Aral Sea Bank's restoration projects, especially in the North Aral, were giving rise to some unexpected, tentative relief in what had been an extremely pessimistic picture. The future of the Aral Sea and the responsibility for its survival are now in the hands of the five countries: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. In 1994, they adopted the Aral Sea Basin Programmme. The Programme's four objectives are: The first phase of the plan effectively began with the first involvement from the World Bank in 1992, and was in operation until 1997. It was ineffectual for a number of reasons, but mainly because
Transport in Uzbekistan of inland waterways. Since the mid-1990s, commercial travel on Uzbekistan's portion of the Amu Darya has been reduced because of low water levels. As of 2010, Uzbekistan had 10,253 kilometers of natural gas pipelines, 868 kilometers of oil pipelines, and 33 kilometers of pipelines for refined products. As of 2012, Uzbekistan has 53 airports. 33 of them have paved runways, six of which had runways longer than 3,000 meters. The largest of them, Tashkent International Airport, is linked with European and Middle Eastern cities by direct flights of Aeroflot, Lufthansa, and Turkish Airlines, and with New York and Los Angeles