Country Comments

The poorest of the former Soviet Republics, Tajikistan is a landlocked Central Asian country. Over 1/10 of its population (mostly males) travel outside of the country primarily to Russia every year to find work. According to the World Bank, migrants have become the country’s prime export and the single largest source of income. Remittances amount to nearly half of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) annually. Other industries within the country are agriculture, mining and hydroelectricity. These industries along with other human economic activity have caused serious land degradation, deforestation, water quality deterioration, and pollution runoff.

Chronic poverty, food insecurity and abandoned households where the males migrate for work has left a fractured society with little investment in health, education and especially in girls who are not as valued as boys who can be future breadwinners.

As a result, Tajikistan maintains a stubbornly high total fertility rate of over 3 ½ children per woman that despite some permanent migration every year the overall population growth keeps barrelling forward at unsustainable levels at already twice as many people than what the country can support with its renewable resources.