Community-level organizations in Kazakhstan often lack essential adaptive management capabilities such as technical know-how, planning skills, experimentation capacities and organizational abilities, and may resort to unsustainable land and biodiversity resource-use practices that can threaten desert and steppe ecosystems. Thus it’s crucial to support community organizations to develop and implement adaptive management projects that build social, economic, and ecological resilience based on, and reinforced, by global environmental and local sustainable development benefits.

Thematic focus: steppe, semi-desert and desert landscapes

Geographic focus: 7 pilot regions (Akmola, Karaganda and Kostanay, Almaty, East Kazakhstan, Kyzylorda and Turkestan)

The project focuses on providing grant support to public organizations (NGOs) and local communities in rural regions for implementation of small projects in the main GEF thematic areas: biodiversity conservation, climate change (mitigation and adaptation), land degradation (sustainable land and water management); and also to increase NGOs and local communities’ capacities in addressing socio-economic issues, implementation and promotion of "green" technologies at the local level.

Expected results:

• Local community organizations formulate landscape strategies  for each pilot region and in multi-stakeholder partnerships implement adaptive management plans to strengthen socio-ecological resilience of steppe and desert landscapes based on conservation of biodiversity, sustainable management of land and water resources and adaptation to and mitigation of climate change
• Multi-stakeholder groups formed at the level of each pilot region to ensure successful implementation of adaptive management plan and projects
• Multi-stakeholder platforms are organized on the basis of the multi-stakeholder landscape management groups with involvement of local policy-makers and sub-national advisors to discuss potential policy innovations based on analysis of project experience and lessons learned
• Community organizations in target eco-systems build their adaptive management and organizational capacities by designing and implementing community and/or landscape level grant projects to sustain and revitalize biodiversity and ecosystem function; improve productivity and sustainability of production systems; develop viable livelihood alternatives; and strengthen formal and non-formal landscape governance institutions and mechanisms.
• Successful technologies, practices and systems from community-based initiatives are replicated and promoted for upscaling by multi-stakeholder partnerships using knowledge and lessons learned from identifying, testing and adapting community innovations for landscape and resource management.