ALM UNDP

Summary:

Background

The project will focus on the village of Lepsy, a pastoral community of 3,100 people, living in Sarkland District, Almaty Oblast, on the southern border of the Saryishkotrau Desert. Climate is extremely continental and dry, with long winters and hot summers. Only precipitation that falls in the winter is considered agriculturally useful as the melting snow is able to seep into the soil and contribute to the soil moisture. The precipitation that falls in the summer, however, evaporates quickly and is not easily used by plants nor useful to agriculturalists. As long-term climate change projections in Kazakhstan and Central Asia indicate that increase in temperatures in the winters and evapotranspiration in the summers will occur, this trend has been clearly observable in the project area as, although there is small declines in overall rainfall, the decreases in winter precipitation is significant.

Therefore, there is less soil moisture available for fodder growth during the spring, lowering grazing capacity for local livestock and contributing to pasture degradation. In response, the UNDP CBA project will build baseline sustainable rangeland management measures, to facilitate extension of the community pastures through the expansion of traditional waterpoints, and the identification and implementation of sustainable pasture management strategies that take changing climactic and ecological parameters into account. The project will also contain a capacity-building component and a component aimed at disseminating identified good practices nationally. With co-financing, the traditional seasonal use of medium-distance pastures (20 km from the village) and long-distance pastures (>20 km from the village) will be restored. Seven (7) waterpoints in the medium distance pastures will be repaired, using the Kazakh technique “Asar”. Through the development of community-based agreements on rational resource use, newly operational pastures will be optimally loaded. In addition, seasonal pasture rotation will be observed and remote grazing practices will be implemented to reduce near-village overgrazing.

The capacity for the community to cooperatively manage shared pasture resources will be built, thus, increasing the community access to watering sites and forage resources. On its own, the UNDP CBA will address climate change impacts by strengthening the community’s capacities in addressing projected climate change risks. Community-based institutional mechanisms (on resource and cooperation) will take climate change into account through education and training of community members. Community awareness of climate change risks will be improved, as well as the capacity to implement climate resilient livestock production practices.

The UNDP CBA will also reduce the climate-change pressures on decreasingly resilient waterpoints through the redistribution of grazing load around waterpoints and identifying new waterpoints; the implementation by community members of practicing traditional and alternative methods of water collection and conservation with the pastures (earth reservoirs, water collection pits, etc); and by expanding the watered pasture areas. Pasture management practices will take climate change risks into account by setting standards for optimal pasture load to be practiced by the community members. Lessons learned from the project implementation and best practice documents will be developed for the local communities, centering on themes of adaptation to increased aridity within steppe pastoral ecosystems. Lastly, new pasture management strategies will be disseminated on the national and local levels and amongst the local farmers.

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