Lying between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya rivers that fed the sea were diverted in a 1960s Soviet project to boost cotton production, leaving what had been water now arid land. Desert covers 80 percent of the country and is spreading each year, due to onic drought.
Now university students, supported by the Uzbek government, are planting fruit trees in an initiative to transform the landscape – for the better this time.
For details: https://bit.ly/2Z1lHTX