Is cotton cultivation that bad in areas that were not artificially made suitable for the crop by the Soviet Union?
Not to mention that cotton is notorious for depleting soil nutrients, so it is often grown with very large amounts of fertilizer, which also polluted waterways and their outlets into the oceans.
Don’t know what you mean by that but the Soviet having made worse does not mean other countries approach is water-friendly. See https://ris.utwente.nl/ws/files/6843583/water_footprint_of_c...