As a result, despite very thorough water cooperation agreements among Central Asian governments, the cross-border governance system “has more or less come to a standstill” (Allouche 2007: 48). Huge irrigation systems constructed during the Soviet era have overdrawn water to the extent that the Aral Sea is mostly depleted of its water and is classified as one of the greatest human-made ecological disasters of the twentieth century (Libert 2008). Related salinity and water pollution have human impacts such as a high morbidity in the Aral Sea region (Krahenbiihl, Gely and Herren 2004).