More than 40% of the population in Namangan and 70% in Karakalpakstan live below the poverty line, in comparison with 27.5 for the country as a whole. Human pressure on environmental resources, rising unemployment, low productivity in agriculture, poor health conditions and poor conditions of infrastructure and services are main factors that have contributed to low regional living standards.

The EU-UNDP supported comprehensive area-based programme entitled The Enhanced Living Standards. Programme in Karakalpakstan aims to enhance living standards in this region through empowerment of local communities, income generation and job creation and bring them closer to the national average. The programme has three components:

1. Support the authorities and local communities to develop and implement regional/local development strategies;
2. Empower local communities to engage in socio-economic development;
3. Increase and persify access of the poor/farmers to finance.

Poverty Mapping – As part of the ELS programme, a socioeconomic atlas was developed for Karakalpakstan. The atlas maps the socio-economic situation in three of the poorest districts in the Karakalpakstan region: Kegeliy, Shumanai and Karauzyak and in Namangan region: Kasansay, Chartak and Mingbuloq during 2005-2006. The atlas uses maps of the districts and plots key socio-economic indicators on the basis of information gathered from:

• Administrative data at national and regional level (provided by the State Statistical Committee of Uzbekistan, the State Committee for Land Resources, the regional administration, the three local governments and the national Nukus GIS Centre in Karakalpakstan)
• A special survey conducted by the national Centre for Social Research Tahlil in December 2005 of a sample of 1,500 households (approximately 8,000 people) with a special questionnaire designed and used to interview the heads of mahallas and collect information on the demographic, socio-economic and environmental situation in selected mahallas
• For smaller geographical/ administrative units/mahallas, such as Rural Assemblies of Citizens (RAC), different sources were used to collect information which made it possible to derive estimates for a set of key indicators disaggregated down to the township level.

On the basis of these sources, ELS project selected 34 socio-economic indicators, which fall into seven major categories:

1. Demographic;
2. Education;
3. Economic;
4. Health;
5. Social Protection;
6. Infrastructures;
7. Environment.

The result is a total of 46 maps showing how the districts perform on various dimensions of welfare such as education, health, and environment. The varied choices of indicators plotted on the maps also enable monitoring for MDGs achievement at the regional, district and local levels. See: From Data to Maps in this website, a PowerPoint Presentation by one of the two international consultants who contributed to the preparation of the socio-economic atlas for the ELS project, for more details.