Uzbekistan
Aden Aw-Hassan, Nariman Nishanov, Alisher Mirzabaev and other co-authors
Land degradation poses a serious threat to economic and environmental sustainability of agricultural production in Uzbekistan. Every year, 30 000 hectares of irrigated land, about 0.7% of the country’s total, are abandoned from cultivation due to secondary salinization. Although there are some estimates of the economic costs of land degradation in the country, indicating at 43 million USD of annual losses, these estimates have been conducted more than a decade ago, now being largely obsolete, and also do not take into account the value of a wide-range of ecosystem services provided by the land. Using a unique nationally representative agricultural household survey and secondary data, the chapter identifies the proximate and underlying drivers of land degradation in Uzbekistan. Building on this analysis, will evaluate the costs of land degradation and the net benefits of sustainable land management, including off-site and other externalities, within the framework of a recursive dynamic agricultural household model. The role of various institutional and policy options for addressing land degradation, specifically, liberalization of input and output markets, is simulated. There is a strong awareness and public commitment in Uzbekistan to take action against land degradation. These efforts could be intensified with more incentives for sustainable land management, such as promoting further the market mechanisms in agricultural production and marketing, concomitantly to securing land tenure, improving the quality of extension services and facilitating access to credit markets targeting the technological adoptions.
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