Arid Aral Sea

Irrigation allowed prehistoric people to jump from semi-nomadism to agriculture; but large-scale irrigation has also felled history's greatest empires. In Central Asia's Turkmenistan, large-scale irrigation feeding the nation's once top industry of agriculture has led to the near annihilation of the once massive Aral Sea which not only impacts wildlife, but also the very agriculture its waters once fed.

     By 1994, the Aral Sea lost roughly 23 thousand square miles of surface area- and that not only deprives the farms the sea once watered, but also leads to the introduction of toxic chemicals in drinking water. Tap water that once derived from the sea now contains ten times as much lethal bacteria as is considered safe to drink and 70% of the country's population that depends on the sea have experienced illnesses from contaminated drinking water including hepatitis and high infant mortality.

     Regulators warn those living near the sea that they must either evacuate by the end of the century or invest heavily in re-watering the once massive inland sea or risk a cataclysmic humanitarian disaster and a complete collapse of the entire country's agricultural industry.