Elusive Water: The Life and Death of Central Asia's Aral Sea

In 2017, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called the disappearance of Central Asia’s Aral Sea, “probably the biggest ecological catastrophe of our time.” Centering the people who lived around the sea and their stories, this talk examines the causes and the consequences of the disaster. And rather than framing the Aral case as a uniquely Soviet story, it will consider what we can learn from it, as we confront similar cases of shrinking bodies of water around the globe.

This talk is part of the Graduate Student Conference on Central Asia at Harvard University, taking place May 2 through May 3rd, 2026.