Kura River at all-time low in Azerbaijan: ecologists alarmed, 11 March 2023

... The Kura becomes shallow in Azerbaijan. The reason is simple: winter pastures have been turned into arable land. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of land, where grass hardly grew before, have now been intensively irrigated. Hundreds of shepherds were forcibly expelled from these lands — officials are creating agricultural parks.

All these parks created on the sites of former pastures belong to businessmen. It is also an unfair competitive environment. Whoever has the money buys the land. Pastures are rented cheaply, and these lands are plowed. Only officials have access to such operations. And they are the first to use water. If something remains, it is only then given to the population...