TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, December 4. Adapting Uzbekistan’s agriculture to adverse climate impacts will require increasing investment in public goods, including agricultural knowledge and innovation, latest Uzbekistan Country Climate and Development report by the World Bank says, Trend reports.
The bank said that since 2019, Uzbekistan has substantially increased the volume of investments to support farmers through better access to finance and matching investment grants and to general support services such as agricultural knowledge and innovation systems, which have demonstrated an ability to generate good economic returns worldwide.
“While the composition of Uzbekistan’s public spending on agriculture is improving, it needs to shift even more from farm support that stimulates production and input use to support that facilitates on-farm investments and increases general support services. Enhancing national capacity in rural advisory, agricultural extension, input, and credit service delivery systems will encourage and incentivize the private sector to provide these services and to manufacture needed equipment,” the bank’s analysts note.
The bank said that climate adaptation measures have strong economic and development benefits in Uzbekistan, making the investments worthwhile even without considering climate risks.
“A triple-dividend-of-resilience analysis of water resources, agriculture, and land restoration up to 2040 reveals a high net present value of adaptation investments of more than $9 billion. The analysis includes the benefits of avoided losses from negative impacts on crop yields revealed in the computable general equilibrium (CGE) model (first dividend), projected increases in crop production and water savings (second dividend), and GHG emissions reductions due to energy savings in the water sector (third dividend) with a value based on the World Bank’s shadow cost of carbon,” said the report.
