Irrational Economic Actions Not Global Warming More Immediate Factor Behind Desertification of Tajikistan, Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 11 – Just as Russian rulers currently blame all their problems on the pandemic, so too many Central Asian ones are inclined to blame water shortages and the desertification of much of their territories on global warming. But in fact, the immediate factor behind those tragedies is the irrational action of the governments themselves.

            The editors of the Central Asian Bureau for Analytic Reporting draw this conclusion on the basis of an analysis of official statistics and expert opinion and say that Dushanbe must do far more than it is now to reverse course, something that global warming will only make more difficult in the future (cabar.asia/ru/opustynivanie-sereznyj-vyzov-dlya-tadzhikistana).

            “The problem of desertification or soil degradation in Tajikistan has existed since the first years of independence,” they write. “Almost all agricultural land of the republic is subject to degradation, and gross blunders in land use aggravate the process of desertification.” But the situation became much worst after independence in 1991.

            In the 1990s, “massive privatization of collective and state farms took place in Tajikistan, and more than 75 thousand hectares of arable land were distributed among the rural population so that it could provide itself with food. In place of the reorganized collective farms, numerous dekhkan farms appeared.”

            But when that happened, the authorities forgot some of “the most important things.” The water supply system was left without an owner and rapidly fell into disrepair. “As a result, most of the irrigated fields turned into dryland” that could not support farming of any kind. And that process was accelerated by two others.

            On the one hand, many Tajik agriculturalists shifted to herding animals in order to make more money, and the herds rapidly used up available pasture land by two orders of magnitude. And on the other, also to make money, Tajiks cut down their forests, thereby eliminating one of the factors holding water in the soil.

            Dushanbe ignored all these developments until recently and is now seeking money abroad to reverse those problems, but “the problem can’t be solved through watering and land reclamation alone,” the editors say. What is needed is a new approach to agriculture with new seeds. And both are in short supply.

            Dushanbe seems to believe it can restore the status quo ante, but the situation doesn’t allow this; and it hasn’t put its money in new seeds that will use less water or in the promotion of agricultural methods that do the same. As global warming accelerates, the need to make these changes is growing faster than the willingness and ability of the government to act.