Addressing climate change risks to farming systems in Turkmenistan at national and community level

The main objective of the project is to strengthen water management practices and legislation at the national and local levels in order to support the adoption of high efficiency irrigation techniques. This is important for local communities in that currently, water is diverted away from private sector agriculture and horticulture towards strategic state crops. Economic evidence will be used to support water and agriculture modeling activities undertaken separately by the Ministries of Water Management and Agriculture. On the basis of economic outputs, it is expected that the project will support the reframing of water legislation to include climate change considerations, and help introduce regulations that support progressive water pricing and the communal management of water delivery services by the end of 2014.

The programme will seek to demonstrate the costs and benefits of community-level approaches, including water user associations, drip irrigation, harvesting, water points, terracing, intercropping, saksaul planting, and irrigation canal improvements. The lessons from these regional pilots will be used not only to inform the legislative reform process relating to land management and water use/pricing, but will also inform the development of larger scale communal management systems and their integration into the government’s social development and poverty alleviation strategy. The work of Water User Associations (WUAs) will be supported, and funds provided for WUA led community adaptation plans and concrete investments in water management systems and infrastructure.