Pei psia final draft final revision june 2016 2 signed

UNDP-UNEP POVERTY-ENVIRONMENT INITIATIVE (PEI) POVERTY AND SOCIAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT (PSIA) FINAL DRAFT Final Version June 23, 2016

PSIA International Consultant: Francesco di Villarosa, PhD

Team: Gulnara Abdykalykova, PEI project coordinator Aida Umanova, PEI project specialist Baibek Usubaliev, PEI consultant Shamsia Ibragimova, PSIA consultant Markel Toromyrza uulu, programme assistant Medina Jumakadryova, programme assistant Cholpon Akmatova, translator

Table of Content LIST OF ACRONYMS......................................................................................................................4 GLOSSARY.....................................................................................................................................6 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.................................................................................................................7 1.

INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................9

2.

CONTEXT............................................................................................................................11

3.

METHODOLOGY OF PSIA....................................................................................................15 3.1.

PSIA approach and focus............................................................................................15

3.2.

Evaluation criteria of poverty and social impact analysis and data sources................16

4. OVERVIEW OF REFORMS TO PASTURE MANAGEMENT AND THEIR FIT INTO NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL REFORM STRATEGIES...................................................19 4.1. An intra-sectoral perspective of pasture management reforms: legal and policy framework and key implementation issues............................................................................19 4.1.1.

Legal and policy framework of pasture reforms.................................................19

4.1.2.

Institutional structure of pasture reforms..........................................................20

4.1.3.

Implementation of pasture reforms: key challenges...........................................22

4.1.4.

Conflicts in pasture reforms implementation.....................................................23

4.2.

Inter-sectoral cooperation and conflict.......................................................................24

4.2.1.

Agriculture legal and policy framework and water-related conflicts...................24

4.2.2.

Environment legal and policy framework: conflicts between pasture management, secondary pasture users, territories under the responsibility of forestry agency and protected areas and new tools for cooperation..............................................25 4.3. A new framework for integrated policies: the National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2013-2017........................................................................................................27 4.4.

5.

Summary....................................................................................................................29

ANALYSIS OF AFFECTED STAKEHOLDERS.............................................................................31 5.1.

Literature review........................................................................................................31

5.2.

Macro data analysis....................................................................................................34

5.3.

Micro data analysis.....................................................................................................39

5.3.1.

Herders´ adhesion to PUA/PC arrangements and rules......................................40

5.3.2.

Benefits, incentives and sanctions from PUA/PC membership to herders..........45

5.3.3.

Impact on herders..............................................................................................48

5.3.4.

Perception of PUA/PC – participation, voice and empowerment.......................60

5.3.5.

Jamaat revolving seed fund................................................................................61

5.3.6.

Environmental implications and climate risk management................................64

6.

5.4.

Summary....................................................................................................................65

5.5.

Qualitative and focus groups analysis.........................................................................67

5.5.1.

Women...............................................................................................................67

5.5.2.

Youth..................................................................................................................71

INFLUENTIAL STAKEHOLDERS FOR PASTURE REFORMS......................................................74 6.1.

Key stakeholders in government.................................................................................74

6.1.1.

Pasture Department (PD)....................................................................................74

6.1.2.

Ministry of Agriculture (MA)...............................................................................75

6.1.3.

Kyrgyzgiprozem (Kyrgyz Design Institute on Land Management – KDIL).............76

6.1.4.

State Agency of Protection of Environment and Forestry (SAPEF)......................76

6.1.5.

Self-government administrations – Ayil Okmotus (AOs).....................................77

6.2.

Key stakeholders in university....................................................................................77

6.2.1.

Kyrgyz National Agrarian University (KNAU).......................................................77

6.2.2.

Naryn State University (NSU)..............................................................................78

6.3.

Key stakeholders in the non-governmental sector.....................................................78

6.3.1.

Camp Alatoo.......................................................................................................78

6.3.2.

Association of Kyrgyzstan Pasture Users.............................................................78

6.4.

Key stakeholders among international organisations.................................................79

6.4.1.

FAO.....................................................................................................................79

6.4.2.

GIZ......................................................................................................................79

6.4.3.

UN-WOMEN........................................................................................................79

6.4.4.

IFAD and the World Bank....................................................................................80

6.5.

Summary....................................................................................................................80

7. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER PEI-LED SCALING UP OF PASTURE MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES AND POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE POLICY REFORMS81 7.1.

Gaps in pasture reforms implementation and recommendations..............................82

7.2.

Risks............................................................................................................................88

7.3.

Final remarks..............................................................................................................89

REFERENCES...............................................................................................................................91

LIST OF ACRONYMS AA: Aiyl-Aimak (village territory) AKPUKJ: Association of Kyrgyzstan Pasture Users AO: Aiyl Okmotu (village level administration) ARIS: Community Development and Investment Agency AWS: Automatic Weather Stations CBO: Community-Based Organisation CRM: Climate Management Risks EEU: Eurasian Economic Union ELD: Economics of Land Degradation EWS: Early Warning Systems FAO: Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations FFS: Family Farming Systems FLERMONECA: Forest and Biodiversity Governance Including Environmental Monitoring GDP: Gross Domestic Product GEF: Global Environment Fund GIZ: Deutsche Geselleschaft fĂźr Internationale Zusammenarbeit (German Corporation for International Development) GNI: Gross National Income IFAD: International Fund for Agricultural Development KDIL: Kyrgyz Design Institute on Land Management KNAU: Kyrgyz National Agrarian University KR: Kyrgyz Republic MA: Ministry of Agriculture MDGs: Millennium Development Goals NGO: Non-Governmental Organisation NSC: National Statistics Committee NSSD: National Strategy for Sustainable Development NSU: Naryn State University

PC: Pasture Committee PD: Pasture Department PEI: Poverty-Environment Initiative PSIA: Poverty and Social Impact Assessment PUA: Pasture Users Association Q1-Q5: quintiles SAPEF: State Agency of Protection of Environment and Forestry SDGs: Sustainable Development Goals SDP: Sustainable Development Programme ToR: Terms of Reference UN: United Nations UNDP: United Nations Development Programme UNEP: United Nations Environment Programme UN-Women: United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women WUA: Water Users Association

GLOSSARY Aiyl-Aimak: village territory Aksakal court: a village-level court made up of the elderly, to judge over property, torts and family law Aiyl Okmotu: village level administration or self-government Jayit: pasture commitee Jailoo: summer mountain pastures Jamaat: cooperative arrangement of groups of approximately 8-10 families each sharing land and workforce Kumis: fermented dairy product traditionally made from mare´s milk Kurut: dairy products made from drained yoghurt or drained sour milk Mal Koshuu: herding services whereby experienced herders are contracted to lead herds to remote pastures Oblast: province Rayon: district Suzmo: thick drink made from yoghurt and milk.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The present PSIA aims at contributing to national policy by (i) identifying strengths and weaknesses in pasture reforms and their implementation, (ii) analysing the distributional impact of pasture reforms on different socioeconomic strata of pasture users, women and the young, and (iii) identifying relevant stakeholders whose strategies influence the course of pasture reforms in the Kyrgyz Republic and who can contribute to upscaling PEI best practices.

The legal, policy and institutional framework of pasture reforms is analysed together with the process of pasture reforms implementation, based on literature review and interviews with key informants. The distributional impact of pasture reforms is investigated focusing on two case studies, respectively of UNDP-GEF Demonstrating Sustainable Mountain Pasture Management Project in the Suusamyr Valley and UNDPUNEP Poverty and Environment Initiative in Naryn Oblast. In both Suusamyr and Naryn projects´ areas a sample survey with herders and focus groups with women and the young have been realised, producing interesting results that add value to the still limited knowledge of the effects of pasture reforms in the field.

The Law of Pastures of 2009 aims at redistributing economic, power and information asymmetries in favour of small and medium herders and livestock owners. The Law has fostered the decentralisation of effective power and responsibilities to the local, community-based level, through the creation of Pasture Users Associations and Pasture Committees (PUAs/PCs), but its implementation has been facing obstacles from low institutional capacity and lack of management tools and from ambiguities in the legal and institutional framework resulting in inter-sectoral and inter-institutional conflicts.

The economic redistributive purpose of pasture reforms has been attained just partially so far. Although poverty and especially extreme poverty are reducing in Suusamyr and Naryn projects´ areas as indicated by the general growth in livestock number and herders´ income, wealth concentration at the top of herders´ socioeconomic stratification, although slowing down, is still significant, and is reinforced by the existing production and market structures. Poor herders are mostly affected by the low scale and lack of access to added-value chains. In contrast, poor farmers joining the revolving seed fund arrangement in jamaats benefit from upscaling through land-sharing.

Women are hardly benefitted by pasture reforms as improvements in their economic situation are very punctual, hardly sustainable and limited to a small number of cases of small-scale, low-technology productive activities. At the same time, the double burden of work and domestic duties on women shows no signs of regress, especially when families move to remote pastures where living conditions are harsh. Whilst the submissive role of women within the family keeps being undisputed, PUA/PCs and jamaat associations can offer women opportunities for exercising their decision-making capacity in managerial functions. Unfortunately, however, in quantitative terms the number of women in management positions in these CBOs is still limited.

The young suffer from structural disadvantages stemming from small livestock and small land size ownership which have not been addressed by pasture reforms so far.

However, opportunities in PUAs/PCs, jamaat associations and village government exist for the young and a new generation of young activists seems to taking advantage of them on a larger scale than women.

The Pasture Department of the Ministry of Agriculture is committed to the improvement of the legal and institutional framework of pasture reforms and replication of PEI best practices, but it needs strengthening its capacity to coordinate different stakeholders (mainly international donors) to follow common and coherent guidelines in supporting pasture reforms.

The main recommendations from the present PSIA are categorised under four headings: A. Improvements to the legal framework: amendments are suggested to existing laws regarding (i) the regulation of the revolving seed fund in jamaats, and (ii) cooperatives taxation.

B. Further development of the policy framework, including (i) the enforcement of penalties for violating Pasture Committees´ rules, and (ii) the development of a minimum common content for coordinating pasture management initiatives of different stakeholders (mainly international donors).

C. With regard to pasture reforms´ institutional architecture and institutional development, it is suggested to strengthen inter-institutional and inter-sectoral cooperation on issues of (i) pastures fees calculation, (ii) investments of common interest of different sectors, and (iii) secondary pasture use, including by expanding the applicability of inter-institutional and inter-sectoral cooperative agreements.

D. At the operational level, recommendations are (i) to invest in capacity-building in information handling with emphasis on livestock census, landscape inventory and electronic pasture management system use; (ii) to advance in the experimentation for the extension of the revolving seed fund to other ecosystems beyond valley pastures; and (iii) to prioritise different technical assistance activities in order to improve pasture-related value chains.

For their implementation, these recommendations would benefit from the coordinated support of different stakeholders from the academy, civil society and the international donors´ community.

1. INTRODUCTION PSIA objective and approach The objective of the present PSIA is to assess the poverty and social impact of the sustainable pasture management tools and practices piloted under UNDP-GEF Demonstrating Sustainable Mountain Pasture Management Project in the Suusamyr Valley and UNDP-UNEP Poverty and Environment Initiative in Naryn Oblast1, in order to make convincing, evidence-based and financially-viable policy recommendations to the Kyrgyz Government to guide further replication in other parts of the country.

The assessment is meant to result in an evaluation of the short and long term distributional impact of the pilot reforms, taking into account the impact on different vulnerable groups (poor, women, youth) and on the environment; any unintentional impacts on these and other non-target groups or other aspects of environmental sustainability; the extent to which synergies with other donor and government programmes are successfully exploited; the institutional capacity to ensure sustainable impact of the pilot results and further up-scaling; and any changes in the regulatory and legislative framework which should be taken into account for the next stage of implementation.

Relevance of PSIA to national policy discussion The relevance of PSIA analysis to national policy discussion is the result of the twofold approach of PSIA studies in general, where the analysis of the distributional impact of the effects of policy joins the engagement of relevant stakeholders aiming at informing their decisions. Specifically, the present PSIA: (i) (ii)

(iii)

identifies strengths and weaknesses in pasture reforms and their implementation, focuses on issues of conflict and cooperation and highlights possible entry points for further advance of pasture reforms; analyses in-depth the distributional impact of pasture reforms on different socioeconomic strata of pasture users, women and the young, the mechanisms through which such impact materialises, and provides suggestions about possible strategies to mitigate wealth concentration and reinforcing the redistributive purpose of pasture reforms; and identifies relevant stakeholders whose strategies influence the course of pasture reforms in the Kyrgyz Republic and discusses their possible contribution to upscaling PEI best practices and magnifying the positive effects of pasture reforms.

The PSIA results are targeted at different audiences, namely policy makers, senior professionals in different government levels, international agencies, NGOs, the academy and practitioners in general.

PSIA main findings 1

In the rest of this paper, the expression “Suusamyr and Naryn projects� is used to indicate these two projects.

The Kyrgyz Republic Law of Pastures of 2009 has been designed with a redistributive purpose, aiming at favouring small and medium herders and livestock owners as well as protecting pastures from overgrazing. However, pasture reforms have been facing several obstacles in implementation, which are related both to flaws and ambiguities in the legal and policy framework and to low capacity in the field. As a possible result, growth in livestock number slowed down after 2009; approximately in the same period, the pace of rural poverty reduction decelerated too.

UNDP together with GEF and UNEP has supported pasture reforms in Suusamyr and Naryn, where trends both in livestock growth and poverty reduction overcome national and regional averages. In these areas, livestock concentration among wealthy herders, although high, shows signs of mitigation. Poorer herders are mainly disadvantaged from small livestock scale, high unitary costs of remote pasturing, and lack of access to adding value chains. In contrast, farmers who joined the cooperative arrangement and the seed revolving fund of jamaats benefit from upscaling production resulting from land sharing and division of labour.

The suggestions emerging from the PSIA focus on the need for improvements in the legal and policy framework of pasture reforms, capacity-building in the field, and upscaling and modernisation of herding-related productive activities.

PSIA report structure The present report is structured as follows.

Section 2 sets the context of the study, focusing on the main challenges to pasture management in the Kyrgyz Republic and introducing the approach, activities and outputs of UNDP-GEF Demonstrating Sustainable Mountain Pasture Management Project in the Suusamyr Valley and UNDP-UNEP Poverty and Environment Initiative supporting pasture management reforms.

In section 3 the methodology of PSIA is addressed together with poverty analysis evaluation criteria and data sources.

Section 4 presents an overview of pasture reforms in the Kyrgyz Republic and how they fit in national agricultural and environment policy, focusing on the legal-policy framework, implementation and conflict issues.

