Europe & CIS

Situation analysis:

Rural poverty is closely linked with unsustainable land use practices, low land productivity and loss of land-carrying capacities.  Although poverty has many dimensions and causes, rural communities usually have few options to improve their well-being apart from improving land and natural resource management.  Solutions can be found at different levels of intervention; however, experience and evidence tends to support that community-based activities and rural-economic liberalization could accelerate improvements and enlarge opportunities of small private farmers.

Proposed programme:

The project focuses on the development of participatory processes for ensuring community involvement for collective action by creating interest groups, joint work on pilot projects and building solidarity required to resolve common problems and work towards community advancement.  The benefits to community organizations and impact of social mobilization at local and national levels will be sustained through linkages to policy, legal and regulatory frameworks.  The project will contribute to strengthened cooperation among Central Asia countries in the area of sustainable land management and lead to the implementation of the National Action Programmes to Combat Desertification and serves as inputs into Central Asian Country Initiative for Land Management. The specific objectives of the Project are: mobilize and prepare local communities for implementing sustainable natural resource management and alternative livelihood initiatives under the CACILM framework; engage the UNCCD RIOD Network  and other stakeholders in Central Asia to improve their response capacity to address local community needs, and support the dissemination and adoption of traditional knowledge and technologies.

Anticipated results:

- Improved capacity of local communities to engage in participatory design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation and review of projects at local level;
- Well-designed, locally-owned project concepts that fit under the CACILM framework, and the capacity of RIOD network members and other stakeholders enhanced to better service local community needs;
- An inventory of traditional innovations addressing sustainable natural resource management, information materials and effective methodologies for facilitating the dissemination of traditional knowledge;
- Exchange and adoption by local communities of innovative traditional approaches for sustainable management of natural resources and strengthened national cooperation through facilitating herder-to-herder and/or farmer-to-farmer exchanges.

Current status:

Project is ongoing in 2007.

Inkar Kadyrzhanova