Viewers of An Inconvenient Truth will remember the terrible images of the fishing fleets stranded in the desert that was once the Aral Sea, a disaster caused by Soviet central planning, not by climate change, of course.

Well, increased political freedom combined with ambitious engineering are reversing that catastrophe and growing the Aral Sea once more. A new dam has risen the sea level by 8 meters (yes, sea level rise is a good thing here) and 30 million fish will be released into the Sea this year.

The Aral Sea is far from saved, but mankind’s resiliency is helping to restore it slowly.