干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Agriculture in Central Asia was mismanaged for decades under a centralized command economy The continuing legacy of this period is severe land degradation in the form of soil salinization and erosion, elevated groundwater levels caused by poorly managed irrigation systems, the drying of the Aral sea, and the chemical and nuclear pollution of water and soil. This paper provides an overview of how these failures occurred and describes some of their negative social and economic impacts.