Forgive us, Aral. Please come back. These words written in chalk, on a ship sftKk in a sandy wasteland, which was once the bustling shore of the world's fourth largest lake, the Aral Sea, tell a graphic tale of the human toll caused by am of the world's greatest ecological disasters in recent memory. A disaster that took all of 40 years in the making. Forty years of creeping environmental probknum that built up into a mammoth monster insidiously sucking the great Aral Sea virtually dry. Creating a health crisis beyond all imagination, which scientist Oral Ataniyazova graphically describes (see INTERVIEW).
But now that the world has finally woken up to the Aral Sea crisis - what next7 Can the most earnest of human encleavours bring to life this dying sea? Or is this erstwhile, mighty Sea about to become part of history?
--- ANIL AGARWAL reports from NUKUS, (UZBEKISTAN).