🇹🇯 RESILAND CA+ in Tajikistan

The Tajikistan Resilient Landscapes Restoration Project is part of the Regional RESILAND CA+ Program, whose objective is to increase the resilience of regional landscapes in Central Asia, with a particular focus on cross-border landscapes and collaborative efforts.

The Project applies landscape management approaches that provide frameworks for allocating and managing land to achieve environmental, economic and social objectives in areas with multiple, often competing, land uses.

The project builds on lessons from ELMARL, CAMP4ASB, and other Bank- and donor-funded projects on forestry, pasture, agriculture, irrigation, disaster risk mitigation, and the country’s rural economy.

The Project is implemented over a five-year period by the Committee for Environmental Protection under the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan. The project works with village- and community-based resource user groups and organizations that take responsibility for the choice, design, and management of smaller-scale landscape and livelihood investments. At the same time, the project works across sectors, e.g., with the State Forest Agency, the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Finance, as well as local administration and organizations (district, sub-district) to incorporate a landscape approach into investment planning.

Project areas/districts have been selected based on a combination of criteria: poverty incidence, potential for integrated landscape restoration (incorporating pasture, agriculture, water, forestry, biodiversity), regional and transboundary corridors, and complementarity with government and donor-funded initiatives.

The project contributes to resilience through interventions that focus on: building the technical capacities of land users and extension support; supporting institutions and access to information; undertaking resource and climate risk assessments before selecting investments; and implementing a range of sustainable land management and climate adaptation investments that also sequester carbon.

Primary project beneficiaries are the rural communities, private farmers and farmer groups, villages and village communities, and resource user groups (e.g., for pasture) interested in adopting landscape restoration practices. These communities benefit from technical and financial support to implement technologies and approaches that improve their livelihoods, increase their resilience, while also contributing to the restoration of ecosystem functions. Government agencies benefit from technical support for integrated landscape planning to reconcile different land uses at national and regional scales. Government institutions benefit from financing for restoration activities in forest, pasture, and protected areas.