LocationsBeyond the disappearing lake: What the Aral Sea can teach us about human security
August 19, 2026
A water specialist overseas the reconstruction of the old water purification station in western Uzbekistan.
Kostruba is a remote community in western Uzbekistan, 280 kilometres from the nearest city. Here, a community leader who has served his neighbours for 24 years describes the Aral Sea crisis through the lens of its impact on his family.
“We have been drinking this water our whole lives,” he says. “Because there is no alternative.”
In his community, they have no access to clean water. Salinity is increasing, so the water they get from underground is highly mineralized and poses a health risk.
His words capture something that statistics alone cannot. The Aral Sea did not simply disappear. It took with it many of the conditions people need to live safely, earn a living, protect their health and look to the future with dignity.
That is why the crisis calls for a human security response, one that starts not with sectors or institutions, but with the daily challenges faced by people and communities. This is the approach long promoted by Japan: placing people at the centre of development and combining protection from critical threats with the ability to shape their own future.
Across Central Asia, environmental degradation, water scarcity and economic exclusion are increasingly interconnected. The Aral Sea, straddling Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, is a stark reminder of what happens when these risks converge. No single sector or country can address them alone.
For UNDP, this understanding has shaped nearly a decade of work in Karakalpakstan, the autonomous republic at the heart of Uzbekistan’s Aral Sea region.
The Aral Sea bed in Uzbekistan.
The results are visible on the ground. Communities that spent decades without safe drinking water now have it. Land long considered too saline to farm is productive again. A rural health facility that had been closed for seven years is once again serving patients. Women in remote districts are running businesses and reaching new markets.
These are not isolated project results. Together, they show what human security looks like in practice: protecting people’s lives, livelihoods and dignity while expanding their choices and opportunities.
The challenges remain immense. Toxic dust from the exposed seabed contributes to serious health problems across the region. Degraded soil limits agricultural productivity. Unsafe water spreads disease. Limited economic opportunities constrain the futures of women and young people.
These problems have common roots and reinforce one another. The Aral Sea crisis is not an ecological crisis alone. It is also a human and development crisis.
Responding to it requires asking a different question: not which sector a problem belongs to, but what people and communities need to live in safety and dignity.
Three interconnected initiatives under the UNDP Aral Sea Programme show what this human-centred response means in practice.
Safe drinking water is now a reality in Karakalpakstan.
Starting with communities
A Japan-funded project supporting climate-resilient agriculture and social infrastructure began not with technical specifications, but with communities themselves.
Through community development plans and participatory assessments, residents identified their own vulnerabilities and priorities before interventions were designed. People affected by the crisis helped define what security meant in their own lives.
When communities identified safe drinking water as their foremost priority, infrastructure investment followed. When unreliable electricity became a barrier to education and livelihoods during harsh winters, a stable energy supply became the next priority.
A restored water purification station in the “Koshkar Jikkan” community of Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan.
Work initially planned for 15 communities expanded to 31 after neighbouring communities saw the results and requested inclusion.
The same project introduced climate-resilient agriculture. In Kegeyli district, a solar-powered system now purifies saline drainage water for crop irrigation and supports aquaculture. It has reduced water consumption by 90 to 95 percent, tackling water scarcity while supporting food production and incomes.
From environmental data to coordinated action
Community-driven solutions of this kind, however, can only go as far as the institutional infrastructure around them allows.
This is where a parallel environmental monitoring and ecosystem restoration initiative, run by UNDP with funding from the UN Multi-Partner Human Security Trust Fund for the Aral Sea Region of Uzbekistan, proved its importance. For years, toxic dust from the exposed seabed was a threat without a coordinated response. Environmental agencies monitored it, health institutions treated its consequences and agriculture bore its costs, without shared information or coordinated mechanisms.
Today, 37 air-quality monitoring stations embedded in Uzbekistan’s national monitoring network enable real-time data exchange among environmental, health and agriculture institutions. Environmental data has become a shared resource for more coordinated, evidence-based decisions.
What began as an environmental monitoring intervention became a governance reform uniting sectoral programs under one umbrella.
At the same time, ecosystem restoration is tackling one of the environmental roots of the crisis. Through UNDP’s Green Aral Sea crowdfunding platform, 915,840 salt- and drought-tolerant trees have been planted across 763.9 hectares of exposed seabed.
These landscapes are also beginning to show their potential for climate finance and private-sector engagement, including opportunities linked to carbon markets as Uzbekistan advances its nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement.
The Takhtakupyr State forestry department is working on afforestation as a climate change adaptation measure.
Creating livelihoods that last
Restoring ecosystems and strengthening institutions are essential. But resilience also depends on whether people can earn a living and build a future.
For this reason UNDP’s One Village–One Product initiative has proved successful over the last five years. One Village–One Product (OVOP) is a community-based approach based on Japanese methodology that helps local entrepreneurs turn locally available resources, skills and traditions into competitive products and sustainable businesses. Through this model, rural producers across Karakalpakstan have developed locally distinctive products and reached new markets.
A registered trademark and dedicated online marketplace give producers a chance to pursue further expansion through access to markets via global OVOP platform. More than 70 percent of those supported are women, in a region where women and young people face particularly high levels of unemployment and economic exclusion.
Participants of the One Village–One Product initiative develop new selling streams.
Economic empowerment in the form of business support contributes to community security.
Economic opportunity does more than generate income. It becomes a driver of gender equality, and gives people greater control over their future and helps families build lasting resilience – the foundation of human security.
From results to scale
Protecting the environment and empowering communities are not competing priorities. In the Aral Sea region, they are inseparable.
The UNDP Aral Sea Programme has reached more than one million people, contributed to national policy and helped catalyse additional financing. In February 2026, Japan committed US$4.6 million for water governance in the Aral Sea region.
The challenge now is to scale proven solutions.
The experience of the Aral Sea shows why human security matters. Clean water is inseparable from health. Restoring land cannot be separated from livelihoods. Stronger institutions matter when they help communities respond to the risks they face. And economic opportunity matters because resilience ultimately depends on people having choices about their own future.
Nearly a decade of work in Karakalpakstan offers a simple lesson: human security is not an abstract principle. It begins with what people need to live safely, with dignity and with the possibility of a better future.
Related
content
content
