Aral Sea – Conserving and rehabilitating a lost sea | Droughts in the Anthropocene

The Aral Sea, once one of the largest lakes in the world, lies dry barring a few small surviving oases of water. A rapid drying of the Aral Sea was caused by the diversion of large quantities of water in the 1960s followed by two decades of drought. Conserving the remaining parts of the sea is essential to sustain livelihoods and to maintain the surviving biodiversity and capture fisheries.

Though droughts are natural events, there is an increasing understanding of how humans have amplified their severity and worsened their effects on both the environment and human populations. Humans have altered both meteorological droughts
through human-induced climate change and hydrological droughts through management of water movement and processes within a landscape, such as by diverting rivers or changing land use. In the
Anthropocene (the ongoing period in which humans are the dominant influence on climate and the environment), droughts are closely entwined with human actions, cultures and responses.

This series of videos explains the effects of drought all around the world through the presentation of case studies.

They are the result of the work of UNESCO IHP in partnership with GRID-Arendal, the University of Southampton and the U.S. National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS).

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