Agricultural production in Uzbekistan is threatened by the degradation of irrigated cropland. The conversion of marginal croplands to tree plantations is an option for rehabilitation of impoverished cropland soils, saving of irrigation water, and carbon sequestration. We examined economic benefits of tree planting on marginal croplands, and policies that may facilitate the adoption of agroforestry. The results indicate that due to benefits from non-timber products, afforestation is a more viable land use option on marginal croplands than the cultivation of major crops. The field level analysis, considering variability in land use revenues, indicated the need for a substantial increase in C prices to initiate afforestation on marginal lands. In contrast, when considering uncertainties in land use returns at the whole farm level, afforestation would be feasible without the C incentive. This is because of improved irrigation water use efficiency and thus cropping pattern, as well as reduced revenue risks through the land use diversification.

Next, we explored farmers’ criteria in making potential adoption decisions on afforestation under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The adoption decisions were explored ex ante through the Ethnographic Decision Tree (EDT) modeling approach. Based on findings of reviewing legal documents, semi-structured interviews, focus-group discussion and a survey with farmers, EDT incorporated farmers’ major decision criteria for the adoption of agroforestry. The combined findings indicated the need for a set of policy measures to increase the flexibility in choice of crops, land tenure security, awareness raising and training about agroforestry and CDM benefits, institutional capacity building for coordinating  a collective action of farmers for the CDM project, enforcement of property rights protection and provision of ownership rights over tree plantations, as well as reduction of transaction costs associated with the implementation of CDM afforestation projects.