In section 5 the impact of pasture reforms on different stakeholders – herders, farmers, the poor, women and the young – is analysed, considering both macro secondary data and micro primary quantitative and qualitative data. In this section distributional analysis is included.

Section 6 addresses the main stakeholders who can influence pasture reforms, respectively from government, university, civil society and international organisations.

Finally, in section 7 recommendations for PEI best practices upscaling and future policy reforms are provided based on the main conclusions from the previous sections.

2. CONTEXT The Kyrgyz Republic at a glance The Kyrgyz Republic (KR) is a landlocked, mountainous country located in Central Asia.

Its total area is 199.9 thousand square kilometres, and its population 5.836 million people (2014). Its GDP in 2014 was $ 7.04 billion and per capita GNI $ 1,250, which classifies KR as a Lower Middle Income Country. Life expectancy at birth is 70.4 years 2.

Agriculture, and pasture specifically, have a prominent role in the KR. Two-thirds of KR ´s population are rural, and 55.4% of its territory is agricultural land, 87% of which (or 48.3% of the country´s total area) being permanent pastures. In addition, the agrarian sector accounts for 40% of total employment in the KR (and specifically for 70% of employment of the poor) and for 35% of GDP (Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation of the Kyrgyz Republic – UNDP – GEF 2012).

Most pastures are located in highlands, as mountain pastures occupy 40% of the country´s area and 85% of agricultural lands (ibid.).

Challenges in pasture management Notwithstanding its key role, more than 40% of KR´s agricultural land is seriously affected by degradation, and over 85% of overall land in the country is exposed to erosion3. As far as native pasture land is concerned, 49% of it is affected for both vegetation and soil state in the country4.

Land degradation is largely the result of poor pasture management in recent years.

After the collapse of the USSR, roads and bridges that allowed access to remote, highland pastures deteriorated, and the traditional practice of seasonal migration of livestock (transhumance) got lost. In turn, this led to overgrazing of pastures nearby villages, and without routine grazing, also distant pastures have overgrown with hard and thorny Karagana, noxious bushes and grasses. (Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation of the Kyrgyz Republic – UNDP – GEF 2012). At the same time, high quality seeds for forage cultivation were not provided by central government any more – as it was the case in Soviet times – and poor farmers could only purchase low quality seeds, which led to further land suffering, decreased forage harvesting (less 30%) and even more overgrazing of winter pastures close to villages. Overall, the livestock population of the country decreased, and living conditions of farmers and herders worsened.

Improving pasture management soon became a national priority.

Suusamyr UNDP-GEF Project Between 2008-2012, the UNDP with GEF grant financing and a budget of $ 1,939,216 5 implemented the Demonstrating Sustainable Mountain Pasture Management Project in the Suusamyr Valley. Suusamyr valley presents harsh climate conditions, with long and 2 http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=2&country=KGZ&series=&period= 3 http://www.unpei.org/what-we-do/pei-countries/kyrgyzstan#sthash.Z94yFOJz.dpuf 4 http://www.fao.org/3/a-au213e.pdf:7 5 Budget funding: UNDP USD 310,000, GEF USD 950,000, KR Government USD 631,000, other sources USD 48,216.

very cold winters and pastures above 2000 m of altitude, which nevertheless are used by shepherds from outside the valley too. The project worked with six villages under the local Aiyl Okmotu (AO – village level administration). The project´s objective was to develop a cost effective and reproducible pasture management mechanism, in order to reduce the negative effects to soil caused by pasturing as well as improving the living standards of rural population.

During Suusamyr Project´s implementation, in 2009 the Kenesh (parliament) of the KR issued the Law of Pastures, which introduced several innovations, namely: (i) it authorized farmers with individual right to grazing, (ii) it established the need to define boundaries of pastures, (iii) it decentralised management of all pasture land to Ayil Aimak (local government) with the further option to pass it to pasture users associations and their executive bodies – Pasture Committees (PCs), (iv) it prescribed a fee to be paid by shepherds to the Pasture Committee, based on the number of livestock as registered in a pasture ticket, and (v) it turned the preparation and implementation of annual and long term pasture management and use plans mandatory (Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation of the Kyrgyz Republic – UNDP – GEF 2012). As a result of the Law, 449 Pasture Users Associations (PUAs) were established for the first time in the country.

Suusamyr project was an important pillar for the application, as well as further improvements, of the Law of Pastures. Suusamyr project components and main actions are the following: 







 

an inventory and assessment of pastures in Suusamyr valley; this includes the identification of pastures sections borders, productivity and capacity of pastures, geo-botanical composition of grass stand, assessment of degradation extent and economic assessment of pastures; development and introduction of the Livestock Grazing Plan considering the wild migration corridors and establishing the rotation of pastures according to seasons and mountain landscapes; a model was also developed for optimum pressure calculation on pastures; development and implementation of the information system “Electronic Pasture Committee” for pasture monitoring, support to the grazing plan, record-keeping of livestock´s vaccination and Pasture Committee´s fees collection and reinvestment; establishment of own seed base for forage based on a cooperative arrangement of groups of approximately 8-10 families each sharing land and workforce (jamaats); UNDP provides start-up high quality seeds to jamaats, conditional to (i) the yearly transfer of 20% of surplus harvested seeds from existing jamaats to newly forming jamaats, thereby embedding a mechanism to incentivise the replication of the arrangement, and (ii) the inclusion of two to three poor families in each jamaat; establishment of the Suusamyr Pasture Users Association (PUA) and the Suusamyr Pastures PUAs Merger; improved pasture infrastructure, mainly to access mountain remote pastures in summer; 56 bridges constructed on three roads (over 30 km repaired); one



tractor to maintain roads; veterinary services station and pharmacies; six stables/barns for cattle, bathhouses for sheep and septic facilities, sheep sheds rehabilitated, 18 solar panels (12 of which to poor families and 6 for remote pastures), six micro-hydropower stations, drainage of some pasture lands, two wells in Suusamyr village, and 11 computers for Pasture Committees; these improvements were provided by the project, in many cases with significant contribution from the Pasture Committee´s collected and reinvested fees; setting up of the “Suusamyr FM” community radio station (Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation of the Kyrgyz Republic – UNDP – GEF 2012).

80 Pasture Committees have their land in Suusamyr Valley; 57 of these are part of the Suusamyr Pasture Users Association (PUA), which includes representatives of eleven rayons of three oblasts of the Kyrgyz Republic: Chui, Talas, and Jalal-Abad. The main objectives of the Suusamyr Pasture Users Association are (i) the coordination of all Pasture Committees who use Suusamyr Valley pastures (including 79 herders who come from outside Suusamyr Valley), (ii) the resolution of land related disputes securing fair access to pasture resources, and (iii) public awareness raising about sanitary and veterinary activities, methods of soil fertility increase, preservation of pasture lands, and improvement of infrastructure. In Suusamyr a Strategic Pasture Management Plan for 2012-2015 was developed with the participation of Pasture Committees members and in collaboration with the administrations at rayon and oblast levels. Pasture tickets are issued by the Pasture Committees including information on pasture rotation and routes for migration.

In Suusamyr 17 jamaats were also implemented at project start, that grew up to 128 at present, representing more than 60% of local households (considering an average of 7 families per jamaat, and a total of 1311 households according to the last official data).

A Jamaats' Association has been created in Suusamyr to coordinate the different jamaats, especially with regard to seeds passing to newly established jamaats, that showed some difficulties at the beginning.

UNDP-UNEP Poverty and Environment Initiative Project in Naryn Following the success of Suusamyr Project, the UNDP together with UNEP started in August 2011 the Poverty and Environment Initiative Project (PEI) in the Naryn Oblast, where, jointly with specialists of Naryn office of the Kyrgyz Pasture Department, five Aiyl Okmotu were selected: two in At-Bashy Rayon (Kara-Suu and Kara-Koyun) and three in Naryn Rayon (Dobolu, Ortok, Sary-Oi). The total area covered by PEI project is 360,046 hectares including 106,747 hectares of pastures.

The first phase of PEI lasted until the end of 2013, aiming at promoting the integration of poverty and environment issues into strategic planning at all government levels in the country, as well as into programmes and projects of all UN agencies and UNDP, based on pilots in Naryn and Suusamyr and on awareness-raising (Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation of the Kyrgyz Republic – UNDP – GEF 2012).

Basically, the same actions as in Suusamyr were replicated in Naryn: landscape inventory, definition of sections' boundaries and economic assessment of pastures,

cattle grazing plan, setting up of the electronic pasture management system, capacity building of Pasture Committees, pasture users and local government, investment in infrastructure, setting up of jamaats.

PUA/PCs were set in Kara-Suu, Kara-Koyun, Dobolu, Ortok and Sary-Oi villages. Some of them faced financial and management challenges. In Kara-Koyu, low fees collection has been associated to ineffective management on the part of the PC; in Dobolu, it has resulted in instability of PCs´ staff because of uncertain and generally low remuneration. In Kara-Suu fee collection is slightly higher because the village is relatively richer compared to its neighbours, and notwithstanding the absenteeism of the PC chairman. In Ortok fees collection is reportedly low, but exceptionally it did not affect the stability of the PC chairman (apparently because of his personal commitment).

At present, there are 14 jamaats in Ortok and more than 10 in Dobolu; 14 jamaats in Kara-Suu (representing 12% of local households) and 14 jamaats in Kara-Koyun (representing 17.5% of households) where other 10 jamaats are waiting for official legalisation; data for Sary-Oi are not available.

3. METHODOLOGY OF PSIA In the present section the object and methodology of PSIA are addressed, together with the analytical flow of the study, the criteria adopted for social and poverty impact analysis, and the data sources used.

3.1.

PSIA approach and focus

The World Bank approach to PSIA: dimensions and tools PSIA is an instrument that has been used extensively by the World Bank, and a significant methodological literature on PSIA has been produced by the Bank. This literature is the main reference for the present section.

According to the World Bank (2012), PSIA is made up of two key and interrelated elements: first, the analysis of the distributional impact of the effects of policy, with special emphasis on the poor and vulnerable; second, a process that aims at engaging relevant stakeholders and informing their decisions – without the latter element, the impact of PSIA on policy-making can be seriously hampered6. A methodological approach based upon these two elements is appropriate to the objectives and scope of the present PSIA. A wide set of tools and methods is available for conducting PSIA, drawing from the economic and social science, whose use depends on the sector and type of reform under analysis, the available information, and the capacity constraints7.

Specifically, for this PSIA tools for social analysis have been used. The focus of social analysis in PSIA is on the institutional, political and social dimensions of policy reforms, as the ultimate purpose of the distributional impact analysis is not just understanding, but also influencing better informed and locally owned policy review or – in our case – policy strengthening and upscaling of already on-going reforms.

Social analysis includes the analysis of formal and informal institutions or arrangements within their regulatory legal and policy framework, stakeholders´ strategies within a political economy perspective, and power relations as well as social dynamics in the field with their implications in terms of empowerment and inclusion of specific social groups8.

Analytical components of the present PSIA These are the dimensions that have been investigated in this PSIA too. More specifically, in the present PSIA the following analysis is included: 6 World Bank, Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) – Enhancing In-Country Partnerships in Poverty and Social

7 8

Impact Analysis (PSIA), Social Development Department, World Bank, Social Development Department, Washington DC 2012: 5-6, available at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTPSIA/Resources/Enhancingcountry-partnerships-GN.pdf http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPSIA/0,,contentMDK:20466271~menuPK: 1108016~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:490130,00.html. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPSIA/0,,contentMDK:22186494~menuPK:1108016~pa gePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:490130~isCURL:Y,00.html

A) Analysis of the legal and policy framework and of key reforms implementation issues, focusing on aspects of cooperation and conflict, informal versus formal arrangements; B) Stakeholders´ analysis divided according to two types of stakeholders: (i) those stakeholders who are affected (positively or negatively) by pasture reforms, to whom the proper social and poverty impact analysis is applied, including the distributional impact analysis, and crosscutting analysis of the poor, women and the young; and (ii) those stakeholders who can influence (positively or negatively) the course of action of pasture reforms, whose interests, strategies, institutional capacity and power (in the sense of the degree of effectiveness in influencing pasture reforms) are considered as the relevant analytical dimensions.

C) When opportune, socio-organisational analysis of local arrangements implementing pasture reforms in the field (Pasture Committees and jamaats) are analysed within their specific local contexts; these are relevant to the extent they influence pasture reforms outputs and contribute to observed outcomes in terms of social and poverty impact.

The analytical framework will include also a final section, where linkages are discussed among (i) the results of social and poverty impact analysis for affected stakeholders, (ii) the performance of local arrangements (as an intervening variable), and (iii) key issues in pasture reforms design and implementation vis-à-vis (iv) the results of the analysis of influential stakeholders.

3.2.

Evaluation criteria of poverty and social impact analysis and data sources

Data sources The present analysis has been based on a mix of quantitative and qualitative data. The following data sources have been used:     

Official legal and policy documents or reviews of them; Official data from the National Statistics Committee; Survey quantitative data from a sample of herders and farmers in Suusamyr and Naryn projects´ villages; Qualitative data from focus groups with women and young activists in Suusamyr, Kara-Suu and Ortok villages; In-depth interviews with key informants from the central government, international organisations, NGOs, universities, rayon and ayil-okmotu levels, Pasture Committees, jamaats associations, and local supporting services, e.g. veterinary services.

Analytical assumptions and evaluation criteria

Schematically, the assumptions the analysis is built upon shape the following logical sequence: Implementation of the Pasture Law/capacity and performance of Pasture Committees → pasture fees collection → reinvestment in infrastructure and additional incentives → access to more and better pastures → increase in livestock → reduction of poverty.

This logical sequence – obviously, a weberian ideal type9 – is the result of discussions with stakeholders especially in Suusamyr and Naryn, reflecting the expectations (and, more important, orienting the strategies and actions) of pasture users, Pasture Committees´ members and UNDP projects' staff in the field.

In the first place, the analysis is conducted at the macro level. The evolution over time of poverty both at the national and local level is compared to data on expected outputs of pasture reforms; these output data refer to the evolution over time of the number of livestock; in addition, data on pasture fees collected by Pasture Committees are used as an indicator of the performance of Pasture Commitees themselves.

The evaluation criteria in this case are based on (i) the evolution of poverty; and (ii) on the search for associations between poverty trends and trends in livestock number and fees collection. In other words, the curves of these variables and the curve of poverty are compared to investigate if they follow a similar behaviour or not – if the curves show similar trends, associations can be established between the variables, suggesting the presence of possible effects of pasture reforms and piloted practices on poverty. It is important to stress that, within the scope of the present PSIA, it is not possible to search for causal relationships between the outputs of pasture reforms and the piloted practices supporting them on the one hand, and poverty on the other, as an experimental design study (with ex-ante / ex-post survey data, counterfactual data from a control group, and at least a difference-in-difference final analysis) would be necessary for that.

