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Figure 6. Preliminary location of SHDs.
Note: SHD location is intended to be to the south from the bold red line.
The details of the relevant works subsequent to the preparation of the Feasibility Studies are not available. However, it can be assumed that the construction of 100 km of new SHDs will require only 3 hours for the construction per km if specialized layer machinery is used and 15 days if partially mechanized procedures are adopted. Accordingly, the width of the ditch will vary from 1 m to 3-5 meters with pipes at a depth of 2.5 m. Consequently 1 meter of SHD installation may require a spacing of up to 20 m width of lands of leasehold farmers, and up to 200 Ha of lands will be temporary occupied. It is expected that the work within each farm will take a short period of time and the farmers would be able to plant the temporarily affected areas almost immediately.
The Feasibility Study (FS) shows that inter farm drains typically show signs of bank failure. Many banks stand vertical. The beds of drains are flat and the drains are narrow. The steep banks may fail under the surcharge of an excavator and bed deepening may cause further failure, thus widening the collector. If drain side slopes are battered back to 1 in 1.5 or 1 in 2, this would involve significant earthwork quantities and land take. On a majority of drains, fields are planted right up to the edge of the collector. This is contrary to standard practice in Uzbekistan, and irrigation so close to the collector adds to the instability of the side slopes. Nevertheless, in such situations, the standing plants will be affected and farmers will have to be compensated.
In addition, in some cases, there is no room for excavators to clean the drains from the bank without passing on cropped land; there is also no room to place spoil apart from on agricultural land. Thus collector deepening may reduce the area of agricultural land. The FS shows that in the Bagdad pilot area the collector density is 60m/ha; if a 10m strip of agricultural land alongside each collector and irrigation canal is used, about 7.5 percent of land in the affected area will have to be taken by the Project.9 The details of the relevant rehabilitation works will be clear at the later stages of Project implementation. Thus it is impossible to assume the scale of this temporary land acquisition and the extent to which the state-owned and privately held property will be affected, to allow the preparation of a full scale RAP with a detailed compensation budget. As a result, the policies, principles, and mechanisms described in the following chapters of this RF document will be used if land is acquired from leasehold farmers or dehkans.
The two other rehabilitation activities (rehabilitation of 1,150 km of existing off-farm and on-farm drains, and 2500 km of canals) might also require temporary land acquisition. Despite the fact that the National Land Code prohibits to use of the reserve lands along canals and drains, households and farmers might be using these for agricultural activities or for planting poplar, fruit, and mulberry trees, as well as other crops. Some farmers plant seedlings to ensure rapid growth, others may cultivate wheat, cotton, or vegetables, and still others may plant poplar and/or other trees. While this activity severely threatens the sustainability of I&D infrastructure, shortages of water creates incentives for illegal planting. Poplars are not bought and sold; they are used by families often for cooking energy. Seedlings are replanted elsewhere in farms once they grow. Wheat, cotton, and other crops are harvested periodically. Mulberry trees have no commercial value because households do not breed silkworm cocoons.
No information is yet available on the list of the drains to be rehabilitated. Although there are variations within the regions, construction of new drains and the extensive rehabilitation would have involved 4,000 leasehold farmer families that lived in the 3 raions in 2007. It now appears that the number of leasehold farms is substantially reduced to 1,800 as a result of the Government’s optimization process. The drains and rehabilitated infrastructure will be unevenly distributed among the affected provinces. Leasehold farmers will lose different amounts of land; at the same time, each farmer will lose a different proportion of his land. Almost none of the 88,000 dehkan farmers are expected to be adversely affected.
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