Publication Details
Abstract
Managing a region's natural capital well means understanding how economic growth relates to the environmental cost of air pollution, yet little sub-national evidence exists for the arid, agriculture-based economies of Central Asia. This paper studies how air pollutant emissions changed across the thirteen territorial units of Uzbekistan's Khorezm region between 2017 and 2024, and asks how effective regional environmental management has been. Drawing on official statistics for emissions and gross regional product (GRP), it applies five tools: an emission-intensity index measured against real GRP, the Tapio decoupling elasticity, concentration indices, a cross-district convergence regression, and correlation analysis of structural drivers. The picture is one of real but fragile decoupling. Emission intensity relative to real output fell by roughly 73 per cent between 2017 and 2023, then rebounded sharply in 2024; five of the seven annual observations qualify as strong decoupling under the Tapio classification. Emissions are highly concentrated in space, with a Herfindahl index between 0.24 and 0.50 and the largest single source accounting for up to 70 per cent of the regional total, and the districts show no significant convergence. Intensity is negatively correlated with the renewable-energy share, reclaimed land, real output and electricity use, and the main pattern survives the removal of the dominant emitter. The paper argues for a shift from uniform to spatially differentiated environmental policy and for bringing natural-capital accounting into regional economic decisions.