More in-depth insights are provided by the analysis based on micro-data, whereby distributional impact is addressed by breaking herders´ data down into quintiles according to the number of livestock they own. In this case, the following analytical sequence has been followed: Adhesion of herders to PUA/PC arrangement and rules: membership, payment of pasture fees  Benefits to herders: access to/quality of infrastructure and facilities, pasture rotation, grazing planning  Impact on herders: evolution of livestock number, growth in herding services´ market, livestock fattening, animal and animal products´ sales and resulting income/consumption, income evolution, herders´ empowerment.

A similar, although simplified, sequence is followed for the analysis of jamaats, whereby three questions are focused: inclusion of the poor in jamaat, economic benefits from jamaat membership and farmers´ empowerment from jamaats.

9 According to Max Weber, an ideal type is a simplification of real life processes or structures, to be used as a guide to research.

4. OVERVIEW OF REFORMS TO PASTURE MANAGEMENT AND THEIR FIT INTO NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL REFORM STRATEGIES Based on an extensive review of the relevant literature and of legal/policy documents (with the possible limitation of documents that are directly available, or at least are commented, in English), the most significant aspects of the legal and policy framework of pasture management, agriculture and the environment are discussed in this chapter, together with key implementation issues, emphasising aspects of conflict and cooperation. The discussion moves from an initial intra-sectoral perspective (within pasture reforms only) to an inter-sectoral one (addressing the relations between pasture and other sectoral reforms, mainly in agriculture and environment).

The main findings of this section point to the socially-oriented nature of pasture reforms in the KR and to the obstacles they have been facing in implementation, stemming from weaknesses in the legal, policy and institutional framework and low operational capacity, often resulting in intra-sectoral as well as inter-sectoral conflicts. Opportunities for advancement in pasture reforms can be provided by new legislation and strategies focusing mainstreaming sustainable development issues in KR policy.

4.1.

An intra-sectoral perspective of pasture management reforms: legal and policy framework and key implementation issues

4.1.1. Legal and policy framework of pasture reforms The Law of Pasture of 2009 provides the main framework for pasture management reforms in the KR. The Law of Pasture builds upon two other important pieces of legislation, namely (i) the Land Code (1991, revised in 2001) whereby it is stated that landowners and land users are responsible for the rational use of their land plots, including restoration and improvement of soil fertility, protection of agricultural land from degradation and diseases; and (ii) the Law about Managing Agricultural Land (2001), according to which pasture land is owned exclusively by the state and can be transferred for use only, thereby reinforcing the Constitution´s statement that pastures cannot be owned privately.

The Law of Pasture has introduced several innovations in pasture management: a) pasture use is based on pasture tickets for which individual herders pay fees – the value of the pasture fee is established according to the number of livestock – substituting the previous system where pastures were leased on the basis of the payment for the area that was rented;

b) the responsibility for pasture management can be transferred from different local governments´ levels10 to Pasture Users Associations and their executive bodies, the Pasture Committees to whom pasture fees are paid by herders; c) boundaries of pastures are to be identified in order to eliminate a cause for frequent conflict and to set precisely the pasture area under the responsibility of each PUA/PC; and d) it is mandatory for Pasture Committees to prepare pasture management and use plans, including grazing plans with pasture rotation and migratory routes for herds, which are registered in each shepherd´s individual pasture ticket.

The guidelines for pasture management reforms are further reinforced by two policy documents, namely the Pasture Sector Development Concept 2012-2015 and the Strategy of Pasture Sector Development and Plan of Action 2012-2015. The goals of the Concept are the improvement of living standards of Kyrgyz population, the guarantee of food security and the preservation of pasture ecosystems. For achieving these goals, operational guidelines for implementation are provided, which focus on: (i) the need for promoting coherence of efforts and combined investments by different stakeholders – state authorities, self-governments, rural communities and pasture users; (ii) the improvement of pasture management and use related legislation framework; (iii) the introduction of innovative technologies for pasture improvement; (iv) the establishment of a capacity-building system for pasture users; and (vi) improvement of pasture infrastructure. All of these issues are extremely important for pasture reforms implementation – nevertheless, as we shall see in the rest of this section, their operationalisation has faced significant challenges.

The Law of Pasture has been amended twice so far (USAID et al 2013), establishing (i) that pasture fees value has to be set by representative bodies of local self-government based on the optimum load per unit area of pasture, the existing pasture infrastructure, as well as its productivity and remoteness (a national government statement provides indications for calculating fees´ value); and (ii) regulating the penalties in case of damages to pastures from grazing, according to standards of compensation for agricultural loss and in case of non-compliance with pasture and hayfields management plans established by PCs (Pasture Department Powerpoint 2015).

4.1.2. Institutional structure of pasture reforms The institutional structure of state management of pasture resources is visualised in figure 1 below.

10 According to the Law on Local Self-Government and Local State Administration of 2002, before the adoption of the Law of Pastures, pasture management was carried out at three levels: pastures for winter use at village level were managed by local self-governments, spring and autumn pastures were leased to the rayon state administrations, and distant summer pastures were under the authority of oblast level administrations (USAID et al. 2013).

Fig. 1 – Institutional structure of state management of pasture resources in the KR (source: adapted from USAID et al 2013:58).

According to figure 1, pasture management reforms emanate from the Pasture Department (PD) of the Ministry of Agriculture. The PD is also responsible for supervising the reforms´ implementation, with the support of Kyrgyzgiprozem on issues of land planning, monitoring and inventory. A chain of command for implementation in the field is structured from the Ministry of Agriculture down to regional, district and village levels, with decentralised technical support from the Ministry itself; and at the village level PUAs/PCs are supposed to coordinate with Ayil-Okmotu (village administrations), with no hierarchical relations between them. In parallel, other sectoral spheres of Government are meant to interact in coordination with the Ministry of Agriculture structure both at the national and district level, namely the State Agency of Protection of Environment and Forestry – SAPEF (for management of pastures in territories under the responsibility of forestry agency), the State Agency of Architecture and Construction (for most engineering- and works-related issues), and the State Registration Service (for registration of rights to immovable properties and the maintenance of topographic, geodesic and cartographic documents). The cooperation of the pasture sector with SAPEF is a key issue, as discussed later on. However, it is worth noting that in the figure above no direct interaction is included at the local or community level between PUAs/PCs on the one side and administrations of forests and Specially Protected Natural Territories on the other.

4.1.3. Implementation of pasture reforms: key challenges The implementation of PUAs/PCs started soon after the issuance of the Law of Pasture under a strict deadline and without clear operational guidelines. Village Administrations (Ayil Okmotu) initially took the lead in the creation of PUAs/PCs and selected “experienced honorable pasture experts and the village elite and did not particularly focus on ensuring broader community participation” (Crewett wd: 3).

However, such process of PC staffing clashed with the objective of the agency (ARIS) which had been designated by the Pasture Department to facilitate the implementation process (although decision-making still was with village administrations and the community). ARIS followed the PD´s intention to promote broad participation and open representativeness in the PCs (including for marginalized and minority groups), and for that it designed an information dissemination plan aiming at mobilising pasture users. Nevertheless, too strict a time framework did not allow for proper awareness raising and mobilisation – as a result, limited information was provided to pasture users, especially with regard to the participation opportunities that were being provided by the new pasture management arrangement (Crewett 2015). Broad pasture users´ participation was hampered also by the fact that, at the time this process occurred, several herders were still in distant summer/autumn pastures (Crewett wd). Although in some cases ARIS influenced the substitution of PC members with new ones elected according to more open eligibility rules, in general in the initial stage of reform implementation PCs kept being staffed by “resource users hand-picked by municipality-level administrators” (Crewett 2015: 3167) and information asymmetries among different groups of herders persisted.

Besides the ambiguities of the initial implementation period, different evaluation studies (USAID et al 2013, Crewett wd, Crewett 2015, Dörre 2015, Kasymov 2014, Rural 21 2014) point to common challenges in pasture management reforms, deriving from factors such as the low capacity level or incomplete knowledge of PC staff, lack of managment tools, high turnover of PC staff due to deficit budgeting resulting from low pasture fees collection, overlaying of informal working rules to formally established ones. Problems also arose related to pasture border demarcation between municipalities, withdrawal of use rights based on existing rental contracts, lack of updated maps and inventories of pastures´ conditions, unreliable livestock census numbers (see box below), and little clarity about the type of services PCs have to provide to pasture users (e.g. veterinary and herding services) as a consequence of fees payment. This has produced at times a poor management performance which has undermined the legitimacy of PUAs/PCs together with pasture users´ motivation to adhere to pastures use plans prepared by the latter, thereby perpetuating pasture degradation.

The financial sustainability of Pasture Committees is key, and it depends mainly on proper livestock census Reliable data on livestock number are critical for both sustaining PCs through fees collection and developing adequate pasture management and use plans. An underestimated number of livestock generates a vicious circle. First, it leads to low fees collection and a reduced budget for PCs. This, in turn, contributes to high turnover in

PC staff (thereby making capacity-building ineffective) because of low and unstable salaries; it also reduces the investment capacity of PCs in improving infrastructure, which in turn makes access to distant pastures difficult and dangerous. Finally, it feedbacks the whole vicious circle, by weakening the legitimacy of PCs, creating further negative incentives for pasture users to paying fees and adhering to pasture use plans, so perpetuating the degradation of pastures. In addition, as the low payment of fees resulting from cheating on the real number of livestock is supposed to be concentrated among wealthy herders, a source of conflict tends to be generated among different socioeconomic strata of pasture users.

In (USAID et al 2013) it is suggested that livestock census should be improved based on the triangulation of different data sources, e.g. shepherds, veterinary services, village administration etc. - which depends, however, on the consensus of different stakeholders as PCs, the Pasture Department, local self-governments and competent NGOs. 4.1.4. Conflicts in pasture reforms implementation Conflicts have emerged during pasture reforms implementation, mostly related to gaps and ambiguities in the legal framework about duties, rights and responsibilities of different institutions.

One type of conflict, which is very frequent but usually latent, is between village administrations (Aiyl-Okmotu – AO) and PCs within the same Aiyl-Aimak (village territory). Indications for coordination mechanisms between PC and AO in the legal framework are not enforced. This conflict rests also on the AO´s reluctance to accept PC´s new functions and the resulting loss of control over sources of revenue (pasture fees), and can be exacerbated by the fact that the approval of the AO is usually necessary for the PC to proceed to investment in pasture infrastructure. Pasture Users, in turn, tend often to consider the PC as an executing arm of the AO rather than an independent, community-based organisation (USAID et al 2013). Aiming at reducing the opportunities for conflict between PC and AO in the same village territory, an amendment to the Law of Pastures has established that PC Heads are nominated by AO Chiefs. This is supposed to facilitate the political alignment between PCs and AOs. Conflicts occur also between the PC and AO of neighbouring Aiyl-Aimaks (village territories) when pasture users from the PC in one village territory access pastures under the responsibility of a different PC/AO but refuse to pay fees for that. This case of conflict is fuelled by the lack of updated data on boundaries and inventory (ibid.).

Finally, conflicts occur between PCs and pasture users when the latter hide the actual number of livestock to evade the payment of fees or do not adhere to the PC grazing plan with regard to seasonal migration to distant pastures, especially when access is difficult for lack of infrastructure maintenance (see Box 1 above). The absence of enforcement measures and penalties for both these deviant behaviours of pasture users as well as the poor transparency of PC budgets contribute to fuelling such type of conflict (ibid.).

4.2.

Inter-sectoral cooperation and conflict

In the previous section pasture reforms have been discussed from an intra-sectoral perspective. In this sub-section and the following one, issues of cooperation and conflict with other sectors that are also relevant for pasture reforms are addressed. The focus of this discussion is on the sectors of environment and agriculture and their relations with pasture reforms.

4.2.1. Agriculture legal and policy framework and water-related conflicts The main pieces of legislation on agriculture are just indirectly relevant for pasture reforms.

The Law on Agriculture Development (2009) regulates the relations between agricultural producers and the state authorities and local self-governments, and establishes the legal framework for the execution of the state social and economic policy in the sphere of agricultural production. It also identifies a wide range of issues where the state needs to intervene, including infrastructure (for agriculture in general and for pasture and grazing specifically), veterinary and sanitary services, seeds production, breeding development, environmental protection, and water supply – just to quote the issues that have relevance for pasture reforms.

The Law on Food Security (2008) sets basic principles and standards for food security, including for the most vulnerable groups, as well as procedures in case of food crisis and for the continuous monitoring of food production, quality and availability. In parallel, the Food Security Programme 2009-2015 includes measures to increase the volume of agricultural and food products and diminish the import dependence of the country (FAO 2011). These legal and policy documents are just relevant for pasture reforms insofar as they indirectly stress the relevance of animal products for food security.

The Presidential Decree on “Development and Support of Enterprises involved in harvesting, processing and marketing of agricultural products� (2000) recognises the weaknesses and financial losses of enterprises in the agricultural sector; the poor performance of credit supply which has been provided by international organisations and channeled through government agencies to small and medium-size enterprises in the agricultural sector; and provides indications to different ministries, government agencies and local governments to take action in favour of cooperative farmers on issues of cooperative registration, veterinary, sanitary and technological support, taxation, marketing and consulting services, credit at preferential interest rates and support to indebted cooperatives, transport improvement, custom duties and governmental purchase of agricultural products. Also these issues are relevant for pasture reforms only indirectly, and especially if, in the future, community-based organisations related to pasture management and, mainly, to forage production, intend to move towards cooperative arrangements.

A relevant case of conflict between pasture users and farmers refers to water-related conflicts. This can be considered as a conflict between pasture management and agriculture not only because it involves farmers and pastor users, but also because in

the KR water management is under the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Conflicts may occur when herds damage arable land or plots´ fences on their way to watering places, especially when wells and watering facilities that in Soviet times existed near to most pasturelands are not working for lack of maintenance and rehabilitation. In addition, irrigated agriculture can suffer from lack of water as a result of suspended sediments blocking irrigation pipes and channels – the sediments being produced from soil erosion in the upper part of watersheds caused by overgrazing (Camp Aalato 2015).

In the KR issues related to water use are regulated by the Water Code (2005), where principles are set for the preservation of water´s flow and quality and for regulating the use of and payment for water under the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Water Users Associations (WUAs) have been established in the KR since the mid 90´s with the authority to trade water, define fees and impose sanctions for misuse, but they are mostly ineffective and powerless (Library of Congress website). Depending on more effective measures to strengthen WUAs, room for cooperation could be explored between them and PUAs/PCs – for instance in coordinating investment for improving watering facilities.

