Development of programmatic approach to sustainable pasture management in various nature-climate zones of Kazakhstan (Development of the "umbellate" project for the sustainable pasture management through revival of traditional methods of the pasture use and active participation of the local communities) (KAZ/05/26)

Project Details & Results

Kazakhstan is a country with historically developed traditions of pasture management. During the Soviet period collective and state farms received sufficient resources for organization of the cattle breeding on remote areas: for pastures water supply, repairing and maintenance of wells, transportation of cattle, welfare actions for families of shepherds. Distant pasture cattle breeding was carried out by professional shepherds who well knew pastures and technology of their use.

Now people are not able either financially, or physically independently organize the cattle breeding to the remote areas. Infringement of the pasture management mechanisms, absence of professional shepherds and lack of financial resources to arrange cattle breeding to the remote areas has led to ecological, economic and social problems, like poverty of the population, employment, population migration, etc. The situation is aggravated by unprecedented pressure on pastures round the villages, which has already led to progressively developing processes of the pastures degradation, and in some cases, the extremely admissible limits of the land erodibility have exceeded 7-fold value.

The project is directed on search and adaptation of traditional knowledge and methods of sustainable pasture management in various nature-climatic zones of Kazakhstan and development of the program system approach to their long-term operation.

1. Selection of traditional methods of pasture management in various natural zones of Kazakhstan and their adaptation to the current situation.
2. Preparation of methodology and recommendations of rational pasture use in mountain, desert, semi-desert, dry-steppe and steppe zones of the country.
3. Development of typical schemes of the projects with various approaches to rational pasture use.
4. Search and a choose local communities for further realization of the project activity.
5. Training of the local community members in rational pasture use
6. Assistance to the local communities in development of local projects and working off of the mechanism of sustainable pasture use in the chosen nature-climatic zones.
7. Consulting support to the local communities’ projects.
8. Propaganda of knowledge and distribution of the reached results among local population, state bodies and donors

Expected results:
- Methodology and recommendation on rational pasture use in various nature-climatic zones of Kazakhstan will be developed in Kazakh
- 8-10 villages will be covered by the project to settlement of local initiative groups among the local communities to further cooperate with, a series of trainings will be arranged on methods of revealing basic problems of the settlement, definition of the ways to solve them, skills to develop projects and to mobilize resources for projects realization
- 10 local projects on rational pasture use in various natural zones of the republic will developed
- program approach for restoration and sustainable pasture use in various zones will be designed.
- recommendations for further project duplicating will be developed and presented to the state bodies, such as the Ministry of Agriculture, regional and local akimats, etc.

Notable Community Participation
LCs will actively participate in project implementation. The main ideas of any projects that will be developed with this project should be initially developed by LCs. This will guarantee community ownership on projects results.

Capacity - Building Component
The project will improve local communitites' capacities in project development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. A series of the seminars that are going to take place in 10 villages will raise awareness local people about methods and schemes of the rational pasture management.

Emphasis on Sustainable Livelihoods
The basic approaches to decision of the issues of rational pasture management are based on the simplified, inexpensive schemes of ecologically safe sustainable pasture use which will allow to raise profitableness of the local people and country farmers who have cattle. The concrete project will then define the results of the work. For example: observance of parameters of rational pasture use will enable participants of realization of the project to get additionally 8-10 kg growth in live-weight and 0,6 kg fleece for each sheep.

Gender Focus
One of the main principles that will be used by granter is equal participation of all interesting pastes, and this guarantee lack of gender discrimination

Significant Participation of Indigenous Peoples
The project actively involves local communities into realization of the project activities. like: (i) discussions about the problems of the pastures use and methods they could be solved will be arranged taking into account the vision of the local communities; (ii) gathering information about traditional pasture cattle-breeding will include experience and knowledge of the local “aksakals” - cattle breeders; (iii) local projects executors will be chosen by members of the local communities; (iv) all the project activities will be discussed with local communities considering opinions of the local people; (v) Local people will be involved into the project monitoring.

Promoting Public Awareness of Global Environment
Conducting of meetings, trainings and workshops for different communities of Kazakhstan will significantly influence of awareness raising of LCs in the area of LD combating

Policy Impact
This project will help GEF SGP to test different approaches of sustainable pasture management in all climatic zone of Kazakhstan. Thus SGP will be able to recommend correspondent state bodies the most efficient ways for pasture degradation problem resolving.

Project Results
Project successfully archived all planned results. 9 demonstration projects were developed and implemented in different regions of Kazakhstan and its aggregated results were adopted by correspondent state bodies.