Horses walking in the shallows of the Aral Sea

This May 31, 2009 photo shows horses walking in the shallows of the Aral Sea some 100 kilometers from Aralsk, Kazakhstan. The Aral, the world’s fourth-largest freshwater sea, once covered an area the size of Ireland. But then it became part of the Soviet Union. With their passion for planned economics and giant, nature-reversing projects, the communists diverted the rivers that fed the landlocked sea and used them to irrigate vast cotton fields. The result: The Aral shrank by 90 percent to a string of isolated stretches of water.