ANatureIndependent states
Aral Sea and Moynaq
Once one of the world's largest lakes, the Aral has been drying since the 1960s; Moynaq's "ship graveyard" is the symbol of this disaster.
The Aral Sea lay between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan's Republic of Karakalpakstan and, at 68,000 km², was one of the world's largest lakes. Its name means "sea of islands" in Turkic, after its more than a thousand islands.
In the 1960s the Soviet authorities diverted the Amu Darya and Syr Darya into canals to irrigate cotton. The sea shrank fast and by 2007 had largely become desert; fishing collapsed and salty dust harmed people's health across the region.
In the former port of Moynaq rusting ships now sit on the sand, a "ship graveyard" that shows the scale of the disaster. Uzbekistan is planting forests on the dry seabed to hold back sandstorms.
Sources
Updated: October 3, 2026