Why did the Aral Sea begin shrinking rapidly after 1960?

The rapid shrinkage of the Aral Sea beginning in 1960 was primarily caused by the Soviet Union’s economic policies, which prioritized large-scale agricultural development in Central Asia.12

To convert vast areas of arid land into productive farmland, the Soviet government diverted the waters of the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya—the two main rivers that historically maintained the lake's water balance—for irrigation purposes.123

As these rivers were redirected to support crops such as cotton, the volume of water reaching the Aral Sea dropped drastically. By the 1980s, these rivers often dried up entirely before reaching the lake, leaving the Aral Sea to shrink rapidly due to the evaporation of its unreplenished waters. This environmental transformation resulted in a catastrophic loss of volume and surface area, the collapse of the local fishing industry, and severe ecological damage, including the spread of toxic, salt-laden dust across the region.24315