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The project worth $4.3 million provides for pilot farmer and community centered landscape restoration of specified degraded territories in Kazakhstan. The list of objectives includes afforestation and shelterbelt establishment around villages to protect from dust storms or along main roads for land stabilization around the degraded Aral Seabed using successful planting technologies of saxaul and other drought-resistant trees.
The Aral Sea, lying between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, had an area of seven million hectares until the 1960s.
Described as one of the worst environmental disasters of the world, the Aral Sea began shrinking after the waters of the Amu Darya River, which used to flow into the Aral, started to sink into Uzbekistan s cotton fields, never reaching the sea. Over time the sea split into the South Aral Sea, or Large Sea, mainly within Uzbekistan s borders, and the North Aral Sea, also called The Small Sea, in Kazakhstan.
The environmental disaster affected the fishing industry after 40 species of fish inhabiting the sea died out due to the harsh conditions. The most widespread inhabitant of the Aral, the Black Sea flounder, had adapted to life in salt water, but it also completely disappeared by 2003 as it failed to stand the increasingly extreme salty water. Once the world s fourth largest lake after the Caspian Sea, Lakes Superior, and Victoria, the Aral turned into a desert over time, even burying fishing ships into the sand.
In addition, the climate in the region became arid and heavy windstorms with millions of tons of pesticides used in agriculture destroyed once diverse fauna.
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