Trust Fund helps to mobilize $10 million to increase climate resilience in Tajikistan
On July 25, 2019 the Adaptation Fund approved the project “Increasing Climate Resilience of Rural Communities in Tajikistan” along with 9 other climate adaptation projects. The project proposal was prepared with the support of the Russia-UNDP Trust Fund for Development in the framework of the project “Building climate resilience in agriculture and water sectors of rural Tajikistan”.
Mobilized $9.9 million dollars will help to enhance climate resilience of small-scale farmers and pastoralists through an integrated landscape approach. The proposed project’s activities will focus in particular within one of the most climate-vulnerable river basins, namely the Kofirnighan River Basin (KRB). An integrated catchment management strategy will be developed for this basin which will be operationalized at district, sub-district and village levels. The strategy will provide detailed guidelines for suitable landscape management interventions to reduce the vulnerability to climate change.
Tajikistan is the most climate-vulnerable country in Central Asia due to extreme weather conditions which provoke frequent hydrometeorological disasters such as droughts, mudflows and landslides leading to the increase of soil erosion rates across the country. Indeed, natural hazards linked to climate change (e.g. droughts and landslides), result in annual losses equivalent to ~20% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and this puts social-economic situation in the country at risk. The vulnerability of Tajikistan to climate change is expected to intensify in the future, and consequently the building of climate resilience across the country is of paramount importance.