The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is leading an expedition to the dried bottom of the Aral Sea providing an opportunity for a group of international development representatives and government officials to visit several afforestation projects, including USAID Oasis, currently under development.

The expedition is to provide first-hand observations of the ecological and environmental challenges facing restoration efforts aimed at reviving parts of the ecosystem of the Aral Sea, lying between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and fed by rivers including the Amu Darya that flows along border territories between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan (strictly speaking only ground water generated by the Amu Darya is nowadays reaching the sea, which rests in an endorheic, or drainage, basin).

The Aral Sea is a well-known case study on water over-extraction as its water volume has shrunk nearly 10 times from its original size in 1960, noted USAID in a press release.

It added: “The environmental devastation in the region has decimated the ecosystem and negatively impacted local communities who used to depend on the Sea for fishing and now are subject to frequent sand and dust storms that affect humans and livestock alike.

“The expedition is the first of two USAID-organized events organized over the week to draw increased attention to the Aral Sea devastation and to foster more dialogue and knowledge sharing among the various organizations working in the region.”

USAID said it also arranged a donor coordination conference that brought together Kazakh government officials and international donor organisations to review past and present Aral Sea projects for determining best practices and increasing cooperation among the various initiatives in the region.  

Located 50 kilometres from Karateren in western Kazakhstan, USAID Oasis is a demonstration site where USAID is testing black saxaul under various growing conditions to determine the shrub’s viability as a species to help revive the local ecosystem.

The Oasis was launched in 2021, in collaboration with the Executive Directorate for Saving the Aral Sea (ED-IFAS) in the Republic of Kazakhstan, which provides on-the-ground expertise to the project.

Environmental Restoration of the Aral Sea I (ERAS-I) is a component of USAID/Central Asia’s Regional Water and Vulnerable Environment Activity, a five-year, multi-level governance approach to strengthen regional capacity to manage shared water resources and mitigate environmental risks in the Amu Darya and Syr Darya river basins.