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The study demonstrates how the cotton industry in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan contributes to political repression, economic stagnation, widespread poverty and environmental degradation. Without structural reform in the industry, it will be extremely difficult to improve economic development, tackle poverty and social deprivation, and promote political liberalisation in the region.

It highlights how the operations of the cotton industry have been connected with immense, social, political, economic and environmental costs:

• millions of the rural poor work for little or no reward growing and harvesting the crop, and the considerable profits go either to the state or small elites with powerful political ties
• given the benefits they enjoy, there is little incentive for powerful vested interests to engage in serious structural economic reform, which could undermine their lucrative business as well as eventually threaten their political power
• despite official denials, child labour is still in use in Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, and little attention is paid to the conditions in which children and students work so very year some fall ill or die
• women do much of the hard manual labour in cotton fields, and reap almost none of the benefits. Cash wages are minimal, and often paid late or not at all. In most cotton-producing areas, growers are among the poorest elements in society
• the environmental costs of the monoculture have been devastating. The depletion of the Aral Sea is the result of intensive irrigation to fuel cotton production.

The study argues that changing the business of Central Asian cotton will take time, but a real reform of this sector of the economy would provide more hope for the stability of this strategic region. Therefore it offers a number of recommendations, including the following:

• the Governments of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan should take urgent action to end child labour in cotton fields for example by by adhering to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour
• the Governments of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan should begin programs of land reform that would gradually develop the level of private farming and provide safeguards for property rights
• Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan should in coordination with local and international investors, also conduct a thorough audit of investors' claimed farm debts and develop a plan for resolution of farm debt that favours farmers
• the Government of Tajikistan should accelerate land reform and provide much moreadvice and legal protection to farmers, particularly in cotton-growing areas.
• international financial institutions and donors should create a joint working group, including, where possible, private foreign investors, to coordinate strategies on the Central Asian cotton industry.
• the European Union, its member states, and the U.S. Government should work within and through the ILO to achieve respect in the cotton industries of Central Asian states for the Convention on the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour, and for related standards respecting student forced labour and other abuses.

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