The Effect of Water Scarcity on the Well-being of Households and Agricultural Production in The Rural Areas of Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

Climate change poses a significant challenge to Kyrgyzstan, impacting its economic and environmental sustainability. One of the main consequences of climate change in the region is water scarcity, particularly affecting local farmers and rural households. Kyrgyzstan faces extremely dry summers annually, leading to reduced water flow in irrigation facilities compared to previous years. As a result, farmers have organized multiple protests due to the lack of irrigation water for their crops. Hence, water scarcity issue has raised concerns about the well-being of rural populations, specifically local farmers and households, and has the potential to negatively affect crop production and harvest collection within the country. The problem of water scarcity is exacerbated by the fact that many people in rural areas depend on agriculture and animal husbandry as their primary source of income. Furthermore, agriculture remains a highly important sector of Kyrgyzstan’s economy. This study aims to identify the impact of the shortage of water resources on the well- being, income, consumption of the households in rural regions and estimate the effect on the agricultural production in the rural areas of Kyrgyzstan. The study will utilize data from the Life in Kyrgyzstan household survey LiK 2019. The type of data that will be used is a cross-sectional data, in which the participants are surveyed at a specific point in time. The study will employ a Multiple Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression model to analyze how water scarcity affects the income and consumption of households, while Multivariate regression model will be used in order to assess the effects of water scarcity on agricultural production and output in Kyrgyzstan. Furthermore, the Ordered Probit regression will be employed to study and examine the effects of water scarcity on the subjective assessments of the household prosperity as well as income satisfaction reported by the members of the household. Key findings of the study are that water accessibility has a statistically significant effect on the household income satisfaction, i.e. when water is accessible with difficulties, household income satisfaction diminishes. The results of the study also suggest that water accessibility is positively correlated with food consumption. Another major finding is that water accessibility strongly predicts the agricultural output with a positive correlation.