17-year-old Aysulu walks alongside the dried riverbed of the Amu Darya, close to her dwelling in Nukus, Uzbekistan.
Claire Harbage/NPR
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Claire Harbage/NPR
17-year-old Aysulu walks alongside the dried riverbed of the Amu Darya, close to her dwelling in Nukus, Uzbekistan.
Claire Harbage/NPR
In Central Asia, the world’s youngest desert occupies a basin that after held an enormous saline lake. The Aral Sea.
Up till the Sixties, the ocean spanned greater than 26 thousand sq. miles throughout two nations. It supported thriving fishing communities alongside its shores. However then, within the identify of progress and growth, a lot of the river water that fed the ocean was diverted for agriculture. Now the Aral Sea has all however disappeared, shrunk to about tenth of its unique measurement. The UN Surroundings Programme has known as the Aral Sea’s destruction quote “one of the most staggering disasters of the 20th century.”
On this episode of The Sunday Story, Above The Fray Fellow Valerie Kipnis takes us to the Aral Sea to attempt to perceive what went improper and whether or not something may be executed to avoid wasting the little water that is left.
This episode was produced by Justine Yan and edited by Jenny Schmidt. It was engineered by Gilly Moon.
We would love to listen to from you. Ship us an electronic mail at TheSundayStory@npr.org.
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