VICTORIA MILKO - Associated Press

Toxic dust storms, anti-government protests, the fall of the Soviet Union — for generations, none of it has deterred Nafisa Bayniyazova and her family from making a living growing melons, pumpkins and tomatoes on farms around the Aral Sea.

Bayniyazova, 50, has spent most of her life near Muynak, in northwestern Uzbekistan, tending the land. Farm life was sometimes difficult but generally reliable and productive. Even while political upheaval from the Soviet Union’s collapse transformed the world around them, the family’s farmland yielded crops, with water steadily flowing through canals coming from the Aral and surrounding rivers.

Now, Bayniyazova and other residents say they’re facing a catastrophe they can’t beat: climate change, which is accelerating the decades-long demise of the Aral, once the lifeblood for the thousands living around it.

The Aral has nearly disappeared. Decades ago, deep blue and filled with fish, it was one of the world’s largest inland bodies of water. It’s shrunk to less than a quarter of its former size.

Much of its early demise is due to human engineering and agricultural projects gone awry, now paired with climate change. Summers are hotter and longer; winters, shorter and bitterly cold. Water is harder to find, experts and residents like Bayniyazova say, with salinity too high for plants to properly grow.

“Everyone goes further in search of water,” Bayniyazova said. “Without water, there’s no life.”

EDITORS’ NOTE: This is the second piece in an AP series on the once-massive Aral Sea, the lives of those who’ve lived and worked on its shores, and the effects of climate change and restoration efforts in the region. The AP visited both sides of the Aral, in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, to document the changing landscape.

HISTORY AND DEMISE

For decades, the Aral — fed by rivers relying heavily on glacial melt, and intersecting the landlocked countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — held meters-long fish, caught and shipped across the Soviet Union.

The region prospered, and thousands of migrants from across Asia and Europe moved to the Aral’s shores, for jobs popping up everywhere from canning factories to luxury vacation resorts.

Today, the few remaining towns sit quiet along the former seabed of the Aral — technically classified as a lake, due to its lack of a direct outlet to the ocean, though residents and officials call it a sea. Dust storms whip through, and rusted ships sit in the desert.

The shrinking Aral Sea is visible in satellite images from NASA

In the 1920s, the Soviet government began to drain the sea for irrigation of cotton and other cash crops. By the 1960s, it shrunk by half; those crops thrived. By 1987, the Aral’s level was so low it split into two bodies of water: the northern and southern seas, in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, respectively.

The United Nations Development Program calls the destruction of the Aral Sea “the most staggering disaster of the 20th century.” It points to the Aral’s demise as the cause of land degradation and desertification, drinking water shortages, malnutrition, and deteriorating health conditions.

SEE MORE PHOTOS FROM UZBEKISTAN:

A man rides to his home through the area of the dried-up Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, Saturday, June 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

An abandoned fishing workshop is visible along the dried-up area of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, Saturday, June 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

A former military base that was destroyed and evacuated after the drying up of the Aral Sea is visible in Uzbekistan, Sunday, June 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

A hill of sand is visible through a destroyed home on the edge of the dried-up Aral Sea near Tastubek, Kazakhstan, Monday, July 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

A rusting ship sits in a dried-up area of the Aral Sea in Muynak, Uzbekistan, Sunday, June 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

A former military base that was destroyed and evacuated after the drying up of the Aral Sea is visible in the former Aral Sea seabed Uzbekistan, Sunday, June 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

A dirt road stretches through the desert that used to be the bed of the Aral Sea, on the outskirts of Muynak, Uzbekistan, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

National governments, international aid organizations and local groups have tried — with varying degrees of effort and success —to save the sea. Efforts range from planting bushes for slowing the encroaching dunes to building multimillion-dollar dams.

But experts say climate change has only accelerated the death of the Aral, and will continue to exacerbate residents’ suffering.

The UN labels the destruction of the Aral Sea in Central Asia the most staggering disaster of the 20th century. The drying up of the once-mighty sea has affected residents and their livelihoods for decades. Some now say climate change presents their greatest obstacle yet. (AP Video by Victoria Milko and Ebrahim Noroozi. Produced by Teresa de Miguel)

“ONLY US LOCALS”

Without the moderating influence of a large body of water to regulate the climate, dust storms began to blow through towns. They whipped toxic chemicals from a shuttered Soviet weapons testing facility and fertilizer from farms into the lungs and eyes of residents, contributing to increased rates of respiratory diseases and cancer, according to the U.N.

Fierce winds caused dunes to swallow entire towns, and abandoned buildings filled with sand. Residents fled. A dozen fish species went extinct, and businesses shuttered.

Madi Zhasekenov, 64, said he watched as his town’s once-diverse population dwindled.

“The fish factories closed, the ships were stranded in the harbor, and the workers all left,” said Zhasekenov, former director of the Aral Sea Fisherman Museum in Aralsk, Kazakhstan. “It became only us locals.”

Dust storms, rising global temperatures, and wind erosion are destroying the glaciers the sea’s rivers rely on, according to a U.N. report. The remaining water is getting saltier and evaporating faster.

Melting ice and changing river flows may further destabilize drinking water supply and food security, the report warns, and hydropower plants could suffer.