Aral Sea Seabed Afforestation Programme

Since the mid-2010s, Uzbekistan's Forestry Agency and Ministry of Ecology, Environmental Protection and Climate Change have run a national programme to plant salt- and drought-tolerant vegetation, chiefly saxaul (Haloxylon), across the dried bed of the Aral Sea in Karakalpakstan, aiming to suppress the sand, salt and dust storms that now sweep the exposed seabed.

Around 150 forestry employees and 300+ local residents from Karakalpakstan take part in planting, using both tractors (360+) and aerial seed dispersal; a parallel, smaller UNDP-backed 'Green Aral Sea' initiative, funded in part by the government of Japan, has planted 823,000 trees on 658 hectares since 2020, testing methods such as moisture-retaining seed treatments to raise survival rates.

Uzbekistan met an initial 500,000-hectare Bonn Challenge restoration target in 2020, a decade ahead of schedule, and roughly 1.7 million hectares had been planted over the preceding five years as of 2024 reporting, with 150,000-200,000 ha planned for 2024 alone. The World Bank estimates storm damage costs Karakalpakstan about USD 44.2 million a year versus roughly USD 39 million a year in estimated restoration benefits; saxaul shrubs 7-10 years old are reported to stop 2-4 tonnes of moving sand each. Seedling survival ranges from 30% in low-rainfall years to 50-70% with adequate rain.

An outside specialist quoted in the reporting was explicitly uncertain how worsening drought would affect the programme's long-term sustainability, and introducing dense single-species stands across a very large area risks altering habitats and migration routes of species adapted to the open former seabed. No independently measured, region-wide dust-storm reduction figure was found to corroborate the mechanistic sand-trapping claims.