**5. Conclusions**

Irrigation agriculture drives rural livelihoods in the cold winter deserts of Uzbekistan. An agrarian community inhabits Karakul district, and its welfare depends entirely on the access and use of irrigation services. The government of Uzbekistan is very keen about the irrigation system, and the system is geared towards the production of export and strategic commodities as part of national agenda of crop diversification and sustainable management of underutilized cold winter deserts. Both crop diversification and sustainable land management depend on the quantity and the quality of irrigation water.

The long-term sustainability and ecological soundness of the irrigation system in the cool deserts of Uzbekistan depends on farmers' interest in and hence the effective demand for the irrigation service. There is, however, no empirical evidence on the preferences for and implicit prices farmers, particularly small holders, are willing to pay for irrigation services.

Taking a small village of 750 hectares, we conducted a choice experiment survey on 300 sample farmers and estimated their willingness to pay for the different attributes of irrigation and the relative importance of the attributes in choosing the irrigation schemes.

The analyses revealed that farmers are most interested in a higher irrigation watering frequency. We also observed that farmers are willing to pay more for irrigation water in the dry seasons than for improvement in irrigation water quality. It is, therefore, clear that farmers are rather keen on having more water in the irrigation system. This needs to be an important consideration in designing or redesigning irrigation schemes in areas where irrigation is crucial for livelihoods.

We also observed that there was a high level of random choice of the irrigation schemes. There was low interest in irrigation water quality and even lower in water sharing with downstream users. There was, in fact, a considerable level of heterogeneity among the sample respondents. Farmers' preference for a higher frequency of irrigation without considering quality may affect the soil properties in terms of sustainability [43]. This aspect, not addressed in our study, needs to be investigated in future studies to ensure that land in the cold deserts is cultivated in a sustainable manner. The issue of water quality could be associated with the fact that most farmers consider the current quality of irrigation water to be good. Lack of interest in sharing irrigation water with downstream users can only emanate from the water shortage.

Given the history of inefficient management of water resources in the region, it is not illogical to expect further deterioration of water resources. This deterioration will profoundly affect agricultural productivity and, hence, livelihoods in the cold winter deserts. This will create tension between upstream and downstream users of water resources. Possible solutions entail the designing and implementation of demand-driven and carefully targeted irrigation schemes. We hope our findings and similar further studies will assist decision makers to develop such irrigation programs that will address human needs and sustainability in terms of both environmental and social justice.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, G.T.K.; data curation, H.B.; formal analysis, G.T.K.; funding acquisition, R.S. and A.A.; investigation, H.B.; methodology, G.T.K.; project administration, R.S. and A.A.; resources, R.S. and A.A.; supervision, H.B.; writing—original draft, G.T.K., H.B., R.S. and A.A.; writing—review and editing, G.T.K., R.S. and A.A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the Government of Germany under Central Asian Desert Initiative (CADI) through United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Uzbekistan.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study. Hence, data were generated from households who were willing to participate in the paper based survey.

**Data Availability Statement:** The dataset and the Stata do-file used in this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

**Acknowledgments:** This study was conducted by ICARDA under funding support of the "Central Asian Desert Initiative" project being implemented by FAO as part of the International Climate Initiative (IKI). The Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety (BMU) supports this initiative based on a decision adopted by the German Bundestag. We are very grateful for the funding we received from FAO-Uzbekistan and the Central Asian Desert Initiative (CADI). We do also appreciate very much the administrative and logistical support from local communities in Durmon and Chuya, the Forestry Department in Durmon and Chuya, the District and Local Administrative Offices in Karakul and Nurata, and the Scientific Research Institute of Southern Crop Husbandry, Karshi, Uzbekistan.

**Conflicts of Interest:** We the authors of the study declare that we have no conflict of interest in the writing or submission of this article.
