The people of the Northern Aral Sea region in Kazakhstan may soon see their economy revitalized and the return of large-scale fishing and farming, said President Robert Zoellick.

"As poor people around the world struggle to keep food on their tables in the face of rising prices, it is gratifying to see that Kazakhstan has found a way to give back fishermen and their families their way of life on the Northern Aral Sea," he said.

Zoellick met with Prime Minister Karim Massimov in a former port town on the shrinking inland sea to review progress on initiatives to improve irrigation.

But as the northern region flourishes, the southern part of the sea, located in Uzbekistan, remains damaged.

What was once the Aral Sea lay on the border between the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and was once the world’s fourth-largest lake. But Soviet irrigation projects caused the sea to shrink by almost 70 percent between 1960 and 2004, devastating fisheries as the rate of salinity rose sharply.

Life expectancy in the region also collapsed amid worsening air quality, which resulted in high rates of respiratory diseases.

In the early 1990s, the sea split into two separate bodies of water.

Kazakhstan and the World Bank joined forces in 2001 to build an eight-mile dam between the two sections of the sea and improve management of water resources. The $86 million project was completed in 2005. Improved water quality boosted fish stocks in the Northern Aral Sea, enabling fisherman to increase catches to around 2,000 tons last year, up from a meager 52 tons in 2004, the World Bank said.

Kazakhstan’s steps are positive but limited, because most of the shrinking sea lies in Uzbekistan, said Steve Trent, executive director of the Environmental Justice Foundation.

"What the Kazakhs are doing is a good thing, they are making positive developments in restoring what can be called the ’Little Aral,’" he said. "The Aral at large, in the context of a whole ecosystem, is not going to be salvageable at all. The damage has gone too far."

Discussions are continuing between the World Bank and Kazakh authorities over expanding the revitalization project by building a second dam. The bank estimates that by 2015 the project could raise water levels to Aralsk, which was once the largest port in the northern section of the sea. Aralsk now stands 15 miles from the water.

In addition to improving local living standards, experts say the growth of the Northern Aral Sea could also restore the variety of flora and fauna in the region.

"The Aral used to be on a central migratory passage for birds," said professor Trevor Tanton, an environmental engineer from the University of Southampton in England. "Now many of those fish-eating birds will come back."

Growing populations and income levels coupled with poor coordination of water management among Central Asian states have strained water supplies. Almost all countries in the region have been severely affected this year by water shortages, which have ruined vast areas of crops and forced up prices of staple foods.

Zoellick said the renewed health of the Aral Sea suggested Kazakhstan may be saved from shortages in the next few years.

"The return of the Northern Aral Sea shows that man-made disasters can be at least partly reversed, and that food production depends on the sound management of scarce water resources and the environment," he said.