Environmental issues in Kazakhstan sea’s already grave pollution. International programs to save the Aral and Caspian seas have not received meaningful cooperation from Kazakhstan or other member nations. The Aral Sea covers with Kazakhstan to the north and Uzbekistan to the south. Soviet irrigation projects begun in the 1960s and other environmental challenges have severely depleted this once massive inland sea and by 2007, it had shrunk to 10 percent of its original size. The efforts included Syr Darya Control & Northern Aral Sea (NAS) project. The $86 million NAS project, funded jointly by the World Bank through a loan of $65 million and
Seto Inland Sea Chūgoku, Shikoku, and eastern Kyūshū. The Seto Inland Sea provided each of these regions with local transportation and connected each region to the others and far areas, including the coastal area of the Sea of Japan, Korea, and China. After Kobe port was founded in 1868 to serve foreign ships, the Seto Inland Sea became a major international waterway with connection to the Pacific. Due to the development of land transportation, the travel between east and west — that is, transportation within Shikoku, within Honshū, and between Honshū and Kyūshū — shifted to railroad and road transport. Two coastal railways,