Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Turkmenistan to plant huge forest in Aral Sea region

Terra Daily via AFP: Turkmenistan is allocating tens of millions of dollars to plant trees in a region neighbouring the stricken Aral Sea, state newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan said Tuesday.

"A project has been developed to target environmental problems in the Aral Sea zone, which entails planting greenery over 20,000 hectares on the eastern bank of the Sarygamysh lake," the newspaper said.

The Sarygamysh lake in northern Turkmenistan lies several hundred kilometres to the south of the Aral Sea, a body of water that was almost totally wiped out after rivers feeding it were diverted for irrigating cotton in Soviet times.

...The dramatically disappearing sea on the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan has been replaced by salty desert in one of the world's biggest environmental disasters which affects millions of people in the region....

An abandoned ship in what used to be the Aral Sea, shot by Staecker, public domain

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