4.2.2. Environment legal and policy framework: conflicts between pasture management, secondary pasture users, territories under the responsibility of forestry agency and protected areas and new tools for cooperation With regard to the relationship between pasture reforms and the environmental legal/policy framework and its implementation, a premise is important. The economy of the KR is environmentally-intensive and is developed in an extensive manner (IMF 2014). As a consequence, when pasture use is at stake, conflicts tend to emerge from competition over scarce and degrading resources, including conflicts over the use of water and pastures in territories under the responsibility of forestry agency and in Specially Protected Natural Territories. Rehabilitating the infrastructure and water supply to distant pastures, together with improving the coordination between PCs and other environment-related bodies, are essential measures to mitigate these sources of conflict.

The use of natural resources (land, subsurface resources, forest, water, flora and fauna etc.) are regulated in the KR by the general Law ‘‘On protection of environment’’ (1999) and by specific sub-laws (e.g. “On Fauna” and “On Flora” of 1999 too) subsequently updated. The use of fauna and flora is subject to the issuance of a license from and the payment of a fee to the state (USAID et al 2013). The successive law ‘‘On protection and use of flora’’ (2001) indicates that agreements are mandatory between the users of flora (e.g. bee farmers, harvesters of wild medical plants or plants for industrial use) and the permanent or major users of the land (such as pasture users) that is to be provided for such flora uses (ibid.).

Notwithstanding such indications, conflicts often occur between PUAs/PCs and secondary users of pastures for the purpose of tourism11, business, hunting, bee11 The Law “On Tourism” (1999) mainly regulates the relationship between tourists and the providers of tourism activities but not the relations between the latter and third parties.

keeping and artisanal mining. These conflicts may arise from (i) competition over scarce resources for such purposes (for instance the right to occupy the best locations for business such as those near roads or markets); or (ii) disputes about fees collection for these practices between the PC or the AO and the secondary users; in addition, (iii) artisanal mining (a practice with a significant negative impact on pastures) is often practiced without licensing; also (iv) hunting, extraction of raw materials 12 and setting up of telecommunication antennas in pastures are potentially dangerous activities for which a compensation has to be paid to PUAs/PCs, whose payment is a further source of conflict.

Most of these conflicts originate from the knowledge gaps of PCs about their rights, lack of standards for setting the value of fees and compensation (together with the low capacity for monitoring the environmental impact, which would provide a reference for establishing such value), lack of legal support for enforcing fees and compensation payments when established, and disputes between the PC and the AO over the eventual destination of fees and compensation stemming from unclear roles and responsibilities on these issues (USAID et al 2013).

Environment-related conflicts occur also when pasture users access pasture land outside their right of use, as in the case of pastures in territories under the responsibility of forestry agency and Specially Protected Territories (SPTs). The Kyrgyz State Forest Fund is the owner of pastures which can be rented to PUs through the forestry agency, but under a different regime as the PCs´ pastures, whose conditions are not always known by PUAs/PCs. Such a knowledge gap is exacerbated by the conflicting nature of grazing rights in territories under the responsibility of forestry agency and in PUAs/PCs pastures, as in the former pasture use fees are still based on grazed hectares rather than on the number of livestock. Also the use of PCs´ and forestry agency´ funds is inconsistent and coordination on investment decision between these two bodies is weak, with a paralysing effect inhibiting repair and maintenance of infrastructure to access pastures, thereby further reinforcing the scarcity and degradation of the latter. Finally, overlaying and duplication of fees payment often occur (to both PCs and forestry agency), dis-incentivizing herders to pay either of them – this is caused by both the different regime for setting fees and by the fact that at times neither PCs nor forestry agency issue receipts confirming that payments are made (USAID et al 2013).

A possible way out to solve these problems by establishing formal mechanisms for cooperation based on clear responsibilities, is provided by the agreement that has been signed in 2013 between the Pasture Department and the State Agency of Protection of Environment and Forestry (SAPEF)13, whereby forest pastures can be transferred for management to PCs, hence integrating fees collection to the system in use by PCs and avoiding duplication of payment. The management transfer is made 12 The Law of the Kyrgyz Republic ‘‘On subsurface resources’’ (2012) states that such resources are exclusive property of the KR and that the State provides the right of use them by negotiation with interested parties who applied for that. Apparently, there is no mention to broader negotiation or agreement among different parties on different and conflicting uses.

13 SAPEF is the state agency responsible for the environment and specifically forests and territories under the responsibility of forestries. At present it is responsible for both environmental policy-making and environmental supervision and control, the latter being severely weakened by low funding (IMF 2014).

possible by a contract type agreement between PCs and forestry agency, whereby the part of collected fees corresponding to the use of forest pasture is refunded to the latter (USAID et al 2013).

Similar conflicts occur between PUAs/PCs and natural reserves or national parks, when prohibition to grazing is violated, or when specific areas where grazing is allowed, together with the conditions for grazing, are not known to PUAs/PCs. Also in this case the memorandum between the Pasture Department and SAPEF can be applied – as a matter of fact, it permits to extending the responsibility of PCs to all types of pastures provided that agreements are set with the appropriate institutions (USAID et al 2013).

The conflicts that have been discussed above share some common causes: a) In general, the scarcity and degradation of pastures versus the growing number of livestock exacerbates the competition for scarce natural resources inducing a chain effect on water, territories under the responsibility of forestry agency and protected areas. b) The lack of coordination among different laws, regulation frameworks and standards generates unclear institutional responsibilities, duplications and gaps in procedures, and weak or null cooperation mechanisms. c) The low level of awareness and knowledge in PUAs/PCs and other governing bodies at the community and local level, including in the legal fundamentals of their respective functions, leads to information asymmetries, mistrust and missed opportunities for participation and cooperation.

4.3.

A new framework for integrated policies: the National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2013-2017

The National Strategy for Sustainable Development (NSSD) 2013-2017 aims at providing a more coherent and purpose-oriented perspective for the integration of sectoral policies towards the common priority of national sustainable development. It also addresses some of the sources of conflict that have been identified above.

In this sub-section the NSSD is discussed with regard to pasture, agriculture and environment issues only. Pasture reforms contribute at least to three of the stated goals of the NSSD: enhancing agriculture productivity and quality of products, ensuring food availability14, and protecting the environment through improved management.

The NSSD15 is a framework document that emphasises the need for intersectoral coordination in policies´ implementation and sets policy priorities but no operational guidelines (these have to be materialised through annual plans with budget and nonbudget/donors funds16), for which further regulating laws need to be issued. This is the 14 In 2012, food self-sufficiency in the KR was only 38% for eggs and 37% for meat, which means that a potentially large domestic market exists for such products. In opposite, in the same year the production of milk was 112% of the domestic need.

15 The Strategy for Sustainable Development has been prepared by the National Council for Sustainable Development, under the leadership of the President of the KR, aiming at integrating the perspective of all government branches, the private sector and the civil society.

16 The National Strategy for Sustainable Development also includes estimates of deficit funding, “a finance gap that

case, specifically, of pasture management, for which the NSSD indicates that regulations and funding are to be established for PUAs/PCs capacity-building, targeted rehabilitation of pasture infrastructure facilities, improvement of forage capacity in natural pastures, and protection of pasture ecosystems – all very relevant priorities anyway.

The NSSD identifies agriculture as one of the strategic sectors for the sustainable development of the country, and sets priorities for the agriculture sector that address some of the shortfalls of pasture reforms that have been discussed in the previous sections, at the same time integrating them within a sector-wide framework. In this regard, the NSSD focuses on issues such as the identification of pasture borders, agricultural land and monitoring, livestock identification mechanisms (a new law has been issued already for that), measures to counter-balance the excessive fragmentation of agricultural plots from a very socially-oriented land reform 17, and limited access of rural producers to government services, logistic and financial resources (including veterinary services, quality seeds and pedigree breeding as well as fertilisers) (IMF 2014). Although not yet operational, these indications from the NSSD (as the ones from the previous paragraph) can pave the way for the replication of successful experiences from UNDP-supported projects.

With regard to the environment, the NSSD explicitly recognises that the current degradation of land is due to failures in farming and livestock systems, representing a threat to the country´s food security and future sustainable development. A more effective use of land and water resources is priority, which has to be attained by improving the government´s monitoring capacity together with a strengthened role of local authorities and public organisations (IMF 2014).

Moving from policy-making to policy implementation, the Government of the KR has associated to the NSSD a further policy document providing more operational indications for real-life administration, the Sustainable Development Program (SDP) 2013-2017. The SPD introduces a refreshing perspective in KR´s policy approach, as specific key requirements for effective administration are addressed, within a multidimensional perspective. The issues to be addressed are (i) institutional strengthening; (ii) improvement in legislation; (iii) human resource capacity-building; and (iv) reliability of information for reconciled (that is, based on consensus-building and intersectoral negotiation) policy solutions.

The section of the SDP on regional sustainable development is one of the most relevant for pasture reforms. The focus of this section is on project-targeted local community development policy based on regional specialisation, interregional trade and cooperation. The backbone on which local community development is to be structured is the “two-level model of intergovernmental fiscal relations [which] should become might be a subject of constructive cooperation with international donors as a part of development of the Joint Strategy for Donor Support to the Kyrgyz Republic 2017” (IMF 2014). For the development of strategic sectors, including agriculture among them, only 40.7% of necessary funds can be guaranteed by the Treasury budget, the remaining part depending on donors´ finance (ibid.).

17 In the KR more than 334,000 farms exist with an average arable area of only 2.7 hectares including 1.9 hectares of irrigated area (IMF 2014).

the encouraging factor for local governance bodies with respect to promotion of prospective projects locally” (IMF 2014: 9). The parallel is apparent, in this case, with the pasture reform model based on financially self-sustainable PUAs/PCs, to be coordinated to AOs funding and to transfers and structural investments from the central government.

Lastly, it is worth mentioning that both NSSD and SDP address to some extent Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sustainable development issues have been part of strategic political and programmatic agenda in Kyrgyzstan for a long time but they gained more centrality with the adoption of NSSD and SDP. As NSSD and SDP were issued before the establishment of SDGs, the Kyrgyz government analysed to what extent these policy documents reflect the transition from MDGs to SDGs. The analysis shows that when NSSD and SDP are considered altogether, 72 percent of SDGs´ targets are reflected in these documents. In addition, the cross-sectoral institutional capacity that has been built up to follow up MDGs´ attainment is already in place to support also the transition to SDGs. What needs to be strengthened is a system of indicators of achievement of SDGs at the national, provincial/municipal and local level. This issue of indicators will be specifically addressed in the Conclusions of the present report, especially for SDG 2 “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture” for which concordance between NSSD/SDP and SDGs is weak and national adaptation is necessary (UN Economic and Social Council 2015).

This is also the SDG that is most relevant for the object of the present PSIA.

4.4.

Summary

The Law of Pastures of 2009 aims at redistributing economic, power and information asymmetries in favour of small and medium herders and livestock owners, but its implementation has been facing obstacles from low capacity and lack of management tools, ambiguities in the legal and institutional framework resulting in inter-sectoral and inter-institutional conflicts, and threats by local elites to capture and manipulate pasture users´ associations and pasture committees.

Overall, the KR legislation on pasture use and management can be considered as socially oriented, as it is primarily meant at protecting the rights and interests of KR pasture users (USAID et al 2013). To which extent it has succeeded so far to attaining such purpose is the object of analysis of the next section of the PSIA report.

The Law of Pastures has fostered the decentralisation of effective power and responsibilities to the very local, community-based level through the creation of PUAs/PCs. However, implementation failures of at least three types have been identified and associated to sources of conflicts:

 

institutional strengthening failures, which are related to low awareness raising, knowledge transfer, capacity-building and provision of working tools; legal and institutional design failures, associated to unclear roles and responsibilities and the lack of formal mechanisms for intersectoral and



interinstitutional cooperation and enforcement of violations; political economy failures, that – contradicting the apparently genuine commitment of the Pasture Department, and to some extent as a consequence of items (i) and (ii) above – allowed some room for manipulation of the PUA/PC arrangement, the proliferation of informal working rules, and for a deficit in participation and transparency.

5. ANALYSIS OF AFFECTED STAKEHOLDERS This section approaches the distributional impact of pasture management reforms and PEI project piloted practices on the following stakeholders: (i) pasture users, (ii) farmers, (iii) the poor as part of (i) and (ii), (iv) women, (v) the young.

The analysis is structured as follows. Initially, relevant literature is discussed, and a framework is constructed to organise and analyse both quantitative and qualitative information. Successively, official statistics are analysed at the macro level on possible associations between rural poverty trends, expected effects of pasture reforms on livestock number, and PUA/PC performance. The analysis of micro data from field work follows, whereby the focus is on distributional impact analysis.

Overall, the Law of Pastures of 2009 apparently has not delivered the expected results in terms of livestock number growth and, to some extent, poverty reduction. However, when externally supported – as it has been the case in Suusamyr and Naryn projects´ areas – pasture reforms show better performance in terms of both livestock increase and decreasing poverty. This seems to be the result of improved facilities, services and infrastructure, and to a lesser extent of improved pasture management capacity.

Livestock concentration among wealthy herders might be slowing down but it is still high, and poorer herders – although improving their economic status overall – still face obstacle to robust growth from the small scale of livestock and lack of access to adding value chains. In contrast, farmers in jamaats benefit from land sharing and improved division of labour. Benefits from pasture reforms to women and the young are still limited.

5.1.

Literature review

Market opportunities and socioeconomic inequality In Martiniére (2012) the evolution of the market for animal products and its effects on the agropastoral system are analysed based on a case study in the Chuy province 18. The demand for animal products as well as their prices have been growing in the last years – the beef market has even been labelled as a “bull” market. After the crisis that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, livestock number has increased 37% between 2000 and 2011 in the KR – even so, current livestock levels are below what pastures can sustain in Kyrgyzstan and had indeed sustained in Soviet times, showing the great potential for further livestock expansion in the country. In Chuy province, between 2000-2011, accumulated inflation has been 200%, but beef prices have rose 450%, milk prices 400% and mutton prices 330% (versus just 50% of wheat). The trend is estimated to continue, as the growing urban demand should keep prices of animal products high and stable. In fact, complementing Martiniére (op. cit.) with more recent data, according to the World Food Programme, in 2015 the retail price of beef and

18 Different for instance from Naryn or other remote areas, Chuy province enjoys a good access to the market of both Bishkek and Almaty, therefore the opportunities that the growing demand for animal products provides are likely to be magnified in this case. In Naryn, only meat is valuable enough to be marketed far away, whereas market opportunities for daily farming for low- and middle-income families are quite limited (Martiniére 2012).

mutton were considered at “near-record level�19.

