I think you'll find reformers is often just a label for developers and agriculture business looking to line their pockets. This is why more sane areas of the world try to inhibit their ability to fuck everything up even unintentionally with environmental impact reports. Unfortunately in my experience their is often a lot of inadequate science and opinion in them plus unskilled government bodies who get to say "Yes" regardless. EIRs can and do get challenged by citizens as wrong or inadequate but those kinds of actions are expensive, lengthy which puts up a huge hurdle against them.
In other places without them you're just destined to take whatever the bozos in control push through. But hey, at least the cause here is well known and it isn't global warming. Just local greed and ineptitude.
RE: Blue No More Part 2: The Aral Sea and The Aralkum Desert