Tajikistan Environment - 2022

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES 

Environment - current issues

areas of high air pollution from motor vehicles and industry; water pollution from agricultural runoff and disposal of untreated industrial waste and sewage; poor management of water resources; soil erosion; increasing levels of soil salinity

Environment - international agreements

party to: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Climate Change-Paris Agreement, Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Wetlands

signed, but not ratified: none of the selected agreements

Air pollutants

particulate matter emissions: 40.05 micrograms per cubic meter (2016 est.)

carbon dioxide emissions: 5.31 megatons (2016 est.)

methane emissions: 4.87 megatons (2020 est.)

Climate

mid-latitude continental, hot summers, mild winters; semiarid to polar in Pamir Mountains

Land use

agricultural land: 34.7% (2018 est.)

arable land: 6.1% (2018 est.)

permanent crops: 0.9% (2018 est.)

permanent pasture: 27.7% (2018 est.)

forest: 2.9% (2018 est.)

other: 62.4% (2018 est.)

Urbanization

urban population: 28.2% of total population (2023)

rate of urbanization: 2.73% annual rate of change (2020-25 est.)

total population growth rate v. urban population growth rate, 2000-2030

Revenue from forest resources

forest revenues: 1.12% of GDP (2018 est.)

Revenue from coal

coal revenues: 0.54% of GDP (2018 est.)

Major infectious diseases

degree of risk: high (2020)

food or waterborne diseases: bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever

vectorborne diseases: malaria

note: on 21 March 2022, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a Travel Alert for polio in Asia; Tajikistan is currently considered a high risk to travelers for circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses (cVDPV); vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) is a strain of the weakened poliovirus that was initially included in oral polio vaccine (OPV) and that has changed over time and behaves more like the wild or naturally occurring virus; this means it can be spread more easily to people who are unvaccinated against polio and who come in contact with the stool or respiratory secretions, such as from a sneeze, of an “infected” person who received oral polio vaccine; the CDC recommends that before any international travel, anyone unvaccinated, incompletely vaccinated, or with an unknown polio vaccination status should complete the routine polio vaccine series; before travel to any high-risk destination, CDC recommends that adults who previously completed the full, routine polio vaccine series receive a single, lifetime booster dose of polio vaccine

Waste and recycling

municipal solid waste generated annually: 1,787,400 tons (2013 est.)

Major rivers (by length in km)

Syr Darya (shared with Kyrgyzstan [s], Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan [m]) - 3,078 km; Amu Darya river source (shared with Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan [m]) - 2,620 km
note – [s] after country name indicates river source; [m] after country name indicates river mouth

Major watersheds (area sq km)

Internal (endorheic basin) drainage: Tarim Basin (1,152,448 sq km), (Aral Sea Basin) Amu Darya (534,739 sq km), Syr Darya (782,617 sq km)

Total water withdrawal

municipal: 647 million cubic meters (2017 est.)

industrial: 407.8 million cubic meters (2017 est.)

agricultural: 10.44 billion cubic meters (2017 est.)

Total renewable water resources

21.91 billion cubic meters (2017 est.)

NOTE: The information regarding Tajikistan on this page is re-published from the 2022 World Fact Book of the United States Central Intelligence Agency and other sources. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Tajikistan 2022 information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Tajikistan 2022 should be addressed to the CIA or the source cited on each page.