Uzbekistan was always a major cotton producer for the Soviet Union. But during the 1960s an ambitious project of irrigation was taken in place. Rivers that fed the Aral Sea were diverted to irrigation, which caused the sea to slowly evaporate. This strategy changed the environment drastically and today it only accounts for 10% of its original area. The city mostly impacted for this intervention was Moynaq, a center of industrial fishing and canning that had to face the draining of the sea level also drains its economy, leaving only a desert with a cemetery of ships.