However, even in the presence of a growing demand for animal products from urban areas (as well as for forage due to livestock recovery), socioeconomic inequality is said to be increasing in the KR countryside, according to the ability of different groups in grasping new market opportunities. A typology of four Family Farming Systems (FFS) is used in MartiniĂŠre (op. cit.) to analyse how competitive is the access to market opportunities for different groups, and, consequently, how differentiated are their living conditions. a) FFS1: destitute households involved in horticulture and daily farm labour, mostly headed by elderly people or single parents who sold or are renting their land; their small scale production is used basically for self-consumption, and notwithstanding social assistance, these families experience financial hardship and food insecurity; b) FFS2: vulnerable small crop farming systems; these are usually made up of nuclear families, owing 2-6 hectares plots that are allocated to irrigated and mechanized cropping; they produce mainly cereals and forage for both self-consumption and the market, but the resulting income is on average low because of the small scale of production and the vulnerability to price fluctuations of cereals; consequently, more and more families turn to fodder production because of the higher value added (US$ 500 per hectare versus US$ 300 for wheat) and of the growing market associated to the increasing number of livestock; in addition, fodder production needs sowing every 2-3 years rather than every year as for cereals; many families also rely increasingly on offfarm jobs to secure their livelihoods; finally, this group is characterised by the small number of livestock (2-30 sheep or goats) they own, which therefore can hardly work as a self-insurance mechanism in times of hardship; c) FFS3: sustainable dairy farming systems, which superficially can resemble FFS2 since they adopt the same cropping system and own a small herd, but actually are differentiated because of the larger capital they have obtained from extra jobs, migration and microcredit, and invested in dairy production; this group feeds its livestock with self-produced fodder and sells animal products to the local market where prices have been high and stable and less vulnerable to international price variations; the sale of milk grants a regular cash income during 7-8 months a year although demanding extra female labour (one woman milking 5-6 cows a day), and calves can also be sold when cash is needed; d) FFS4: dynamic meat producers owing more than 30 sheep, 6 cattle and one horse; also in this case fodder for livestock is self-produced, but extra fodder is bought too, usually from FFS2, and herders have the opportunity to access remote pastures, so increasing their profitability by fattening and selling adult animals (the price of fattening bull is doubling every 6 months); with the resulting profit they can further diversify income sources by investing in non-agricultural activities such as small retail or tourism.

19

http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/ena/wfp280103.pdf

The typology that has been developed by Martiniére (op.cit.) is useful as it shows to what degree different groups in rural areas in the KR are able, based on their assets and strategies, to seize the existing opportunities from the market. It also shows that at least two groups (FFS4 and FFS3) can actually have sustainable livelihoods or even prosper. However, what is most interesting in the present PSIA is to investigate how pasture reforms interact with these market-related dynamics and specifically if they can widen or open up new opportunities, and for whom.

Redistributive purpose of pasture reforms and manipulation by local elites Interesting contributions on the distributional effects of pasture reforms can be found in (Kasymov and Thiel 2014 and Kasymov 2014), based on a case-study of two communities in Chuy and Naryn provinces (incidentally, the same where this PSIA´s fieldwork has been conducted). According to these studies, pasture reforms in general tend to redistribute power and information asymmetries in favour of small/medium herders and livestock owners: the introduction of pasture tickets, substituting the previous pasture rent system, bound large livestock owners from semi-monopolising the best and/or more accessible pastures; pasture use plans, in turn, force all herders and livestock owners to move to remote pastures, including the wealthiest ones whose strategy has been often to privilege pasture near villages in order to reduce transportation costs and maximise the access to market facilities. We can add that access to remote pastures is incentivised by the highly profitable opportunity of fattening and then selling adult animals, as previously seen.

A specific group that can benefit in terms of increased employment from pasture reforms are the experienced herders who own small herds or none and are contracted by large livestock owners to take their herds to summer, autumn and spring pastures (the so-called Mal Koshuu arrangement). Due to the increasing number of livestock in the KR, together with the broadening possibility (or obligation if pasture use plans are enforced) to access remote pastures, the demand for Mal Koshuu services is growing as well as the employment opportunities and the remuneration of herding services – according to Kasymov and Thiel (op. cit.), in Jergetal community the cost of Mal Koshuu has increased 100% for sheep/goats and 150% for cattle between 2007-2013.

However, following the same authors, formal rules that have been established by pasture reforms are not necessarily followed, as a situation of “legal pluralism” (coexistence of many institutional levels or frameworks) creates room for bargaining, whereby different stakeholders follow different strategies, aiming at substituting formal rules for informal ones favouring them. For instance, we have seen in the section on pasture reforms that rich livestock owners tend to hide the number of animals they own and to evade or negotiate with the pasture committee the payment of pasture fees (or transfer them to Mal Koshuu, according to Kasymov and Thiel op.cit.); in addition, Aiyl Okmotu (AO) leaders allied to wealthy livestock owners (and to Pasture Committees at times) influence negatively the remuneration level of Mal Koshuu herding services in annual village meetings. In general terms, rich herders often tend to shape the way new pasture management arrangements work and to re-establish previous power and information asymmetries. The final outcome of this bargaining process depends on contextual power relations, the effectiveness of PC pasture

management, the degree of social control by the community, and the capacity of PCs and public authorities to enforce the established rules.

Depending on the result of this bargaining processes, by redistributing access to key resources, pasture reforms can empower and benefit small and medium herders who often represent the majority of members of pasture committees. Following the typology of MartiniĂŠre above, these correspond approximately to FFS2 and, mainly, to FFS3 groups. However, this can be a win-win situation too, as large livestock owners (corresponding to FFS4 group) can benefit from livestock fattening from access to remote pastures too.

In practice, for such a redistribution effect to materialise, the key issue is to increase the stock of accessible resources (pastures, water, territories under the responsibility of forestry agency) for pasture users, and to regulate its use in order to promote a fair access. This, in turn, depends on two key factors: (i) to enforce pasture committees´ rules (mainly on livestock counting and adhesion to pasture grazing plans) through effective incentives, penalties and social control, and (ii) to foster access to such resources through improvements in infrastructure, appropriate incentives and interinstitutional cooperation.

In the next sections, the effectiveness of pasture reforms in redistributing access to power, information and economic resources is assessed based on the analysis of both macro and micro data.

5.2.

Macro data analysis

In this sub-section quantitative data from official statistics at different territorial levels are analysed and discussed in order to assess possible associations between pasture management reforms and poverty trends. The following data are considered: poverty and extreme poverty trends, evolution of livestock number, and pasture use fees revenues to PUA/PCs. Poverty and extreme poverty trends at the national and oblast level

Poverty and Extreme Poverty 2005-2014 60

50

40

30

20

10

0 2005

2006

2007

Poor KR Poor Chui obl a st

2008

2009

2010

Extreme poor KR Extreme poor Naryn obl a st

2011

2012

2013

2014

Poor Naryn obl a st Extreme poor Chui obl at

Figure 2 – Evolution of poverty and extreme poverty 2005-2014, KR, Naryn Oblast and Chuy Oblast – Source: NSC According to figure 2, poverty and especially extreme poverty in the KR show an overall decreasing trend in the period 2005-2014, interrupted in 2010-2012 but then resumed in 2013-2014. The national trend is dramatically intensified, with a one-year gap in 2013, in Naryn Oblast whereas in Chuy Oblast 2014 recovery is smaller, leading to equal or similar levels as in 2005.

For the purpose of the present analysis it is important to add that over the whole period reduction in poverty and extreme poverty is more accentuated in rural areas than in urban areas, as indicated in figure 3 below. At the same time, however, the constant downward trend in rural poverty reduction is interrupted in 2010 – coincidentally, one year after pasture reforms were introduced – and, different from urban poverty, it just marginally resumed in 2012-2013. Rural extreme poverty, in contrast, steadily decreased since 2011-2014 after a temporarily peak in 2010 20.

20

Newly released poverty data for 2015 indicate that in this year urban poverty increased 2.4 percentage points and rural poverty just 1 percentage point.

Poverty and Extreme Poverty, Urban-Rural 60.0 50.0 40.0 30.0 20.0 10.0 0.0 2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

Urban poor Urban extreme poor

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

Rural poor Rural extreme poor

Figure 3 – Evolution of urban and rural poverty and extreme poverty 2005-2014, KR – Source: NSC Trends in livestock number before and after the Law of Pastures Trends in post-2009 poverty reduction in rural areas show an interesting parallel with trends in livestock number evolution before and after the Law of Pasture as indicated in table 1 below. In table 1, data for full time individual farmers and part time individual farmers (not for state or collective farms, whose figures are insignificant anyway) are compared for a five-years period respectively before and after the year the Law of Pastures was issued (2009). As we suppose that the effects of the Law did not materialise immediately (and pasture committees were established in the summer/autumn of 2009), 2009 has been included in the period before law issuance.

The comparison is made using the average yearly growth (which can be positive or negative) because the comparison only between the first and last year of each period might be biased if any of these years was an exceptional one, for instance because of drought. A further reason for using the average yearly growth is that data for 2007 are missing, therefore the comparison is between time spans of five years each, but one of them has data for only four of the five years.

Kyrgyz Republic Farming Cattle Sheep and goats Horses Part time farms

(A) Average yearly growth 2005-2009

(B) Average yearly growth Difference B-A 2010-2014

6.2%

3.4%

-2.8%

8.4% 1.7%

3.5% 2.9%

-4.9% 1.2%

Cattle Sheep and goats Horses Naryn oblast Farming Cattle Sheep and goats Horses Part time farms Cattle Sheep and goats Horses

6.6%

2.6%

-4.0%

6.6% 4.4%

4.2% 4.4%

-2.4% 0.0%

4.3%

2.0%

-2.3%

8.9% 0.7%

3.3% 2.3%

-5.6% 1.6%

0.8%

4.7%

4.0%

9.8% -4.0%

3.4% 8.3%

-6.4% 12.3%

Chuy oblast Farming Cattle 10.3% 5.4% -5.0% Sheep and goats 12.7% 4.8% -7.9% Horses 11.4% 7.9% -3.5% Part time farms Cattle 1.6% -0.9% -2.5% Sheep and goats 6.7% 0.2% -6.5% Horses -3.0% 2.6% 5.5% Table 1 – Livestock number for selected species, KR, Naryn and Chuy Oblasts, 20052010. Source: NSC Livestock number has been growing in the KR since the mid 90´s. The upward trend continues in the whole 2005-2014 period, but the pace of growth after the Law of Pasture has decreased for cattle and sheep/goats and increased or remained stable only for horses21 (cattle and sheep/goats of full-time farmers – but not of part-time farmers – still grow more than horses in 2010-2014, but even so, less than they used to in 2005-2009). The trend observed for cattle and sheep/goats cannot be attributed to saturation, neither of pastures22 nor of market demand (see above, discussion on the 21

The number of horses can be growing at constant pace because horses are easier to breed compared to cattle (cattle grazing requires the presence of herders) and sheep/goats (who are more vulnerable to predators).

22 The World Bank estimates that the value of potential pastures in the Kyrgyz Republic is worth US$ 100 million a year. Specifically, Suusamyr has 302,000 hectares of usable pasture (94,000 only near the villages) out of 479,000 hectares of land, with an economic capacity estimated at US$ 39 million; access to distant pastures would provide opportunity for grazing additional 57,000 livestock heads (Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation – UNDP – GEF 2012). In Kara-Koyun, the unused pastures cover 38,873.5 hectares out of 73,536.5 hectares of

beef and mutton booming market). Climate factors can be related, although droughts occurred both before (2008) and after the Law of Pastures (2012 and 2014, the latter being the most severe of all).

At the oblast level, farmers in Naryn tend to follow the same trend as the national one, whereas farmers in Chuy underperform compared to the national average. This seems to be consistent with lower poverty reduction in Chuy Oblast than in Naryn Oblast as previously discussed. At the same time, however, part-time farmers show an erratic behaviour, showing both in Naryn and Chuy better trends than national data for cattle and horses but worst ones for sheep and goats.

One hypothesis has been raised by pasture management specialists 23, that the reduction in the pace of growth of livestock post-2009 pasture reform is only apparent, as when pasture fees payment based on the number of livestock was introduced it acted as an incentive to herders hiding the real quantity of livestock they own, resulting in lower numbers in official statistics. Doubts on the validity of this hypothesis are raised by the following data on pasture fees payment growth.

Trends in pasture fees collection A third set of data that is useful for analysis refers to the evolution of pasture fees collection. This can be considered as an indicator of adhesion of herders to PUA/PC arrangement and, indirectly, of PUA/PC performance.

Pasture Fees´ Collection 2014/2010 585%

394%

KR

350%

Na ryn obl a st

Chuy obl a st

Figure 4 – Pasture fees´ collection 2014/2010, KR, Chuy and Naryn oblasts. Source: Pasture Committees – unofficial data Data on pasture fees collection have been collected from unofficial sources so they have to be considered with caution. Even so, results are apparently remarkable. The accumulated inflation rate for the period has been 41.3 percent24, meaning that the pastures, (Haltaeva 2012a). In Kara-Suu, there are 42,750 unused hectares of pastures out of 86,940 hectares available (Haltaeva 2012b).

23 At PSIA results´ presentation in Bishkek, May 2016.

24 http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG/countries/KG?display=default

national increase in collected pasture use fees at 2010 price has been 352.3 percent almost doubling every year on average, much faster than the pace of growth in livestock number we saw above. Pasture fees collection is a consequence of registered livestock, which undermines the validity of the hypothesis above about the disincentivising effect of pasture reforms to livestock registration. Instead, herders might be optimising the number of livestock to existing infrastructure (stable, barns etc.), forage availability, herders´ management capacity (which would confirm the argument about prioritizing horse breeding as comparatively easier to cattle and sheep/goats breeding), and risk of illnesses in too dense herds 25.

Pasture use fees´ collection in Naryn almost mirrors the national average, whereas in Chuy it scores almost 1.7 times higher. This is possibly the result of demonstration effect from Suusamyr Project, as in Suusamyr pasture fees collection grew 900 percent over the period (in contrast, the rate growth is approximately 300-400 percent in KaraSuu, Kara-Koyun, Ortok, Dobolu and Sary-Oy PCs, where PEI project started later than Suusamyr project)26.

The increased revenue capacity of PCs is a key condition for reinvestment in infrastructure and other incentives to access remote pastures, thereby providing new growth opportunities to herders. Besides that, financial self-sufficiency is also crucial for PC staff stability and equipment maintenance.

