Resettlement policy framework and specific resettlement action plan

1.3Population and Project Affected People

The Project area accommodated 490,000 people in early 2007. Currently, agricultural activities are carried out primarily by leasehold or dehkan farmers; the state cooperative farms (shirkats) no longer operate in the Project area. The leasehold farmers used to have 20 hectare holdings, on average. In the process of farm consolidation (optimization process) rapid changes have taken place, and every 2 to 3 leasehold farms were merged under one management selected from among one of these farms. Thus, the legal entities, i,e, the newly emerging farms that deliver the produce, pay taxes, etc., have been reduced from 3,900 in 2007 to 1,800 in 2009. The leasehold farmers are organized into 35 WUAs which, are based in the former shirkat areas.

While a relatively small number of leasehold farmers cultivate most (75 percent) of the cultivable land, the greatest majority of the farming families rely on 12,000 ha or one-quarter of the cultivable area for their living. There are some 88,000 dehkan households with very small holdings of 0.14 ha (garden plots) adjacent to their homes; about 10 percent of the households have an additional dehkan farm of 0.15 ha outside the settlements, away from their homes. All Project construction and rehabilitation works will take place on the lands of leasehold farmers. This land is owned by the State. No works will be performed on the very small plots of dehkan farm land adjacent to the homes, or to home gardens. Because the Project will rehabilitate the entire I&D infrastructure, however, there is a possibility that some of the dehkans farms may also be affected¹. Thus no adverse Project impacts on standing crops will fall on the shoulder of the greatest majority of the people in the three districts - the dehkan farmers with no additional land outside the villages. The largest impacts will be on leasehold farmers whose land holdings are significantly larger than any of the dehkan farms.