Recently, in one of the archived interviews with residents of the Uzbek SSR, I heard the phrase: “We are watering the desert — it’s madness.”
This act of madness unfolded under the slogan “Turning the Desert into a Flowering Garden,” where the transformation of nature took the form of constructing thousands of kilometers of irrigation canals. Up to 60% of the water was lost — it soaked into the sand or evaporated before ever reaching the fields. This led to an environmental catastrophe, the consequences of which are still felt today in Karakalpakstan and the Kazakh part of the Aral Sea region.
