Why are water levels falling?
Scientists and in particular climatologists have tended to restrict their search for the causes for the lowering of the water level to the sea itself, often forgetting the rivers that feed it. Change of climate might be a long-term cause: a decrease in precipitation and increase in evaporation in the sea. However, if this were so, it is difficult to explain the unprecedented rise of the adjoining Caspian Sea. Climate change might be a contributory factor especially at the local scale, but the main causes must be sought in the response of the entire basin of the Aral Sea which has become a “man-made lake”. This is because man has diverted river waters to produce food and fibre, and the sea receives what man allows. Therefore, the solution to the problem lies in the study of the production of water in the snows and glaciers of the mountains of the upper catchment of the Syr Darya and Amu Darya, and of the manner in which this water is used and managed, before it flows into the Aral Sea t
