In the Western region of Ukraine, melioration is both of economic and social importance. The area of reclaimed lands constitutes 2.2 million ha or 24 % of the total agricultural lands in the region. Thus, melioration is of great importance for social-economic development of agro-industrial complex of the territory. Under conditions of the land reform in Ukraine, reclaimed lands were subjected to sharing and privatization causing a negative impact on efficiency of its utilization and technical conditions of the reclaimed land infrastructure. The aim of the research is to analyze conditions and suggest practical recommendations as to rise of productivity of reclaimed lands, peculiarities of land organization on privatized reclaimed areas, consolidation of shared lands within the boundaries of acting drainage systems. Timeliness of the research is connected with the issues of improvement of agricultural utilization and protection of drained lands of the region. The authors used economic-statistical, monographic and logistic methods in the research. The example of Lviv region was used to analyse conditions and problems of reclaimed lands of western regions of Ukraine under conditions of land relations’ transformation. It is mentioned that only 70 % of drained areas feature satisfactory water-air regime of soil for cultivation of agricultural crops. Prospects of an increase of their utilization efficiency are connected with reconstruction of the systems consolidating common technological melioration complexes, support of both-side regulation of soil humidity.

Land degradation is a topical issue not only in Latvia, but also in Europe. Even the real estate additional tax rate of 1.5% does not prevent agricultural land from overgrowing, and there is no other legal mechanism to control it. One of the mechanisms of prevention of land degradation process is reconstruction of drainage systems, change of worthless agricultural land (less than 25 points) to forest land or improvement and return of agricultural land (more than 25 points) to economic production. Although such actions require financial resources, there may be a variety of financial support programs, for example, the decrease of the real property tax rate (in case of afforestation).