Rationale for the Meeting: Two key challenges facing Central Asian countries include land degradation and water resource manage-ment. Land-cover change, unsustainable land use, and poor management of river waters in the region have cre-ated disputes. As the countries of Central Asia are heavily dependent on use of fragile dry lands and limited arable land, land-use change and water management are central issues in the region. A number of regional and interna-tional efforts have been made to understand the causes, extent, rate, and societal implications of land-use changes in the region, but these efforts have not been synthesized or framed effectively to address emerging issues.
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