The Aral Sea Basin: Legal and institutional aspects of governance

Once the world's fourch-largest inland body of water, the Aral Sea, has shriveled to occupy half its former area and to a third of its volume. The Aral Sea fell victim to a drive led by Soviet planners, who decided in the 1960s ta make their country self-sufficient in cotton and ta provide employment for a rapidly growing population. Irrigation water was thus divetted from the Amu Darya and from the Syr Darya rivers flowing into the inland sea. This diversion of water accentuated the shriveling of the sea by natural processes. As a resulr, besicles the disappearance of the water itself, disasrer condirions also spread ta large portions of rhe ter-rirories upsrream of the Aral Sea: productive wetlands in the delras have dried up; salt dust from the bed of the drying sea and chemicals from fertilizers used in cotton fields have endangered the health of millions of people living in the region; in addition, salinity in the rivers has risen to very high levels, entailing serious threats ta sail productivity. President Mikhail Gorbachev's ascension ta power in 1985 brough