Preliminary conclusions from macro data analysis Overall, data at the national level might be suggesting that pasture reforms are not generating a general speed up effect in livestock growth. This is consistent with post2009 slowing down trend in poverty reduction in rural areas. Low adhesion of herders to PC arrangement seems not the be the reason for that, as indicated by the significant growth in pasture use fees´ collection. Different underlying factors can be at work, such as low PC institutional capacity in translating revenues into concrete benefits and incentives for herders.

At the oblast level data show less linearity. Naryn Oblast outperforms the national average in poverty reduction although its post-2009 growth in both livestock number and pasture use fees´ collection is not outstanding. In contrast, Chuy Oblast shows a disappointing performance in poverty reduction consistently coupled to an equally fragile growth in livestock number, but also the highest increase in pasture use fees´ collection. The analysis of data at the oblast level shows no meaningful associations between the variables under investigation. Further analysis, at the micro-data level, can shed light on these associations.

5.3.

Micro data analysis

“I grew up in this village. People are getting better: they put fancy fences in their gardens, repair or construct new houses, have better cars”.

25 Comments to PSIA results´ presentation in Bishkek, May 2016.

26 Information from field work interviews.

Nurdasan Kulmatov, Chairman of the Suusamyr Pasture Committee.

Quantitative and qualitative field work was executed in January 2016 in the AOs of Suusamyr, Kara-Suu, Kara-Koyun, Dobolu and Ortok. In the quantitative survey, a representative sample of 403 families of herders and farmers was interviewed. In addition, qualitative interviews were realised in focus groups of respectively eight nine women (Suusamyr and Ortok villages) and the young (Suusamyr and Kara-Suu villages).

Provided that this is the first time that a sample survey has been realised to assess the distributional impact of pasture reforms among herders and farmers, and considering the relevance of results of both the sample survey and focus groups, the analysis that follows aims at providing an original contribution to the study of pasture reforms in Kyrgyzstan as well as to adding value to the already existing knowledge on the topic.

The discussion of the methodological aspects of the survey is available in Annex 1.

Quantitative data analysis is focused on herders and PUA/PCs first, and farmers and jamaats later. For herders, it addresses issues of adhesion to PUA/PC arrangements and rules, benefits, incentives and sanctions to herders, impact on productive dimensions of herders, and participation, voice and empowerment in PUA/PCs. With regards to farmers, jamaats are analysed with respect to issues of inclusion of the poor, economic benefits for jamaat members, and participation, voice and empowerment.

Distributional analysis is executed by breaking down herders and farmers´ data into quintiles based on livestock number, land size ownership, and their effects on income.

Poverty data as used in macro data analysis above are produced by the NSC and are not available following the same procedures as NSC´s in PSIA survey, so proxies are used. Most of distributional analysis that follows is based on livestock number ownership. This is justified by the fact that livestock number ownership is the parameter used in the KR to allocate social allowances to needy families. In addition, a discussed later on, this choice is also grounded on the fact that the strategy for rural poverty reduction in the KR is primarily focused on promoting livestock growth and forage production associated to it.

Most interviewed families are nuclear ones, made up of parents and sons or daughters: 71.2 percent of families have between 3 and 5 members, approximately 5 percent less than three members and 23.6 percent six or more members.

5.3.1. Herders´ adhesion to PUA/PC arrangements and rules PUA/PC membership Among herders, 87.1 percent are members of the PUA/PC. Non-members are concentrated in Suusamyr and Kara-Koyun and do not show a different profile from the average of herders. On average, the first year they paid for pasture tickets (most frequently in 2009), herders owned three cattle and no one owned more than ten; 51 sheep/goats and only one more than 90; and three horses

and no one more than 15. This suggests that neither large herders nor small ones tend to concentrate in non-membership.

Valid

Missing

Total

2008 2009

Frequency 6 169

Percent 1.5 41.9

Valid Percent 1.7 48.7

Cumulative Percent 1.7 50.4

2010

50

12.4

14.4

64.8

2011

52

12.9

15.0

79.8

2012

25

6.2

7.2

87.0

2013

20

5.0

5.8

92.8

2014

14

3.5

4.0

96.8

2015

11

2.7

3.2

100.0

Total

347

86.1

100.0

9999

4

1.0

System

52

12.9

Total

56

13.9

403

100.0

Table 2 – Year of membership in PUA/PC According to table 2, the majority of herders joined the PUA/PC when it was established in 2009 (50.4 percent) or in the following two years (29.4 percent), whilst just approximately 20 percent joined in the subsequent years.

By further breaking down PUA/PC membership by the number of livestock owned as divided into quintiles and by year (see Annex 2 for full data), quintiles tend to be compressed to the low end, especially in the years 2009-2011 when most herders joined PUA/PC: for instance, in 2009 classes of Quintiles 1-4 for cattle were 0 to 4 cattle, and the class for Quintile 5 was 4-70 cattle, whereby only 13 herders owned 10 or more cattle, two herders owned 20 or more cattle, and one herder owned 70 cattle.

In other words, quintiles reflect overall homogeneity in livestock ownership and therefore have little differentiating capacity (however, they show more analytical relevance in their evolution over time, as we shall discuss later on). Even so, the following graph can be of interest.

Long-term PUA/PC Membership by Livestock Number 35 30 25 20 15 10 05 00 Q1

Q2

Q3 Cattl e

Q4

Sheep & goats

Q5

Hors es

Figure 5 – Long-term PUA/PC membership (seven years) by quintiles of livestock owned in the year of membership The graph in figure 5 indicates that overall, Q4 and Q5 show a higher long-term membership and Q1 a lower one (with the exception of horses, where Q2 is the lowest). This is partly related to the frequency distribution of livestock ownership (often classes of Q1 include no livestock owned), but it also suggests that for the largest livestock owners there is an incentive in joining PUA/PC. This picture can be complemented by the indications from the following table.

Frequency Valid

Have an opportunity to represent my interests Influence the decisions that affect me

Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

43

10.7

12.3

12.3

21

5.2

6.0

18.2

113

28.0

32.2

50.4

37

9.2

10.5

61.0

1

.2

.3

61.3

Get useful information

82

20.3

23.4

84.6

Get instructions for improving pasture management

28

6.9

8.0

92.6

Promote the conservation of pastures

20

5.0

5.7

98.3

6

1.5

1.7

100.0

351

87.1

100.0

52

12.9

Increase my income Get material benefit in the form of infrastructure improvements Get material benefit in the form of access to transport

Promote environmental conservation Total Missing

Percent

System

Total

403

100.0

Table 3 – Motivation to join PUA/PC According to table 3, for almost one-third of herders the main reason for joining PUA/PC is to increase income – a hypothesis here is that the large livestock owners are those who best see in PUA/PC membership an opportunity to earn money; for about one-quarter it is to get useful information; more articulate reasons related to interest representation, infrastructure improvement and pasture management are indicated by 8-12 percent of interviewees; finally, environmental conservation of pastures ranks low among the reasons to join PUA/PC. PUAs/PCs are not necessarily run by the herders´ economic “elite”

Valid

Frequency 5 7

Head Board member Accountant/Treasurer

Missing

Percent 1.2 1.7

Valid Percent 1.4 2.0

Cumulative Percent 1.4 3.4

1

.2

.3

3.7

Member

338

83.9

96.3

100.0

Total

351

87.1

100.0

52

12.9

403

100.0

System

Total

Table 4 – Role of interviewees in PUA/PC Following table 4, the large majority of interviewed herders (almost 84 percent) are simple PC members.

Cattle 2015 2015 2015 2015 2015 2015 2015 2013* 2015 2015 2015 2015 2015

1 2 6 5 4 2 10 10 10 6 6 2 2

Sheep and goat 50 20 50 50 17 10 100 90 100 60 30 25 60

Horse 1 12 2 6 0 1 10 20 15 6 3 4 3

Total 66 662 83 Average 5,1 50,9 6,4 * Data for 2014 and 2015 not available

Table 5 – Animals owned by Heads, Board Members and Accountants/Treasurers of PUA/PCs in the last year for which data are available When data on role in PUA/PC are crossed to data on the number of owned animals as in table 5, we observe that in 2015 Heads, Board Members and Accountants/Treasurers on average owned five cattle, almost 51 sheep or goats and 6.4 horses. In the same year, the average of the whole sample was six cattle, 38 sheep and goats and four horses (Annex 2). In addition, just three among 13 Heads, Board Members and Accountants/Treasurers own 10 cattle, three own 90-100 sheep and goats and one owns 20 horses. This picture suggests that senior management roles in PUA/PCs tend to be occupied by herders whose livestock ownership is slightly above the average for sheep/goats and horses but not for cattle, but there is no evidence that PUA/PC management is monopolised by the richest herders´ elite.

Pasture fees payment An important aspect of herder´s adhesion to PUA/PCU arrangements and rules is payment of pasture use fees by herders. Data from figure 6 below indicate that the frequency of herders who pay pasture fees is constantly growing over time, reaching almost 100 percent in 2015. This is consistent with macro data previously discussed.

Livestock owners from Q4 and Q5 show the highest willingness to pay consistently over the years (data in Annex 2). The value of pasture fees´ payment stayed almost unchanged, as it grew approximately 50 percent in nominal terms over the period, from an average of Som 3,437 per herder in 2009 to Som 5,160 in 2015 – this growth, however, is only apparent as the accumulated inflation of the period is 54.7 percent (data in Annex 2). This indicates that growth in pasture fees´ collection at the macro level seems to be associated to the growing number of herders´ membership in PUA/PC rather than to an increase in fees´ value.

% herders paying pasture fees

Pasture Fees Payment 89.6

92.6

98

95.5

76.2 63.8

58.3

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

Figure 6 – Percentage of herders paying pasture fees, 2009-2015

2015

5.3.2. Benefits, incentives and sanctions from PUA/PC membership to herders A high adhesion to PUA/PC arrangement and rules can be the result of benefits, incentives or sanctions to herders.

Perceived access to, and quality of, facilities and services Under Suusamyr and Naryn projects, different goods and services have been provided to local herders. Pasture Committees are the first providers of infrastructure and machine, and UNDP of buildings and services (see Annex 2 for data).

More important than who provided what, is the perception of beneficiaries of the facilities and services that have been supplied, as in table 6 below.

In your locality

Yes Roads to remote pastures Bridges to remote pastures

No

If 'yes', assess on a scale from 1 to 5 the accessibility of that object?

1

2

3

4

5

Distance

Quality of physical access

Why did you give such an assessment?

Availabili Availabili Business ty of ty of Quality of hours staff goods service

Quality of infrastructure

99.3%

.7%

3.8%

16.5%

36.8%

37.3%

5.6%

41.9%

28.7%

8.4%

7.6%

4.8%

1.8%

6.9%

92.1%

7.9%

1.1%

16.7%

40.0%

29.9%

12.3%

8.7%

56.3%

11.4%

7.3%

4.6%

3.8%

7.9%

Village administration

65.5%

34.5%

1.1%

13.3%

20.9%

52.9%

11.8%

1.9%

11.7%

17.8%

9.1%

6.1%

31.4%

22.0%

School

98.5%

1.5%

2.0%

6.4%

14.6%

46.0%

30.9%

3.6%

2.6%

18.8%

7.0%

5.4%

41.5%

21.1%

95.3%

4.7%

1.9%

4.5%

21.2%

40.2%

32.3%

.3%

5.0%

14.6%

5.6%

8.0%

47.2%

19.4%

63.0%

37.0%

.8%

6.7%

19.0%

52.0%

21.4%

2.8%

3.9%

15.0%

4.7%

18.1%

52.4%

3.1%

92.6%

7.4%

.8%

8.7%

26.6%

41.5%

22.5%

1.1%

4.6%

19.1%

7.1%

51.1%

16.1%

.8%

FAP/VGP/health care unit Pharmacy Store/market/retail units Post

79.9%

20.1%

1.3%

8.8%

24.1%

49.4%

16.6%

2.2%

4.3%

21.4%

5.6%

2.2%

60.9%

3.4%

Club or public cultural facility

78.4%

21.6%

1.0%

8.3%

24.5%

48.7%

17.5%

1.9%

4.1%

19.6%

6.3%

3.5%

57.0%

7.6%

Public water supply

82.4%

17.6%

5.5%

15.2%

17.7%

45.7%

15.9%

7.0%

8.8%

16.4%

7.9%

1.8%

46.1%

12.1%

Veterinary services

76.2%

23.8%

2.0%

8.6%

23.4%

55.3%

10.9%

.7%

4.9%

12.8%

11.8%

5.9%

59.7%

4.3%

.5%

99.5%

.0%

.0%

.0%

100.0%

.0%

.0%

.0%

50.0%

50.0%

.0%

.0%

.0%

6.2%

93.8%

.0%

.0%

24.0%

64.0%

12.0%

8.0%

16.0%

16.0%

.0%

16.0%

40.0%

4.0%

Crop processing companies

18.1%

81.9%

.0%

.0%

5.5%

93.2%

1.4%

1.4%

1.4%

4.1%

4.1%

1.4%

12.3%

75.3%

Stables or barn

88.8%

11.2%

1.1%

10.2%

33.9%

50.3%

4.5%

9.6%

15.8%

16.4%

8.8%

3.4%

17.5%

28.5%

Stall

93.3%

6.7%

.8%

6.7%

37.9%

48.4%

6.2%

7.3%

12.7%

15.9%

7.8%

3.5%

23.5%

29.2%

Car

86.1%

13.9%

.9%

5.5%

23.3%

60.5%

9.9%

1.8%

8.5%

15.8%

8.5%

4.4%

58.8%

2.3%

4.5%

95.5%

5.6%

22.2%

66.7%

5.6%

.0%

.0%

11.1%

44.4%

.0%

16.7%

22.2%

5.6%

Community services (garbage disposal services) Companies processing of livestock products

Motorbike

Truck

82.4%

17.6%

1.8%

6.7%

27.7%

55.6%

8.2%

1.8%

8.9%

16.5%

6.4%

4.0%

60.6%

1.8%

Cart

55.3%

44.7%

3.2%

15.5%

21.4%

47.3%

12.7%

1.4%

8.3%

20.2%

6.0%

4.6%

54.1%

5.5%

Combine

73.7%

26.3%

1.0%

12.2%

35.1%

49.3%

2.4%

1.0%

7.1%

13.5%

6.4%

1.3%

70.0%

.7%

9.9%

90.1%

.0%

20.5%

51.3%

28.2%

.0%

2.5%

22.5%

35.0%

27.5%

5.0%

7.5%

.0%

88.3%

11.7%

1.1%

8.8%

35.7%

51.8%

2.5%

.9%

8.0%

17.9%

8.8%

2.6%

61.3%

.6%

Thresher Tractor

Table 6 - Types of facilities in the locality, accessibility and reasons for the assessment According to table 6, more than 90 percent of herders reside in localities where important infrastructure for herding (roads and bridges to remote pastures, stalls) are situated together with economically and socially relevant facilities such as schools, health units, stores and markets.

