Answer:
Efforts to grow cotton production have led to environmental problems in the Aral Sea
Explanation:
The disappearance of the Aral Sea in Central Asia is one of the greatest man-made disasters in the world. To stimulate cotton farming, aggressive irrigation policies implemented by the Soviets turned 90% of what used to be the fourth largest lake in the world in a desert.
The Soviets wanted to transform Central Asia into the world's largest cotton producing region - for a period in the 1980s, Uzbekistan grew more than any other country.
As the sea shrank, the huge volumes of pesticides and insecticides thrown into the river over the years became gradually more concentrated until the fish began to die.
In other words, to build the cotton industry, the Soviets ended up with a sea and their fish.
The weather also began to change. The rain stopped. The grass dried up, and the small freshwater lakes that existed near the shore disappeared, as did the herds of antelopes that used to roam the area.
