Geography of Uzbekistan has been working to help improve the health conditions in Uzbekistan since the 1990s. This has led to improvements in drinking water. The World Bank and United Nations have also been involved in preparing possible solutions for the environmental problems in Uzbekistan. The World Bank worked with the countries in the Aral Sea Basin to form the Aral Sea Basin Assistance Program (ASBP) in the early 1990s. The main roles of the ASBP were the rehabilitation of the Aral Sea area that was destroyed through evaporation, the planning and management of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, and the
Kazakhstan–Uzbekistan border sparsely populated and traverse largely desert areas, in stark contrast to the western third which is densely populated, containing some of the largest towns in Uzbekistan and southern Kazakhstan. The eastern-most section is mountainous and contains a series of national parks (Sayram-Ugam National Park and Aksu-Zhabagly Nature Reserve in Kazakhstan and Ugam-Chatkal National Park in Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan’s Jizzakh to Sirdaryo railway crosses through Kazakhstan briefly, a legacy of the Soviet era where infrastructure was built without regard to what were then internal boundaries. Russia had conquered Central Asia in the 19th century by annexing the formerly independent Khanates of Kokand