Environmental Injustices, Unsustainable Livelihoods, and Conflict: Natural Capital Inaccessibility and Loss among Rural Households in Tajikistan

Environmental injustice—in the form of limited access to and control of natural capital—negatively impacts the livelihoods and security of rural households in Tajikistan.1 Its primary victims are impoverished households, especially those headed by single women, living in Gorno-Badakhshan, and/or engaged in cotton farming (see figure 10.1). Moreover, the country’s governance structures and processes remain inadequate, particularly at the highly centralized national level, and often perpetuate environmental injustice and conflict. Indeed, civil society in Tajikistan possesses very limited influence, and public participation in decision-making processes is the exception.

This chapter offers a working definition of environmental justice in Tajikistan and then supports the above thesis by (1) describing the rural vulnerability context; (2) highlighting unsustainable—and dangerous—livelihood strategies, including child labor, outmigration, human trafficking, drug trade, and militant fundamentalism; (3) analyzing the access to natural capital and the processes of natural capital loss among different types of rural households; (4) analyzing the shortcomings of environmental governance, especially at the national level; and (5) discussing the state of an environmental justice movement in Tajikistan and possible steps forward. My research was carried out using Sustainable Livelihoods Framework analysis (Chambers and Conway 1991; DFID 1999) focused on natural capital, the essential and non-substitutable livelihood asset for rural, agrarian households (Neefjes 2000, 89).

This chapter appears in the book Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union, edited by Julian Agyeman and Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger

An excerpt of the chapter is available here for download.