Executive Summary of “Land Use Patterns in Uzbekistan:

Residential Expansion and Environmental Degradation”,

by Farhod A. Maksudov, M.A., Brown University, May 2006.

Globally, farmland preservation is an important component of meeting sustainability goals and reducing environmental degradation. In the semi-arid regions of Central Asia, Uzbekistan is the most irrigated-agriculture dependent country, yet it has very limited land resources suitable for agriculture. Therefore, loss of agricultural lands to housing development severely undermines sustainability objectives.

The majority of settlements in Uzbekistan have been located among the most intensive agricultural areas for the past 3,000-2,000 years, thus residential expansion occurs at the cost of agricultural lands. In addition, the failure of non-traditional unsustainable irrigation techniques has resulted in salinization and erosion of large areas of cultivated soils. The dual threats of residential development and salinization threaten the sustainability of agriculture in this region.

In this study I examined the rates of residential expansion from 1978-2002 in the Ferghana Province of Uzbekistan, a region experiencing the dual pressures of rapid residential development and agricultural expansion into non-traditional areas. I also examined the drivers of residential expansion over two periods – the late Soviet (1978-1991) and the Independence (1991-2002) – using remote sensing images and GIS analysis. The year of 1991 is an important point, because since then Uzbekistan has been facing significant decrease in all spheres of socio-economic growth, including residential development.

The results demonstrate that during the late Soviet period, the rates of residential expansion were higher near major industrial centers and lower in the areas with predominantly rural population. This pattern shifted after 1991, when non-Uzbek population emigrated from urban centers causing significant fall in residential development. In contrast, rural areas embarked on rapid residential expansion because of the cultural shift to more traditional approaches towards land-use, which resulted in faster loss of agriculturally valuable lands in areas with domination of rural population.

I found that residential area currently occupies almost 30% of agricultural zone in the Ferghana Province and increases at annual rate of 0.5%. Therefore I project that after 50 years a half of agriculturally valuable lands will be covered under housing only.