The Aral Sea disaster is one of the planet’s worst environmental tragedies.” — United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) In the 1960s, large-scale irrigation projects diverted the flow of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers to support cotton monoculture. Scientific assessments show that in some irrigation networks, up to 50% of water is lost through evaporation and leakage due to outdated infrastructure. As a result, the Aral Sea has lost around 90% of its surface area, creating the so-called “Aralkum Desert,” now spanning over 5 million hectares of exposed seabed