Ban urged all the leaders to sit down together and try to find the solutions,” he said, promising United Nations support. However, cooperation is hampered by disagreements over who has rights to scarce water and how it should be used.
