ESG

Soil is becoming a balance-sheet asset — complete with sensors, dashboards, and its own ESG reporting.

By 2050, food production needs to grow by 60% — with no new arable land to grow it on. Uzbekistan already loses at least 3% of GDP annually to soil degradation, and by mid-century the flow of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers will drop by 15% and 5% respectively.

The industry’s answer: IoT sensors tracking soil moisture and nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium levels in real time, and VRA technology, which cuts fertilizer use by 15–25% without yield loss. John Deere is already cutting fertilizer volumes by 60%, while sensor-guided regenerative farming lifts EBIT margins by 20–40%.

In the Aral Sea region, this isn’t optional — it’s a matter of the land’s survival: drip irrigation replacing furrow systems is already blocking salinization across hundreds of thousands of hectares. Who actually owns field fertility data — the farmer or the sensor provider.

A meta-analysis of 169 studies (43 countries, 176,000+ participants, 1971–2019, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2022) delivered a clear answer: systematic environmental education works.

📊 The numbers:
— Environmental knowledge: g = 0.95
— Pro-environmental behavior: g = 0.41
— Intention to act: g = 0.26

Uzbekistan is already moving: the Environmental Culture Concept through 2030 will reach 9.8 million people — from kindergartens to civil servants.

According to Gallup 2024 (145,170 respondents, 144 countries), women rate their nighttime safety on average 10 percentage points lower than men — and the gap barely narrows even as cities’ overall safety improves. The ILO estimates that women’s limited mobility cuts their labor force participation in developing countries by 16.5%.

The solutions are known — good lighting, courtyards without blind spots and windowless walls, safe transport.

Case studies: Vienna redesigned its street lighting around women’s actual experience, Barcelona cut traffic in courtyards through its superblock model, London targets cameras at “hot spots” identified directly from women’s reports, and Delhi launched the Himmat app with a one-tap panic button.

For Tashkent and other fast-growing Central Asian cities, this is a window of opportunity — to build these principles into new districts at the design stage, not retrofit them later at greater cost.

How environmental responsibility evolved from an entrepreneur's personal choice (1950s) into a strategic asset for modern business.

✓ Management tools: Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), environmental audits, and implementation of Best Available Technology (BAT) standards.

✓ Circular economy as profit source: Aluminum recycling saves up to 95% energy, and according to Goldman Sachs forecasts, transition to a circular model can add $4.5 trillion to global GDP by 2030.

✓ Uzbekistan 2026: transformation point: Launch of the region's first green hydrogen production facility in Chirchik, clean energy generation growth of 28%, and full operation of the National Carbon Registry.

Modern economic progress is impossible without environmental well-being. Environmental responsibility is no longer a trend, but a key competitive advantage for business.
 

Some of the most dangerous risks at any production facility are the ones you can’t see — and that’s exactly what makes them so deadly.

In our new article, we break down three factors that silently and gradually damage workers’ health every single day: industrial noise, vibration, and dust. According to the ILO, more than 2.3 million people die each year from work-related causes — and a significant share of those deaths stem not from acute injuries, but from the cumulative toll of what workers simply call “the usual background.”

Why is hearing loss irreversible? What is “white finger syndrome”? Why do dust particles smaller than 2.5 microns practically never leave the body?