The Aral Sea has been drained due to irrigation for intensive cotton farming in Uzbekistan. It is an unnatural environmental disaster.

In Uzbekistan (and the former USSR) a programme to promote agriculture and specifically cotton farming implemented firstly in the 50s by Khrushchev deprived the Aral Sea of its two main sources of water income - two rivers, Amu Dar'ya and Syr Dar'ya.

Intensive cotton farming continued as a programme under the Uzbek government. It has been highly criticised for its former programme of utilising school children between the ages 11-15 to farm cotton, leaving schools in some districts of Uzbekistan empty during harvest season. The Uzbek government has also utilised (and still does!) members of other professions, such as teachers, doctors, and nurses, to work the cotton fields, jeopardising the quality of essential services in the country.

With strict quotas set and punishments for non-compliance including unaffordable fines, this is a modern example of state-sanctioned, state-orchestrated slavery.

This has led to many problems in the area. Land has become salinified which prevents crop growth, and the development of toxic dust has led to a huge increase in respiratory problems in the area - some estimates reckon that as many as half of all deaths in this area are caused by respiratory issues. This is why many businesses refuse to use cotton farmed from Uzbekistan - unfortunately, many more do not.

Coincidentally, Sept-Oct 2015 issue of AramcoWorld magazine has article Reviving the North Aral Sea. However, this is in Kazakhstan, a large project funded by the World bank, and supposedly with later phases projected to address the Uzbekistan South Aral Sea. The article is very good, an easy read, and overall is positive: commercial fishery has been reborn on the North Aral sea in the last few years.