A plan to divert the waters of the Ob River to help irrigate the dry regions of Central Asia, which had been much talked about during the Soviet era, has now been revived by the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Academy has initiated a discussion about diverting some of the water of the Ob River, not by digging canals, but by means of pipelines.
The program dates back to the 1860s and was a major discussion in the Soviet Union until 1986, when the Malthusian environmentalist movement began to gain steam, undercutting some of the more elaborate programs developed during the Brezhnev era. The breakup of the Soviet Union really put a stop to such discussions, although it has come up in the years since, including in a proposal by then-Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.
