Sustainability of Irrigation in Uzbekistan: Implications for Women Farmers

This chapter focuses on a discussion of how global efforts to align local irrigation management with the good governance principles affect the lives of the rural poor, specifically women. Drawing in empirical data collected in post-soviet Uzbekistan, I illuminate unexpected effects of an apparently well-intended irrigation project on those categories of farmers whose connections to state apparatus of agricultural commerce of cotton were weak. Using fieldwork data from a village largely affected by desiccation of Aral Sea, I describe the everyday struggles by these people, who are mostly women, engage to make their living and provide subsistence to their families in situation of economic trauma, environmental disaster, and massive outmigration of male population. This analysis puts forward the local voices of real people whose lives are being restructured by sustainability oriented actions. Such perspective is often missed in scholarly and professional literature. These findings are hoped to assist policy developers in formulating irrigation programs in ways that would embrace sustainability both in terms of environmental and social justice.