*NEWS*KAZAKHS GET LOAN TO SAVE ARAL SEA

[Anonymous]

Kazakhs get loan to save Aral Sea

The Kazakhstan government has secured a multi-million dollar loan from the World Bank to help save the Aral Sea.

The money will be used to implement the second stage of a project aimed at saving the northern part of the sea.

The United Nations has said the disappearance of the Aral is the worst man-made environmental disaster.

But this new project could mean that at least part of the Aral – once
the world’s fourth largest inland body of water – will be saved.

It is an ambitious project aimed at reversing one of the world’s worst environmental disasters.

As a result, the sea that many predicted could never return is already filling the desert.

The story of the Aral dates back to the 1970s, when the Soviet
government diverted two main rivers feeding the Aral to irrigate cotton
fields in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

Starved of water, the sea began to shrink.

The desert spread, changing the climate, destroying the economy and the
ecosystem, eradicating species and forcing thousands of people to leave
the area.

By the 1990s only a quarter of the Aral Sea was left,
but recently using a $68m loan from the World Bank, the Kazakh
government built a dam that split the sea into two parts.

It did not solve the problem entirely. On the Uzbek
side of the border, the southern part of the sea is still shrinking,
but here in Kazakhstan officials say 40% of the sea has already
returned.

Now using the new $126m loan from the World Bank, they
plan to build a second dam which they hope will bring the water back to
the deserted port of Heralsk.

Communities in the area are already feeling the impact.
The fishermen are back in their boats, the clouds and the rain have
returned and many across this impoverished region say the future no
longer looks hopeless.

[Author]

April 9, 2007 at 12:07 PM