Turkmenistan landscapes: Opportunities for restoration and livelihoods

This analytical study - developed under the World Bank’s Central Asia Resilient Landscape Restoration Program (RESILAND CA+) aims to identify strategic land restoration opportunities and inform policy and investment planning for resilient landscape management in Turkmenistan. The study employed remote sensing technologies, ecosystem modeling, and extensive stakeholder consultations to assess the extent and impacts of land degradation, identify opportunities for landscape restoration, and evaluate the costs and benefits of restoration. This study aims to provide policy makers with information to address land degradation in Turkmenistan, by identifying hotspots of land degradation and declining land productivity along with areas of adaptation opportunity where landscape restoration can best offset these trends under changing climate conditions. The report also analyses the costs of land degradation (cost of inaction) compared to investing in adaptation technologies cost of action. With this, the study aims to facilitate consensus-building with national and international stakeholders and not only make the case for scaled-up investment in adaptation and landscape restoration efforts but also provide guidance on where to start. This study employs the landscape approach to identify degradation hotspots in different landscapes and explore opportunities for landscape restoration.

Turkmenistan faces significant environmental and climate-related challenges, with widespread land degradation, increasing salinization, water scarcity, and vulnerability to climate change impacts. Approximately 4.9 million hectares (ha) of land are currently degraded, with projections indicating an expansion to 6.3 million ha by 2050 under a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario. These trends threaten national food security, rural livelihoods, and economic development, especially given that agriculture employs half the country’s labor force and contributes 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).