What is being done to fix the Aral Sea disaster?

What is being done to fix the Aral Sea disaster?

The North Aral Sea is recovering thanks to the $86 million Syr Darya Control and Northern Aral Sea project, funded by the Kazakh government and the World Bank. The project focused on dike repairs and construction of a massive new dam, Kokaral, splitting the North and South Aral Sea.

What has the World Bank done to help replenish the Aral Sea?

Under the Northern Aral Sea project, the World Bank has helped build the eight-mile Kok-Aral Dam, completed in August 2005, which separates the two parts of the Sea.

What caused the Aral Sea disaster?

The ecosystem of the Aral Sea was destroyed mainly as a result of the increased salinity as well as the testing of weapons and other fertilizer run offs. The salinity of the water in the Aral sea was around 376 g/l by 1990 compared to the 35 g/l salinity of ordinary seawater.

How is the Aral Sea being managed?

By 2005 the World Bank and the government of Kazakhstan had designed and built a permanent eight-mile (13-kilometer) dam intended to raise the North Aral by about 13 feet (four meters), several feet shy of the level needed to refill Aralsk’s harbor, but deep enough to drop salinity and allow native fish to repopulate …

Who is responsible for the Aral Sea disaster?

By establishing a program to promote agriculture and especially that of cotton, Soviet government led by Khrouchtchev in the 1950s deliberately deprived the Aral Sea of its two main sources of water income, which almost immediately led to less water arriving to the sea.

How are people saving the Aral Sea?

Dam Saves the Northern Aral Sea in Kazakhstan To increase the flow from the Syr Darya, existing levees were strengthened, banks were straightened and old Soviet bottlenecks were removed. The plans also called for fish hatcheries to be restocked ad landbound fishing boats to be put into service again.

What can farmers living around the Aral Sea do to help repair the environmental degradation of the sea itself?

Q. What changes will farmers need to make to help repair the environmental degradation in the Aral Sea region? They will need to increase their use of fertilizers. They will need to plant crops that require less water.

Can we bring back the Aral Sea?

This included constructing a 12km-long (7.5 mile) dyke across the narrow channel that connects the North Aral Sea to its neighbour to the south, with the aim of reducing the amount of water spilling out into the South Aral Sea.

What has been done to save the Aral Sea?

In a last-ditch effort to save some of the lake, Kazakhstan built a dam between the northern and southern parts of the Aral Sea. The Kok-Aral dike and dam, finished in 2005, separates the two water bodies and prevents flow out of the North Aral into the lower-elevation South Aral.

How did the shrinking of the Aral Sea affect Kazakhstan?

The shrinking of the Aral Sea (once the world’s largest inland lake, with a total area of about 64,490 square kilometers in 1960) upset the ecological balance, causing environmental degradation – which in turn negatively affected important parts of the economic system not only in Kazakhstan, but also in Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

Can Kazakhstan’s Aral fish habitat recover?

But with help from the Kazakh government, the World Bank, and scientists, the northern part of the Aral has started to make a recovery. There are fish in the water again, and for the past four years, fishermen have gathered at this spot to celebrate.

What happened to the North Aral?

After the Soviet Union collapsed and Kazakhstan became independent in 1991, glimmers of hope appeared for the North Aral’s recovery. The mayor of the town of Aralsk followed scientists’ advice and built a makeshift dam, isolating it from the South Aral and retaining the entirety of the Syr Darya’s meager discharge.