Grant Funds Supporting Partnership on Land Degradation in Central Asia
MANILA, PHILIPPINES - ADB is administering more than $4 million in grants to support an initiative to help Central Asian countries address land degradation. The grants, provided by Global Environment Facility ($3.025 million), International Fund for Agricultural Development ($200,000), and ADB itself ($800,000), will back activities of the Central Asian Countries Initiative for Land Management (CACILM), launched earlier this month in Kazakhstan. CALCILM is a partnership of five Central Asian countries and development partners dedicated to combating land degradation and improving rural livelihoods in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. It will be a 10-year program of country driven action and resource mobilization to strengthen policy and legal frameworks for sustainable land management, boosting institutions responsible for planning, and improving land management. In the five countries, land degradation – from overgrazing, soil erosion, salt damage to irrigated land, and desertification – is a serious problem, directly affecting the livelihood of nearly 20 million rural inhabitants. ADB is responsible for leading the CACILM partnership, coordinating programs, and supporting activities across the countries, including developing an information system to address sustainable land management, knowledge management and dissemination, and research. CALCIM program areas and activities will be based on each country's National Programming Framework as well as carried out within a multicountry framework. Committed funding up to end of 2008 is about $155 million. Coordination will be conducted through a task force comprising the members of the CACILM partnership and other international organizations. The other development partners involved are the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), CCD Project of the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Global Environment Facility, Global Mechanism, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), International Fund for Agricultural Development, Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation, United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme, and World Bank. Also participating are the Islamic Development Bank and the UNCCD Secretariat. See earlier story:
Partnership Launched to Combat Land Degradation in Central Asia About ADB | 
News and Events 
Top of page
