The site of the project is situated 50 Km north of the capital Astana in the transition zone between the dry and moderately-dry steppe. The land is composed of low to moderate sloping hills. The main economy activity is the production of spring wheat. Winter snowfall is the most important precipitation for agriculture as melt-water provides the moisture required for agricultural production. Declining precipitation and increasing ratio of rainfall to snowfall threaten to intensify erosion and desertification on the sloping lands as rainfall is more likely to run off, rather than slowly infiltrate. This is likely to be compounded by rising temperatures and evapotranspiration. In the project site, increasing average of annual temperature of the ground air associated with the rainfall downtrend in a warm season and uptrend during cold period will lead to premature depletion of soil moisture reserves. This will result in a decrease in the contribution of summer precipitation to agricultural activities which constitute an important component of the community livelihood. In addition, the change in hydrothermal conditions will increase exposure of grain crops to various diseases resulting in lower grain quality and yield. Scientific evidences suggest that the frequency of droughts due to the climate change as a hazardous phenomenon for agricultural operations will keep growing.

Project aim:
To develop and implement adaptive land use, including soil and water conservation management and a system of land-use adapted to environmental landscapes, designed to conserve and renew natural fertility, create conditions for the sustainable management of both summer and winter precipitation, which will provide land-use stability against the negative effects of climate change.

Project tasks:
- Restoration of existing land infrastructure
- Environmental stabilization of landscapes
- Development of landscape-environmental plan for the territory
- Integration of changing climate parameters into agricultural landscape management

Project results:
- Reconstructed destroyed dams and dykes
- Reconstructed culverts
- Reconstructed existing water guiding shafts
- Pasture formation at low-productivity lands withdrawn from grain cropping
- Developed a landscape-environmental plan of the territory
- Diversified land-use
- Identified various land categories according to the cultivation conditions of grain crops
- Calculated water balance
- Optimized the agricultural land
- Plough-land management
- Improved community capacity to address climate change risks to agriculture
- Improved infrastructure and community institutional capacity
- Disseminated new land management strategy on a local level
- Incorporated lessons learned and CC adaptation techniques in local district development plan; publishing experience in local media
- Developed recommendations for soil-conservation planning