Central Asian Countries Initiative for Land Management Multicountry Partnership Framework Support Project: Economic Analysis of Sustainable Land Management Options

Abstract

Land degradation is severe in Central Asia, reducing productivity and threatening the livelihoods of millions of farmers and pastoralists. Major problems include salinity and soil erosion, affecting more than half of irrigated cropland in some countries. In part due to land degradation, as well as other factors, average yields have declined in many areas by 20 to 30 percent since independence, contributing to worsening rural poverty and vulnerability. Negative environmental impacts include the drying of the Aral Sea, water and air pollution caused by salinization and erosion, loss of biodiversity, and reduced provision of ecosystem services. The causes of these problems are numerous and complex and vary across the region. Proximate causes include unsustainable agricultural practices, overgrazing near settlements and deforestation. Underlying these proximate causes are many factors, including the promotion of irrigated cotton production with inadequate drainage, irrigation subsidies, and government controls of agricultural production and marketing in some countries, limited development of markets, land tenure insecurity resulting from incomplete market reforms, breakdown of institutions regulating access to common pool resources, lack of government or private capacity to provide essential services (such as agricultural extension and credit), and others. A major cause is inadequate incentives for land managers to invest in conserving and improving the land. Recognition of these problems has led to large efforts by governments, donors and civil society to address them, including the Central Asian Countries Initiative for Land Management (CACILM). The success of these efforts will depend upon the identification and promotion of feasible and socially and privately profitable sustainable land and water management options suited to different contexts of Central Asia. This study seeks to help address this information need by assessing the economic feasibility and private (financial) profitability of land management options in major agro-ecological and socioeconomic contexts of Central Asia. Assessment of the social profitability of options is also important but is beyond the scope of this study. Nevertheless, since the assessment of private profitability is the first step in estimating social profitability, this study can contribute to future efforts to estimate the social profitability of land and water management options. It is based upon a review of literature and experimental evidence from all five Central Asian countries, additional reviews by collaborators in these countries, and the use of agronomic models and cost-benefit analysis techniques.