The same figure is between 70 and 90 percent for post and clubs/cultural facilities, public water supply, veterinary services, stables/barns, availability of cars, trucks combines and tractors. Village administration offices, pharmacy and carts are easily accessible to 50-70 percent of herders. In contrast, facilities for processing and marketing products, such as crop or animal product processing companies and threshers are located where only approximately 6-18 percent of herders live. Garbage collection is virtually absent.

Infrastructure to access remote pastures – roads and bridges – is evaluated high in terms of accessibility, mainly because of reduced distance or quality of physical access, whereas other relevant facilities for herders, such as processing companies, stables/barns and stalls do not score particularly well whatever the criteria. Trucks, combines and tractors provide important inputs to production and trading and are well ranked despite the long distance because of quality of service. Public service providers including those that are important for human capital formation, such as village administration, schools, health-related and cultural facilities are also ranked well mainly due to the quality of service. The same is true for veterinary services, whether public or private. Stores and markets are considered as supplying a wide range of goods.

Scores do not show significant differences when broken down by quintiles of livestock owned.

Following data discussed above, overall pasture reforms supported by Suusamyr and Naryn projects have benefitted herders (and citizens in general) with access to, and in some cases quality of, facilities. Specifically for herding, some of these facilities and services are meant to facilitate and stimulate access to remote pastures, aiming at promoting both pasture conservation and livestock growth. Besides infrastructure, however, pasture management plans have to be prepared by PCs, and followed by herders, to assure proper pasture use and conservation. These are the topics of the following discussion.

Pasture rotation and grazing plans

Valid

Yes No Total

Frequency 355 48

Percent 88.1 11.9

Valid Percent 88.1 11.9

403

100.0

100.0

Cumulative Percent 88.1 100.0

Table 7 – Pasture rotation According to data from table 7, the large majority of herders – more than 88 percent – say their herds move from pasture to pasture. This is more frequent among cattle herders of Q5 (94.4 percent) than among cattle herders of Q1 (83.8 percent) – frequency distribution of sheep/goats and horse herders shows no significant differences among quintiles.

However, pasture rotation is not too often based on instructions on what, where and when to move herds, as just 53.3 percent of interviewed herders state they received such instructions. Besides, only 40.5 percent of those who received instructions say they always followed them, whilst 59.1 percent say they followed them sometimes.

Overall, then, only about one-fifth (21.6 percent) of herders in the sample received instructions on pasture use and followed them for good. One possible reason for that can be the low enforcement of sanctions to herders who do not meet requirements of PUA/PC or do not follow their instructions. According to the interviewees, only 11.9 percent of herders received sanctions, the most frequent being fines (57.4 percent) followed by denied access to pastures (23.4 percent). Cattle herders from Q5 received sanctions close to the average of other quintiles, but both sheep/goat and horse herders from Q5 received sanctions less frequently than the average (respectively 7.5 and 5.8 percent) (see Annex 2 for data).

Apparently, then, pasture rotation is widespread among herders but somehow “spontaneously”, seeming to be driven by access through infrastructure availability, rather than by “rational” pasture management planning.

5.3.3. Impact on herders One the expected outcomes of pasture rotation is the increase in number and added value of livestock.

Trends in livestock number in Suusamyr and Naryn project areas We consider first the evolution in livestock numbers.

Number of livestock Cattle 2009 2010

Mean 3 3

Sum 1050 1299

2011

4

2012

4

2013 2014 2015

Number of livestock Sheep (goats) Mean 23 27

Sum 9100 10910

1718

31

1572

32

5

1937

5

2050

6

2255

Number of livestock Horses Mean 3 3

Sum 1013 1229

12387

3

1398

12735

4

1500

34

13560

4

1623

35

14275

4

1677

38

15511

4

1796

Table 8 – Number of livestock 2009-2015 According to table 8, between 2009 and 2015 the stock of livestock in the surveyed localities increased respectively 2.15 times (year average of 3.6 percent) for cattle, 1.7 times (year average of 2.8 percent) for sheep/goats, and 1.8 times (year average 2.9 percent) for horses.

In order to compare local and national trends we consider the period 2009-2014 (as 2015 data are not available nationally).

Livestock Number Evolution 2009-2014 1.95 1.14 1.22 1.17

t To

i

a re nc

se

KR

0.23 0.24 0.23 KR ge a er av Yr.

To

Cattl e

n ti

cre

e as

Su

us

& yr m a

Sheep/goats

1.57 1.66

I PE

Yr.

e ag er v a

Su

u

0.39 0.31 0.33 I PE & yr m a s

Hors es

Figure 7 – Evolution of livestock number, Kyrgyz Republic and Suusamyr and Naryn Project Areas, 2009-2014 Figure 7 shows that for all type of livestock, the increase in the areas attended by Suusamyr and Naryn projects exceeds the increase at the national level. Clearly, we have no sufficient elements to establish a causal relationship between Suusamyr and Naryn projects and such performance. Nevertheless, it is interesting to notice that also the performance in livestock increase at the respective oblast level is not as good as in PEI project areas: in Chuy Oblast, between 2009-2014 the increase in livestock number

was respectively 1.13 times for cattle, 1.16 for sheep/goats and 1.32 for horses; in Naryn Oblast, the figures are respectively 1.1, 1.17 and 1.12.

A better performance in livestock number increase is registered in Suusamyr and Naryn project areas than at the national or oblast level, which is likely to be associated to the presence of UNDP-GEF and UNDP-UNEP projects. However, what the internal distribution of such an increase among different groups? Further and more in-depth insights on the distributional impact of livestock number increase are provided by looking in details at the evolution of the distribution of livestock owned by herders.

Distributional analysis of livestock evolution

Distributional Analysis 2009-2015, Cattle 0.41 0.24

0.20

0.21

0.51 0.29

0.28

0.12 0.16 0.12 1 3 0 2 ns ns n n n n ttl ow ow Ca ow ow ow ow 0% 1% ho ho ho ho w w w w st t1 s e s s s s r r r r e e e e ch he rd rd rd rd ic Ri e e e e R H H H H % % % % e0.02

0.12

2009

2015

Distributional Analysis 2009-2015, Sheep/Goats 0.46 0.30

0.27

0.22

0.41

0.19

0.22 0.09

0.14

0.02

2009

2015

0.16

0.12

Distributional Analysis 2009-2015, Horses 0.49 0.45

0.36 0.17

0.19 0.21

0.14 0.17

0.11 0.11 0.09 0.11 3 2 ns ns n n n n rs w w w w w w o o o o o o o H 0% 1% ho ho ho ho w w w w st t1 s e sr sr sr sr e e e e ch he rd rd rd rd ic Ri e e e e R H H H H % % % % es

0

1

2009

2015

Figures 8-10 – Distributional Analysis – Livestock owned by different groups, 2009-2015 In graphs 8-10 above two sets of data are included: (i) data on poorer herders (those who own a number of livestock close to the average of the sample or below it) and (ii) data on the 10 percent and 1 percent of richest herders. For all type of livestock, we observe that (i) poorer herders slightly improved their situation: the group with no livestock reduced significantly, and a relevant proportion moved upwards towards the sample average line; at the same time, (ii) the richest show the most impressive improvement for cattle but do not increase their livestock stock, or even reduce it, for horses and especially for sheep and goats. Overall, the picture tends to indicate a reduction in extreme poverty in terms of livestock ownership associated to a small reduction in ownership concentration at the top for sheep/goats, an almost still situation for horses, and an increase in ownership concentration for cattle – nevertheless, overall the richest 10% still tends to own between 40-50 percent of the available stock of livestock.

This picture partially confirms and complements the results of macro data analysis: on the one hand, the national post-2009 trend of reduction in rural extreme poverty is confirmed in Suusamyr and Naryn projects areas (as the significant diminution in the percentage of herders who own no livestock at all indicates); on the other hand, in Suusamyr and Naryn project areas, different from post-2009 national trend, also moderate poverty seems to be reducing to some extent, as the proportion of herders who own respectively one cattle and 1-10 sheep/goats reduces, and the percentage of those who own respectively 2-3 cattle, 11-30 sheep/goats and 1-3 horses increases to different degrees. An overall higher increase in livestock number is registered in Suusamyr and Naryn projects areas than in national or oblast averages, which seems to have been beneficial to extremely poor and to some extent to poor herders. Richest herders still own a very large share of livestock, but at least for sheep/goats and horses the livestock concentration process at the top of the socioeconomic stratification of herders seem to have been slightly reversed. Although no causal relationships can be attributed to GEF-UNDP and UNEP-UNDP projects, a possible, preliminary conclusion is that, to some extent, the re-distributional purpose of pasture reforms has been

successfully supported in Suusamyr and Naryn projects at least when compared to average data at the national and oblast level.

Herding services (Mal Koshuu) Further indications that are useful for the distributional analysis are provided by information on the labour markets dynamics in services associated to herding. Mal Koshuu is a traditional arrangement whereby services of herders are contracted by other herders to lead livestock to pastures. The distributional impact of Mal Koshuu depends on what group of herders is selling these services to whom, and under what contractual and payment conditions.

Mal Koshuu is quite widespread: 83.7 percent of interviewees say they already contracted it (tables 9-11), and 17.1 percent say they supplied it (tables 12-14).

Have you ever used Mal Koshuu services?

quintal cattle

1

Yes

No

Total

Row N %

Row N %

Row N %

87.8%

12.2%

100.0%

2

84.7%

15.3%

100.0%

3

90.0%

10.0%

100.0%

4

82.2%

17.8%

100.0%

5

75.0%

25.0%

100.0%

Total

83.8%

16.2%

100.0%

Have you ever used Mal Koshuu services?

quintal sheep

1

Yes

No

Total

Row N %

Row N %

Row N %

88.7%

11.3%

100.0%

2

90.5%

9.5%

100.0%

3

84.5%

15.5%

100.0%

4

83.8%

16.2%

100.0%

5

70.1%

29.9%

100.0%

Total

83.8%

16.2%

100.0%

Have you ever used Mal Koshuu services?

quintal horses

1

Yes

No

Total

Row N %

Row N %

Row N %

94.3%

5.7%

100.0%

2

87.5%

12.5%

100.0%

3

89.6%

10.4%

100.0%

4

86.3%

13.7%

100.0%

5

60.9%

39.1%

100.0%

Total

83.8%

16.2%

100.0%

Tables 9-11 – Mal Koshuu demand by livestock ownership quintiles.

According to tables 9-11, those who least contracted Mal Koshuu services tend to be the richest herders from Q5, whilst the demand for it is quite homogeneous among the other quintiles with a slight dominance among Q1-Q3.

This picture is confirmed when data on Mal Koshuu providers are considered, as in tables 12-14 below.

Have you or members of your household ever provided Mal Koshuu services to anyone?

quintal cattle

1

Yes

No

Total

Row N %

Row N %

Row N %

8.1%

91.9%

100.0%

2

16.7%

83.3%

100.0%

3

13.3%

86.7%

100.0%

4

19.2%

80.8%

100.0%

5

27.8%

72.2%

100.0%

Total

17.1%

82.9%

100.0%

Have you or members of your household ever provided Mal Koshuu services to anyone?

quintal sheep

1

Yes

No

Total

Row N %

Row N %

Row N %

7.0%

93.0%

100.0%

2

10.8%

89.2%

100.0%

3

16.9%

83.1%

100.0%

4

20.6%

79.4%

100.0%

5

31.3%

68.7%

100.0%

Total

17.1%

82.9%

100.0%

Have you or members of your household ever provided Mal Koshuu services to anyone?

quintal horses

1

Yes

No

Total

Row N %

Row N %

Row N %

5.7%

94.3%

100.0%

2

15.3%

84.7%

100.0%

3

10.4%

89.6%

100.0%

4

15.1%

84.9%

100.0%

5

39.1%

60.9%

100.0%

Total

17.1%

82.9%

100.0%

Tables 12-14 – Mal Koshuu providers by livestock ownership quintiles For all type of livestock, clearly Mal Koshuu services are least provided by poorest herders in Q1 and are most provided by richest herders in Q5. The emerging picture

seems to indicate that scale is key to lead livestock to remote pastures – small herders have to rely on large ones´ services for that. As stated by a young activist from Kara Suu village in the focus group, “all village does not go to Jailoo, only those who have big amount of sheep or those who collect cattle and go to Jailoo to earn money”. This is possibly due to too high unitary costs of pasture rotation for small herders, as reflected in the dominant payment format of monthly payment for unitary livestock unit (adopted in approximately 78 percent of cases – see Annex 2 for data), whose cost is supposed to be lower under Mal Koshuu´s scale than for an individual family. As a net distributional result, resources for livestock pasturing are likely to be transferred from poor to rich herders: in this respect, Mal Koshuu tends to work as a capital-intensive rather than as a labour-intensive productive arrangement, favouring largest livestock owners.

Fattened livestock According to tables 15-17 below, more added value to livestock also tends to be concentrated among richest sheep/goats and horse herders (but not cattle herders) as a result of the age of livestock that is led to remote pastures. As discussed above, the advantage of remote pasturing is maximised when livestock moves to remote, nutrientrich pastures for fattening, as fattened animal products are rewarded with higher price on the market.

N. of cattle owned % fattened adult livestock Quintile 1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 TOT

4.1 0.0 5.0 6.8 5.6 4.3

N. of sheep/goats owned % fattened adult livestock Quintile 1 0.0 Q2 2.7 Q3 2.8 Q4 1.5 Q5 14.9 TOT 4.3 N. of horses owned % fattened adult livestock Quintile 1 1.4 Q2 1.4 Q3 4.5 Q4 4.1 Q5 10.1 TOT 4.3 Tables 15-17 – Fattened adult livestock to remote pastures by quintiles of owned livestock

From tables 15-17 above we observe that overall only 4.3 percent of livestock is led to remote pastures for fattening, and among sheep/goats and horse herders those from Q5 are the only who take advantage of the opportunity of fattening animals in mountain pastures. Overall, little advantage is taken from the opportunity of adding value to animal products from pasture rotation, and when this is the case, only larger livestock owners tend to benefit from it.

Impacts on sales, consumption and income The final outcome of the whole process of adhesion to PUA/PCs, access to remote pastures through available infrastructure, growth in livestock stock and livestock fattening is expected to reflect in consumption or sales of animal products and then family income. Data on these dimensions are provided in the following tables.

