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The name of this sea has become synonymous with an ecological catastrophe. Over the past 50 years, its volume has decreased by 10 times. Today, the dried-up bottom has turned into a large-scale natural laboratory. Using this unique example, scientists study how living organisms adapt when their marine ecosystems transition to desert conditions. On January 4, 1993, the leaders of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, representatives of the entire Aral Sea basin, gathered together to decide how to avoid deterioration of the environmental situation and decided to create the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea. And systematic work began. What has been done over the years and how life began to return to the areas near the Aral Sea, watch this documentary. The history of the large-scale ecological catastrophe began in the 60s of the last century, when intensive water withdrawal for irrigation from the two rivers feeding the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, occurred on an excessively large scale. The sea began to dry up. The result was both a water and an ecological crisis. Local residents lost their drinking water, their jobs because they could no longer fish, and the desert, which was once a sea, began to cover nearby villages with salty, hazardous sand. #world24kazakhstan