GIZ activities in Central Asia in the sphere of sustainable natural - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

GIZ activities in Central Asia in the sphere of sustainable natural resources management WOCAT Share Fair Natalia Mitiakova Pretoria, South Africa 28 May 2013

Natural resources in Central Asia are severely degraded due to inappropriate use and climate change Kazakhstan: 180 million ha are subject to degradation (66% of total area) Kyrgyzstan - 10,6 million ha of farmlands have already degraded ; 88% of arable lands - subject for erosion; 25% of pasture lands – are degraded. Tajikistan – 97 % of farmlands are affected by erosion. 88% of summer pasture and 97% of winter pasture are affected by erosion. Turkmenistan – 80% of lands are subject to degradation. Uzbekistan – 70% of lands are degraded. 51% of irrigated lands are salinized. UNESCAP (2007)

GIZ regional programme for sustainable use of natural resources in Central Asia  Regional programme supports the Central Asian countries Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in implementing sustainable management of natural resources such as forest, pasture, arable land, wildlife, energy efficiency, and combating land degradation.  Regional programme is implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.  GIZ is financed by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).  Regional programme works in Central Asia since 2000.  Regional programme’s mission - on behalf of the German government: • Contribute to sustainable forest and pasture management and to the conservation of biodiversity; • Help people to adapt land use to climate change; • Permanently improve the situation of the rural population.

Problems faced by the GIZ regional programme:  10-year activities of GIZ in CAC: hands-on experience, lessons learnt and successful practices on natural resources management.  SLM knowledge shouldn’t be lost and has to be used for further up- and out-scaling at national and regional levels in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan!  Strengthen knowledge management aimed at documenting, storage and dissemination of SLM experience.  What tools has to be used for that?

WOCAT strengths  … Standardized, comprehensive DB;  … Long-term storage of information;  … Open access to SLM best practices in the online DB;  … . Comparability of SLM BPs;  … Bilingual documenting (English and Russian);  … Availability of standard printable form on the base of online version;  … Ability to cover all thematic areas of the GIZ Regional Programme (forest, pasture, wildlife, energy efficiency) WOCAT standardized tools used by the GIZ  QT - questionnaire on SLM technology  QA - questionnaire on SLM approach

Progress achieved by the GIZ regional programme • Resource specialists to document best practices 13 QA have been selected in CAC (2 per country) • Regional WOCAT training has been conducted • 5 national WOCAT meetings in 5 CAC conducted to select and SLM BPs generated in the CACILM/GIZ/SLM-related projects at national level (2011) • 28 SLM BPs from CAC have been documented in WOCAT format 15 QT SLM best practices Catalogue from CA • consists of 28 SLM BPs are available in the online WOCAT DB (En/Ru)

Sustainable forest management (KZ, TJ, TM, UZ) 8 WOCAT documentations (4QA+4QT):  Joint Forestry Management (TJ, GIZ)  Savings Book Approach (TJ, GIZ)  Establishment of living seabuckthorn fences for the protection of reforestation sites (TJ, GIZ)  Planting forest on mountain slopes using moisture accumulating trenches (TM, GIZ)  Establishment of school ranger stations to involve youth in nature protection activity (KZ)  Community based forestry in Karakalpakstan (UZ)  Improvement of land under arid conditions through creation of pistachio plantations (UZ)  Agroforestry reclamation of degraded arable lands (UZ)

Sustainable pasture management (KZ, KR, UZ) 11 WOCAT documentations (6 QA+5QT):  Rangeland management through restoration of distant stock-breeding system and drastic improvement of rangelands (KZ)  Creation of a seed area of perennial grasses (KZ)  Irrigation of fields and pastures in autumn and early spring as an adaptation mechanism on sustainable water resources use (KZ)  Joint pasture use planning (KG, GIZ)  Joint pasture management (KG, GIZ)  Budget for pasture management (KG, GIZ)  Mapping in the development of pasture use plans (KG, GIZ)  Stimulating the production of winter fodder through micro-crediting (KG, GIZ)  Monitoring of pastures condition (KG, GIZ)  Cultivation of sainfoin on high mountain pastures – Suusamyr Valley (KG)  Pasture rotation in the desert areas of Uzbekistan (UZ)

Joint Pasture Management in Naryn, Kyrgyzstan: package of 6 WOCAT documentations (5QA+1QT):  QA Joint pasture use planning (KG, GIZ)  QA Joint pasture management (KG, GIZ)  QA Mapping in the development of pasture use plans (KG, GIZ)  QA Budget for pasture management (KG, GIZ)  QA Stimulating the production of winter fodder through micro-crediting (KG, GIZ)  QT Monitoring of pasture conditions (KG, GIZ)

Sustainable wildlife management (TJ, KG) 1 documentation (1 QA): Approach has been developed and introduced by GIZ regional programme in Tajikistan Now it is being transferred to Naryn province, Kyrgyzstan

Energy efficiency - access to thermal insulation (TAJ) 2 documentations (1 QA+1 QT):  Reduced pressure on forest resources by improved thermal insulation in private houses (TJ, GIZ)  Access to thermal insulation through micro loans (TJ, GIZ)

Arable land management and combating land degradation (KG, TM, UZ) 6 documentations (5 QT+1 QA):  The ridge sowing technology (KG)  Cereals growing by using minimum tillage(KG  Growing arundo reeds to create buffer zones around the households aimed at protection from the hot winds and at securing other economic goals (TM, GIZ)  Farmer Field Schools for improved agricultural practices in the irrigation zones (UZ)  Use of mineralized artesian water to organize irrigated crop farming in the Kyzylkum (UZ)  Stabilization and afforestation of shifting sands around settlements in the Karakum Desert (TM, GIZ)

Applying WOCAT tools by new GEF/FAO project in Kyrgyzstan • PPG phase of GEF/FAO project “Sustainable management of mountainous forest and land resources under climate change conditions” (KG) just has started (2013). • The GIZ Regional Programme participates in the PPG project phase. • The GIZ Regional Programme conducted an introductory training on WOCAT knowledge DB and tools for the project staff (May 2013) . • First aim: use GIZ/CACILM pilot experience on pasture and forest which has been documented in WOCAT during 2011-2012 in the project implementation. • Second aim: use WOCAT tools for documentation of new experiences which will be generated during the project implementation.

WOCAT imperfections WOCAT DB Approaches –“Restricted search” • Failing search by CAC geographical locations. • Bottle neck in the “Language” pop -up menu. • No search with Cyrillic words available. • Incomplete display of results after keywords search. • Noncompliance between targeted output and displayed results. • Regular failures in a word-combination search. • Mismatching outputs by search functions. WOCAT Approaches/Technologies “Free text search” • No search by capital Cyrillic letters.

Proposal for possible technical improvement of QT/QA: • Accompany text boxes of the QT and QA with information about sizes of the textboxes. • Increase size of the description sections of QT (section 2.1.2) and QA (section 2.1.1.2) from 3000 up to 4000 -5000 characters. hard format is both an advantage and a disadvantage of the WOCAT questionnaire Proposal for possible modification of search functions: • Improve search functions of the WOCAT DB. • Develop a brief help on how to use WOCAT search functions and place it next to the “search buttons” . It would be very useful for WOCAT newcomers! 31.03.2014

Thank you for your attention!