When Ostap Bender once raised a toast to irrigation in Uzbekistan during his wedding with Madame Gritsatsuyeva, he could never have imagined the tragic fate awaiting the Aral Sea. Decades of thoughtless irrigation policies in the Soviet Union’s Central Asian republics ultimately led to the near-total disappearance of this massive lake — creating one of the most severe … [Read more...] about How the Aral Sea Died: One of the Greatest Environmental Disasters of the Modern Era

