The Empty Sea

Aral Sea boats stranded by drought
Ria Novosti, Science Photo Library

Some call it the world's worst ecological disaster. The Aral Sea in Central Asia is the sea that died. Maybe you've seen the pictures of old fishing boats now sitting in the middle of the desert. It happened in Soviet times, because farms in the old Soviet Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan drained the rivers that once fed the sea to grow cotton.

Since the Russians left, the irrigation works and canals and the farms have fallen into disrepair. Even more water than before is running to waste, but less and less cotton is grown. The two countries in the world that use more water per head of population than any others are Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan - the two big former Soviet cotton states that have emptied the Aral Sea.

But it's not just that. This is a health disaster too. Salt from the bed of the former sea now blows through the air during the frequent sandstorms. It gets into the drinking water, the soils and ultimately into the bodies of the people. Local doctor and health campaigner Oral Ataniyazova took me to hospitals near the former Aral Sea, where more than 90% of the local population have anaemia - caused, she says, by the salt, which prevents their bodies absorbing iron.

Because of the anaemia, deaths of mothers and babies in childbirth are endemic. Cancer rates are among the highest in the world - also, apparently, because of the salt. This forgotten corner of the world is committing ecological suicide. All as a result of the water crisis.