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June 13, 2012

"Help us to find a solution for the Aral Sea problem."

https://p.dw.com/p/15CoZ
This May 31, 2009 photo shows horses walking in the shallows of the Aral Sea some 100 kilometers from Aralsk, Kazakhstan. The Aral, the world's fourth-largest freshwater sea, once covered an area the size of Ireland. But then it became part of the Soviet Union. With their passion for planned economics and giant, nature-reversing projects, the communists diverted the rivers that fed the landlocked sea and used them to irrigate vast cotton fields. The result: The Aral shrank by 90 percent to a string of isolated stretches of water.
Image: Sergey Ponomarev/AP/dapd

"I'm from Uzbekistan. One of the ecological disasters of the 20th century was the drying of the Aral Sea. In the first half of the 20th century it was the fourth largest sea in the world. Now it has lost almost two-thirds of its water and is still continuing to dry. I would ask world leaders to send more scientists here to help us to find a solution for the Aral Sea problem."

Nodir Karimov, Uzbekistan

Editor: Helen Whittle

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