BACKGROUND

Central Asia and especially its mountainous areas is prone to natural disasters like earthquakes, land and mudslides, avalanches, floods, droughts and rock fall. Numerous disasters frequently affect the economy and the population of Central Asian countries, killing people, damaging livelihood and hampering sustainable development. In the last few years the region suffered from a number of devastating events drastically affecting the national economies.

The governmental structures in charge of emergency situations lack financial and skilled human resources to prevent such disasters. The responsibilities in case of emergency between the central government, district administration and local communities are unclear and the capacity of all stakeholders remains weak.

Local population underestimates potential risks and local decision-makers are unable to enforce the measures needed to protect inhabitants. People living in risk areas generally have only basic knowledge and experience related to risks of natural disasters. They do not have enough skills necessary to effectively manage disasters preventively in their locality. In this situation, awareness building and training of local decision-makers in basic skills of Risk Management becomes more and more urgent.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Swiss government assists Central Asian Republics in disaster reduction efforts since 2003. Disaster reduction became one of the five main domains of cooperation for Swiss development programme in the region in 2007-2010. An Awareness Building Project on Integrated Local Risk Management is supported in Tajikistan since 2004. In 2006 CAMP Alatoo started to replicate this successful experience in Kyrgyzstan.

The public Foundation CAMP Alatoo is a locally registered non-profit organisation in Kyrgyzstan and successor of the Central Asian Mountain Partnership Programme (CAMP), which was funded by SDC and implemented by the Centre for Development and Environment at the University of Bern (CDE) in 2000-2008.

The project uses innovative Learning for Sustainability (LforS) approach developed by CDE as a participatory and pedagogical tool for organization of workshops in Kyrgyz villages prone to natural disasters.

Workshops are prepared and conducted in villages by moderators in collaboration with the groups of beneficiaries. During a workshop groups comprised of stakeholders with different knowledge, experience, interests, and perceptions work several days on defined thematic issues. Participatory learning methods, context-based learning, sharing of experience among participants, and development of systemic comprehension are the main characteristics of the approach.

Within the project, all workshop material - in particular the ILRM module, the game and exhibition materials - were adapted, finalized and translated into Kyrgyz. The successful experiences were documented and disseminated through movie, exhibition and ILRM LforS workshops.

APPROACH

As the experience of the project’s first phase showed, watersheds play a crucial role especially if the project focuses on non-structural, preventive measures and links DRR with natural resources use. Therefore the project will focus on one watershed, Zerger in order to:

·         Link the villages in the upper and down zones of watershed (as the reason of disaster risks in the down zone village could be inappropriate land use and water management in the upper zone of watershed)

·         Establish multilevel stakeholder cooperation between village, self governance, rayon or oblast and national levels by involvement of each level in the project planning, implementation and evaluation. The project’s expert team will include local experts from communities and rayon and national experts. The project will be based on participatory bottom up planning process from community to watershed level.

Activities will be implemented in Uzgen rayon of Osh oblast and Suzak rayon at Jalal-Abad oblast. The Zerger river runs in Uzgen and Suzak rayons of the southern region of Kyrgyzstan, thus forming a watershed with three aiyl okmotus Jazyn aiyl okmotu, Jylaldyn and Zerger aiyl okmotus. The population of the named territory is 30073. The Zerger river has the third grade of a torrent risk, while the central part of Zerger watershed is in the zone of the highest level of earthquake risk.

OUTLOOK

At present time CAMP Alatoo is conducting baseline studies in the field, the outputs of which will allow to more effectively achieve the project’s challenges. Application of the integrated watershed approach in the phase II would provide additional incentives for communities and households to reduce risks of disasters which will lead to increased wood resources and clean drinking water as well. This approach involves the adoption of a coherent management system for land, water and vegetation which can decrease not only impacts of natural disasters but decrease risk of their occurrences and help to achieve the sustainable use of the natural resources within a watershed.