The role of formal and informal rules in agricultural land and water management.
Interest in the use of groundwater for irrigation in Uzbek agriculture is growing. This is becoming evident not only in recent legislation, but also on the ground in the form of increased borehole drilling and groundwater use to grow fruits and vegetables in Uzbekistan. Since the institutions governing groundwater use in this part of Central Asia are underexplored, my goal is to provide an overview and comparison of the formal and informal institutions governing the use of groundwater for irrigation. I further seek to identify the consequences of the institutional settings for actors’ use patterns and sustainable conjunctive water management opportunities. The data collected in the field through semi-
structured interviews with commercial and household farmers, as well as experts will form the basis of my thesis. Field research will be conducted during several visits to Uzbekistan from 2019 to 2021, with the main research locations being the regions of Samarkand, Tashkent, and Khorezm.
This dissertation is part of the research project SUSADICA