f large amounts of water diverted for crop irrigation from the Amudarya and Syrdarya rivers. Extreme shrinkage of the once abundant Sea has altered the climate and the livelihood of millions of people. The local population used to live on fishing, commercial shipping, rice growing or cattle herding, but the ongoing Aral Sea crisis has dramatically affected all these careers. The Aral Sea, once one of the world's largest inland freshwater seas, is now a shrinking sea due to unsustainable water use.
             What is unsustainable water use? An example is using pesticides and leaving them untreated with the crops or thrown into water. The destruction of the Aral Sea ecosystem has been sudden and severe. Beginning in the 1960s, agricultural demands have deprived this large Central Asian salt lake of enough water to sustain itself, and it has shrunk rapidly. Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and other Central Asian state
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