ABSTRACT
Occasional popular press headlines over the past decade that lauded the “return” of the Aral Sea (for example, Conant, 2006; Fletcher, 2007; Wester, 2014) are wholly inaccurate and misleading. This becomes abundantly clear once one considers a number of realities confronting the region that was once home to the world’s fourth-largest lake in surface area. First, the Aral does not exist and hasn’t been a single contiguous body since the late 1980s. Second, far from returning, what was once the Aral continues its recession and desiccation. Third, environmental and socio-economic crisis conditions that led many observers to proclaim the Aral a “disaster” or “catastrophe” continue to prevail throughout most of the region today, particularly in Uzbekistan’s autonomous region of Karakalpakstan.
