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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres made the stark comments while looking out over the Aral Sea, now dubbed the 'cemetery of ships'. Located in Uzbekistan, the mass
of water was once the planet’s fourth largest inland sea. But all that remains is a cracked, dry wasteland littered with ships, an eerie reminder of its past. The former sea has shrunk to
roughly a quarter of it original size, once covering 26,300 square miles. Human mismanagement saw its steady decline, and Mr Guterres stressed lessons need to be learned from the tragedy.
He said: “The Aral Sea's progressive disappearance was not because of climate change, it was mismanagement by humankind of water resources. “It also shows that if in relation to climate
change, we are not able to act forcefully to tame this phenomenon, we might see this kind of tragedy multiply around the world.” He made his comments from the former port town of Muynak,
dubbed the cemetery of ships, now devoid of all water. Mr Guterres added the catastrophe is “probably the biggest ecological catastrophe of our time,” and one that demonstrated that “men
can destroy the planet.” He held talks withthe President of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, as the pair discussed potential collaboration between the country and the UN. ARAL SEA: THE SEA
THAT DRIED UP AFTER 40 YEARS > Men can destroy the planet > > António Guterres The secretary-general also called on the international community to implement the Paris Agreement,
the landmark deal on climate change which US President Donald Trump recently pulled out of. He said the Aral Sea should serve as a reminder of what can happen when the climate and
environment are overlooking, urging such travesties not be repeated. GETTY Satellite images taken by NASA in August 2014 showed the true extent of the loss RELATED ARTICLES Beginning to
shrink in the 1960s, Soviet irrigation projects are widely believed to have partially caused the sea’s demise. By 1997 the sea had split into four lakes, and by 2009 the southeastern lake
had vanished entirely, with the southwestern one reduced to a small strip. GETTY The secretary-general also called on the international community to do more Satellite images taken by NASA
in August 2014 shockingly revealed for the first time the true extent of the loss, with the eastern base entirely dried up. UNESCO added the sea to its Memory of the World Register as a
unique resource to study this "environmental tragedy."