Aral Sea Disaster

A rusted, beached ship and a second wreck behind it, stranded on dry scrubland beside a sandy track. — Gilad Rom, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Soviet-era irrigation projects that diverted the rivers feeding the Aral Sea treated the diversion as a neutral act for cotton production, causing one of the world's worst environmental disasters and devastating local fishing communities.

The Soviet-era design and implementation of massive irrigation projects that diverted the rivers feeding the Aral Sea is a stark case. The state planners [=] viewed the diversion as a neutral act in service of a larger goal—cotton production. They were indifferent to the scale of the impact on the Aral Sea ecosystem and the local fishing communities whose livelihoods depended on it. The result was one of the world's worst environmental disasters, where the fishing industry was destroyed and local populations suffered severe health and economic consequences [-].