News & Key Milestones

On 15 December 2025, IIASA and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) convened an online workshop on the prospects of carbon farming in Greater Central Asia, bringing together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners from across the region.

Discussions focused on carbon farming as a concrete land-use practice, examining both its implementation opportunities and practical challenges in different national and agro-ecological contexts. Participants situated carbon farming within a broader agenda of sustainable land management, climate resilience, agricultural transformation, and rural development. In this context, carbon farming was also discussed as an approach that can support farm profitability, stabilize rural incomes, and strengthen climate and production resilience, particularly in dryland and high-variability environments.

The workshop also highlighted the relevance of carbon farming for policy implementation, particularly as a mechanism for linking scientific indicators such as soil organic carbon with national reporting frameworks and Land Degradation Neutrality targets under the UNCCD. In this way, carbon farming was discussed as a practical interface between field-level action, monitoring systems, and international policy commitments.

A recurring message was the need to move from analytical work toward field-level implementation. Participants emphasized that pilot and demonstration projects are critical to test carbon farming practices under real conditions, assess risks, and generate credible evidence. In particular, the discussion highlighted the importance of pragmatic and cost-effective MRV approaches, as high monitoring and verification costs were repeatedly identified as a key barrier to implementation, especially for smallholders and extensive land-use systems.

Country-specific opportunities and constraints were discussed. In Uzbekistan, strong momentum on land restoration and climate policy was seen as creating favorable conditions for piloting carbon farming on irrigated and post-irrigated croplands, while challenges related to water management, institutional coordination, and technical capacity were noted. Kyrgyzstan was highlighted for its potential in rangelands and mountain agro-ecosystems, where improved grazing management could deliver carbon and livelihood benefits, although fragmented land tenure and limited institutional capacity complicate implementation. In Tajikistan, discussions emphasized carbon farming as part of broader resilience strategies for erosion-prone and climate-vulnerable landscapes, with access to finance, data availability, and long-term monitoring capacity identified as major constraints. Mongolia’s extensive rangelands were seen as offering significant opportunities to link carbon farming with pastoral livelihoods and land restoration, with preparations for UNCCD COP17 in 2026 acting as an important catalyst, despite ongoing challenges related to monitoring carbon outcomes at scale.

The workshop contributed to building a shared understanding of the practical conditions required to implement carbon farming and realize its economic, resilience, and land-use benefits in Greater Central Asia. It also provided inputs to ongoing regional cooperation and policy dialogue, including preparations for UNCCD COP17, where land-based solutions and carbon farming are expected to be among the topics of discussion.