Skip to main content
Home

GEF Logo

GEF Logo

GEF Logo

Search
  • Who We Are

    Organization

    • Overview
    • CEO and Chairperson
    • Focal Points
    • Secretariat Staff

    GEF Council

    • Members & Alternates
    • Work Programs
    • Meetings
    • Decisions

    Funding

    • Overview
    • GEF-8 Replenishment
    • GEF-7 Replenishment
    • Replenishment Documents
    • Overview
    • CEO and Chairperson
    • Focal Points
    • Secretariat Staff
  • What We Do

    Topics

    Topics

    • Amazon
    • Biodiversity
    • Blended Finance
    • Chemicals and Waste
    • Climate Change
    • Food Security
    • Forests
    • Illegal Wildlife Trade
    • International Waters
    • Land Degradation
    • Least Developed Countries Fund
    • Mercury
    • Special Climate Change Fund
    • Sustainable Cities
    • View All Topics >>

    Stakeholder Engagement

    Stakeholder Engagement

    • Civil Society Organizations
    • Country Support Program
    • Gender
    • Indigenous Peoples
    • Knowledge & Learning
    • Private Sector
  • Projects & Operations

    Projects

    Projects

    • Project Database
    • Templates
    • How Projects Work

    Countries

    Countries

    • Recipient Countries
    • Donor Countries
    • Participant Countries
    • Country Support Program

    Operations

    Operations

    • Conflict Resolution Commissioner
    • Knowledge & Learning
    • Policies and Guidelines
    • Results
  • Partners

    Partners

    • Countries
    • GEF Agencies
    • Conventions
    • Civil Society Organizations
    • Private Sector
    • Countries
    • GEF Agencies
    • Conventions
    • Civil Society Organizations
    • Private Sector
  • Newsroom

    Newsroom Menu Column 1

    • All
    • News
    • Feature Stories
    • Press Releases
    • Multimedia
    • Publications
    • Blog

    Newsroom Menu Column 2

    • GEF Logo
    • Partner News
    • Newsletter
    • All
    • News
    • Feature Stories
    • Press Releases
    • Multimedia
    • Publications
    • Blog
  • Events
  • Search

Restoring land productivity in Kazakhstan's small villages

Feature Story
February 28, 2017
news_kz_old.jpg
news_kz_old.jpg

Through the GEF's Small Grants Programme, a project in Kazakhstan assisted local farmers with reestablishment of traditional agricultual practices lost with the fall of the Soviet Union. The project, called the Shiyen Public Fund, established a number of important initiatives. First, villagers were able to combine their cattle and hire professional shepherds to herd them to distant pasture areas. Second, with project support, local experts have trained the villagers on traditional methods of seasonal pasture management to sustain the productivity of the pasturelands and hayfields. Finally, beekeeping was introduced as part of the project. Villagers now supplement their income from selling honey, and bees aid the growth of sainfoin and crops around it through pollination.

As the world’s largest landlocked country, Kazakhstan possesses a diversity of natural landscapes, including vast mountain ranges and steppes where semi-nomadic people living in pastoral villages bring their cattle to graze. Seasonal pastoral practices, a mainstay in the village of Shiyen during the Soviet era, fell to the wayside with its collapse. This led to overgrazing, erosion, and desertification of pasturelands near the village. Eventually, the reduced value of Shiyen’s underfed livestock translated to negative impacts on the local economy.

During the Soviet era, seasonal rotation of distant pastures was a collectively organized practice. Shepherds gave their pastures a recovery period by rotating their grazing areas, herding cattle and other livestock to lowlands in spring and mountain foothills in summer. The state also financed and maintained necessary infrastructure, including water wells, and schools for training shepherds in practices such as crop seasonality and grazing routes. However, state-funded support ended once the Soviet Union was dissolved: wells on distant pastures were left unmaintained, and shepherd schools were shuttered. Lacking the knowledge and infrastructure for seasonal grazing methods, villagers chose to let their livestock graze close to home, eventually leading to widespread land degradation.

The GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP) helped reverse this situation through the creation of Public Fund “Shiyen.” This local organization received approximately USD $50,000 in funding from the GEF SGP in 2012 to implement a project with the aim of restoring seasonal pasturing methods and increasing local incomes. This ensures that the local villagers who will benefit when the land’s productivity is restored will also act as its stewards in the years to come.

The GEF SGP project complemented a previous project supported by the United Nations Development Program and the German International Cooperation (GIZ), that restored wells as a source of water during springtime, and provided satellite phones and yurts (mobile houses) with solar panels that ease the villagers’ nomadic lifestyle.

Kazakh_beekeepers_news_size.jpg
Beekeeping was integrated into seasonal pasture management as part of the Shiyen SGP project. In addition to providing villagers with a secondary source of income, bees pollinate sainfoin and other crops, benefitting the ecosystem at large.

Sainfoin_news_size.jpg
Pasture rotation allows the soil to regain its fertility and productivity for the next grazing season. To recover degraded lands near Shiyen, 125 hectares of sainfoin were sown. Sainfoin, a member of the legume family, has special root-nodules which allow it to fix nitrogen and recover soil fertility. Additionally, sainfoin provides a superb forage for grazing animals.

 

Canal_building_news_size.jpg
Through the project, a 1.1-kilometer pipeline was laid out to make a natural spring more accessible as a water source for sheep during summer.


This article was written in collaboration with Olga Romanova, GEF SGP Kazakhstan. Photos by Patrizia Cocca/Olga Romanova.

 

Topics

Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses
Sustainable Land Management

Countries

Kazakhstan
Related Content

Restored Seasonal Pastures Feed More Livestock in Kazakhstan

Multimedia
View All News

Related News

Two people in a field of cacay trees in Colombia
Feature Story

Regenerative agriculture offers fresh solutions for Latin America and the Caribbean

May 4, 2021
Mohamed Bakarr with an antelope
News

‘To succeed, we need to be open-minded, humble, and courageous’

August 20, 2020
Sudanese man in front of solar panels
Feature Story

Solar for agriculture: Empowering farmers in North Sudan

July 1, 2020

GEF Logo

Follow Us

GEF Affiliated Sites

  • GEF Portal
  • Independent Evaluation Office
  • Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel
  • Small Grants Programme

Who We Are

  • GEF Secretariat Staff
  • Conflict Resolution Commissioner
  • Council Members & Alternates
  • Focal Points
  • Careers
  • Legal
  • Contact Us

© 2023 Global Environment Facility, All Rights Reserved.  |   Legal