ИСТИНА

Land degradation is a critical challenge to sustainable development in Central Asia. The study finds that land degradation that had occurred over the previous three decades may be responsible for about 27% losses in agricultural profits in the region during the 2009-2010 cropping season. This may be highly negative for poverty reduction in Central Asia. However, contrary to some previous studies that land degradation affects the poorest the most, we find that medium and richer groups of agricultural households lost a higher share of their agricultural profits to land degradation. In fact, if agricultural profits of medium and rich groups of households were reduced by 30% and 34%, respectively, due to land degradation, we could not find any significant negative impact of land degradation on the agricultural profits of the poor. Poor agricultural households have a stronger dependence on land for their livelihoods, hence have a stronger incentive to take a better care of land. Our results corroborate this: the poor households have applied, on average, 25% more sustainable land management practices than the rich group, and almost twice more than the medium group. Poverty does not need to inexorably lead to land degradation and to subsequent viscous cycles exacerbating poverty. On the contrary, the poor have higher incentives to manage their land sustainably if institutional and economic settings allow them to do so. Among such institutional variables, we find that increasing crop diversification, securing land tenure and providing a better access to markets significantly contribute to higher farm profits among poor agricultural households in Central Asia.