1.Bulls 2.Cows 3.Yaks 4.Sheep 5.Goats 6.Horses 7.Donkeys 8.Camels 9.Hens 10.Turkey 11.Gooses 12.Ducks 13.Rabbits 1.Milk 2.Butter 3.Аyran-yoghurt 4.Сream 5.Kefir 6.Кurut 7.Cheese 8.Eggs 9.Skin 10.Wool 11.Meat (lamb, beef, horse)

Total

Where/To whom was sold Market outside a Market outside Local market village Kyrgyzstan 26.9% 45.2% .0% 35.1% 44.8% .0% 44.4% 11.1% 11.1% 62.0% 18.6% 1.1% 56.9% 25.9% .0% 26.4% 57.9% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% 14.3% 7.1% .0% 33.3% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% 13.8% .0% .0% 9.1% 2.3% .0% 25.0% .0% .0% 7.7% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% 2.4% 2.4% .0% 50.0% .0% .0% 23.3% 2.3% .0% 5.9% 1.5% .0% 2.6% .0% .0%

Friends/Neighbors/ Relatives 1.1% 5.2% 11.1% .7% .9% 1.9% .0% .0% 71.4% .0% .0% .0% .0% 6.0% 15.9% 12.5% .0% 50.0% 9.8% .0% 16.3% 1.5% 2.6%

Sellers 25.8% 14.4% 22.2% 16.1% 12.9% 11.3% 100.0% .0% 7.1% 50.0% .0% .0% 100.0% 67.2% 70.5% 50.0% 84.6% 50.0% 82.9% 50.0% 55.8% 91.2% 94.9%

42.9%

.0%

14.3%

.0%

4.8%

33.5%

33.7%

24.6%

Other

9

Income from sales (soms)

Own consumption

.0% .0% .0% .0% .0% .6% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% 4.3% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0% .0%

1.1% .5% .0% 1.4% 3.4% 1.9% .0% .0% .0% 16.7% .0% .0% .0% 8.6% 2.3% 12.5% 7.7% .0% 2.4% .0% 2.3% .0% .0%

Mean 54477.31 99486.34 109222.67 61571.52 97067.22 140821.03 100000.00 .

5253.57 5166.67 . .

15000.00 6777.59 6450.00 1115.00 2953.85 10000.00 8720.73 1250.00 1695.00 701.10 830.13

Mean 36775.81 33050.67 112000.00 23122.42 5986.56 40366.29 100000.00 .

5217.86 2333.33 . .

15000.00 2861.21 3188.86 496.25 1170.38 .00 4247.68 1250.00 1446.16 536.40 1183.97

.0%

.0%

42.9%

49657.14

157.14

.3%

.5%

2.5%

62466.93

20254.86

Table 18 – Markets for sales and income from sales and consumption in the last 12 months (approximately January-December 2015)

From the analysis of table 18 above we observe, in the first place, that overall about two-thirds of animal products of herders in Suusamyr and Naryn project areas are traded through local sellers and in local markets, and one-quarter in markets outside the village, whilst other options (friends/neighbours/relatives and markets outside Kyrgyzstan) have little significance. This suggests that productive and trade arrangements for herders in these areas are sufficiently structured to reach local markets, but not enough to reach regional and national markets expressively nor to export outside the country. Yaks are the only animals that show significant sales abroad.

However, the picture changes when different products are considered individually. Meat (especially beef meat) is supposed to be among the animal products with the highest added value, but we observe from table 18 that it is mostly traded through informal friends/neighbours/relatives networks (42.9 percent), whilst only in 14.3 percent of cases it reaches the local market and in no cases at all it reaches markets outside the village, including the urban markets where it is most valued27. This is also the case of hens and kefir, which are usually the product of home-breeding and home-processing. The only products that show expressive presence in markets outside the village are big animals (bulls, cows, horses) which apparently are sold alive to be slaughtered, processed and their products traded away from local markets thereby depriving the local producing/trading arrangements of the resulting added value. Smaller animals (with lower added value than big ones) such as sheep and goats - but also some big ones such as yaks and donkeys – tend to be sold locally instead. Finally, most animal products, both processed and unprocessed ones (milk, butter, yoghurt, cream, kefir, kurut, eggs, and especially skin and wool) are traded through local sellers rather than directly in local markets; cheese is equally sold through sellers and directly in the local market.

The overall picture suggests that the productive, processing and trading arrangements of herders from Suusamyr and Naryn project areas add little value to their products as only unprocessed goods reach large external markets, whilst petty, local trade seems to be dominant for meat and other (mainly home-made) animal products.

This picture is complemented by data on income from sales and own consumption. Overall, the value from sales is almost three times higher the estimated value of animal products used for selfconsumption, suggesting that, insofar as foodstuff surplus exists for sale, food security for herders and their families is guaranteed in the first place. With regard to sales, the highest income – above or close to Som 100,000 – is provided by the sale of big animals, irrespective of the market they are traded in: cows, yaks, goats, donkeys and especially horses. As these are sales of the whole animal rather than its processed products, volume rather than productivity or added value from processing is the most influential factor for income generation – in this case, large livestock owners are those who are likely to benefit more. Small livestock owners would increase their share in income generation only by adding value through processing animal products, possibly in a cooperative way in order to gain scale.

This is confirmed by subjective data on income evolution.

Valid

Increased Stayed the same Worsened

27

Frequency 172 204

Percent 42.7 50.6

Valid Percent 42.7 50.6

Cumulative Percent 42.7 93.3

27

6.7

6.7

100.0

Data on meat also shows an exceptionally high non-response “9” rate, whereby unwillingness to answer possibly can be associated to the dominance of informal slaughter facilities and trading networks for processing and selling meat.

Total

403

100.0

100.0

Table 19 – Perception of income evolution in the last five years According to table 19, overall, less than half of interviewed herders perceive that their income increased over the last five years. However, such a positive perception is concentrated among the largest livestock owners in Q5 as the following tables indicate – more broadly, only in Q4 and Q5 more than half of interviewees state that their income increased. Conversely, herders from Q1 always show much lower perception of income increase. In general, the perception of increase in income tends to grow together with the quintile level of livestock ownership – the largest the livestock ownership, the highest the perception of income increase.

Do you think that for the last 5 years your income has increased, stayed the same or worsened?

Stayed the Increased same Worsened Total Row N % quintal cattle

1

Row N %

Row N %

Row N %

21.6%

64.9%

13.5%

100.0%

2

40.3%

54.2%

5.6%

100.0%

3

36.7%

56.7%

6.7%

100.0%

4

53.4%

42.5%

4.1%

100.0%

5

62.5%

34.7%

2.8%

100.0%

Total

43.0%

50.4%

6.6%

100.0%

Do you think that for the last 5 years your income has increased, stayed the same or worsened?

Stayed the Increased same Worsened Total Row N % quintal sheep

1

Row N %

Row N %

Row N %

28.2%

69.0%

2.8%

100.0%

2

37.8%

48.6%

13.5%

100.0%

3

40.8%

52.1%

7.0%

100.0%

4

51.5%

45.6%

2.9%

100.0%

5

58.2%

35.8%

6.0%

100.0%

Total

43.0%

50.4%

6.6%

100.0%

Do you think that for the last 5 years your income has increased, stayed the same or worsened?

Stayed the Increased same Worsened Total Row N % quintal horses

1

Row N %

25.7%

70.0%

2

38.9%

3

34.3%

4 5 Total

Row N %

Row N %

4.3%

100.0%

52.8%

8.3%

100.0%

52.2%

13.4%

100.0%

52.1%

45.2%

2.7%

100.0%

63.8%

31.9%

4.3%

100.0%

43.0%

50.4%

6.6%

100.0%

Tables 20-22 - Perception of income evolution in the last five years by quintiles of livestock ownership.

However, the causal direction in this case is not perfectly clear. It is also possible that people perceive that their income increased precisely because they reached the highest quintiles. Further analysis on social mobility across quintiles based on income evolution is useful in this respect.

Social mobility Self- declared income by interviewees without cross-checking with other information (e.g. consumption) can be doubtful. As previously mentioned, such a cross-checking was not possible in PSIA survey for reasons of time and costs. Having this caveat clear, the analysis of income evolution shows interesting indications on social mobility in the universe under investigation. In table 23 below per capita income data are divided into quintiles and the movement of families among quintiles between 2009 and 2015 is analysed.

Contingency Table - Percentile Group of inc_pc2009 * Percentile Group of inc_pc2015 Percentile Group of inc_pc_2015

Percentile Group of inc_pc_2009

total

4

total

1

2

3

5

1 very poor

68.4%

15.8%

15.8%

0.0%

0.0%

100.0%

2 moderately poor

23.8%

23.8%

28.6%

14.3%

9.5%

100.0%

3 middle-income

9.5%

28.6%

4.8%

33.3%

23.8%

100.0%

4 relatively affluent

0.0%

31.6%

26.3%

15.8%

26.3%

100.0%

5 most affluent

0.0%

0.0%

30.0%

25.0%

45.0%

100.0%

20.0%

20.0%

21.0%

18.0%

21.0%

100.0%

Table 23 – Social mobility among income quintiles, 2009-2015 Perceptions data as from tables 20-22 are partially confirmed by table 23. An overall upward social mobility can be observed for a significant number of families. Among those who in 2009 were very poor, in 2015 approximately two-thirds (68.4 percent) remained in the same quintile, but almost one-third improved their economic situation, moving respectively to the moderately poor group (15.8% to quintile 2) and to the middle-income group (15.8 percent to quintile 3). This upward trend is more accentuated among the moderately poor, where although one-fourth (23.8 percent) kept in the same quintile and another quarter (23.8 percent) moved downward to quintile 1, half of the families improved their economic status, the majority moving to the middle-income group (28.6 percent) with a significant proportion shifting to the relatively affluent (14.3 percent) and most affluent (9.5 percent) groups. In the middle-income group a relative minority (approximately 38 percent) moved downward, but over 57 percent attained a higher degree of prosperity, including one quarter reaching quintile 5. The relatively affluent group seems to be the most vulnerable as 58 percent decreased their economic status (although nobody fell down to the very poor group) and only one-quarter (26.3 percent) moved to quintile 5. Finally, almost half of the most affluent families kept their prosperity level whilst 55 percent lost part of it although never falling into moderate or extreme poverty.

Data on income evolution show a very dynamic picture in terms of social mobility – a typical trait of capitalistic systems – affecting most social groups with a general upward trend, whereby two aspects outstand: (i) the high turnover (more than 50 percent) in the two affluent groups, and at the same time (ii) the lowest social mobility in the two extreme groups, where 68.4 percent and 45 percent of families kept being respectively very poor and very rich. This indicates that opportunities as well as vulnerabilities exist for all groups – the purpose of policy should be to

maximise the former and minimise the latter; and that, to some extent, extreme poverty and extreme affluence are the situations where changes are most difficult to attain.

Preliminary conclusions from distributional impact analysis The picture emerging from this sub-section on distributional impact indicates that a general increase took place in livestock number in Suusamyr and Naryn projects´ areas. This increase is higher than the one that is registered at the regional or national level, and is reflected in a general upward movement in all quintile classes of livestock ownership. As previously observed, this difference between local and regional/national data suggests positive effects from GEF-UNDP and UNEP-UNDP projects. Although livestock ownership is still concentrated at the top of Quintile 5, it shows to be increasing only for cattle, whilst it is reducing or keeping the same for sheep/goats and horses. However, other dynamics tend to benefit larger livestock owners in detriment of smaller ones, namely (i) the provision of Mal Koshuu services by rich to poor herders, thereby transferring resources from the latter to the former; (ii) limited high added-value animal fattening in remote pastures and concentrated only among larger sheep/goats and horses owners; and (iii) still understructured markets and productive arrangements whereby higher income is generated only from the volume of sale of big animals rather than through added-value processing of animal products, thereby mainly benefitting large herding owners. Perceptions data of income evolution in the last five years confirm the picture above. Also objective data on income evolution tend to confirm an overall improvement in households´ economic situation together with a surprisingly dynamic social mobility which, however, affects both the poorest and the richest comparatively less than other income strata.

5.3.4. Perception of PUA/PC – participation, voice and empowerment The perception by herders of PUA/PC is important insofar as it can alert about threats or attempts to manipulate PUA/PC by certain groups. The following dimensions are assessed: (i) transparency, defined as “open access to information, free discussion in meetings”; (ii) openness, as “suggestions/ideas of all herders are considered at decision making, all members can influence the decision making”; (iii) effectiveness of PUA/PC in expressing the interests of all herders to governmental bodies (Village administration, Raion, Oblast, State bodies); (iv) effectiveness of PUA/PC in expressing the interests of all herders to other economic agents (e.g. sellers, truck drivers, businessmen of all kinds); and (v) effectiveness of PUA/PC in protecting herders´ interests in general.

Perception of PUA/PC 54.3 49.1

12.1

Trans parency

8.4 Opennes s

43

44.9

10.7

11.6

Government

Good & very good

48.6

14.5

Economi c a gents Genera l i nterests Bad & very bad

Figure 11 – Perception of PUA/PC by herders, different dimensions.

From figure 11 above we observe that herders have a reasonably positive perception of PUA/PC, as its “good” and “very good” rate stands between 43 and 54.3 percent whilst negative assessments do not surpass 14 percent approximately. The highest positive score is for “openness”, indicating that participation in PUA/PC is considered as fair, and the lowest for “herders´ interests´ representation to governmental bodies”, which might suggest that some space for political manipulation of PUA/PC exists. It is also worth commenting that no significant differences are apparent when perceptions of PUA/PC are compared among different quintiles of livestock owners (data are available in Annex 2), suggesting that poorest herders do not feel that they are marginalised from PUA/PC management or that PUA/PC only represents the interest of largest livestock owners.

5.3.5. Jamaat revolving seed fund The same sample that was interviewed on issues related to herding was also addressed with regard to participation in jamaats´ revolving seed fund. Out of 403 family representatives in the sample, 54.8 percent are members of jamaats.

Two questions on jamaats are selected as relevant in the present analysis: (i) if and to what extent jamaats include the poor, and (ii) what the impact of jamaat on its members, both in economic terms and with respect to participation, voice and empowerment.

Inclusion of the poor in jamaats The first question is addressed by considering quintiles based on the distribution of the number of owned cattle (the same key indicator we have used so far) and the average size of land owned by households in each of these quintiles. The size of land plots depends on the quantity of household members, as since 1990 the government was distributing land based on the quantity of household members. Therefore, it is not a good indicator of poverty. In contrast, cattle ownership is the indicator that is officially used by the Kyrgyz Government to allocate social allowances, therefore it can be considered an appropriate indicator of households´ welfare.

Size of owned land in sq. m Size of owned land in hectares

Mean Quintiles cattle ownership

1 2 3 4 5 Total

16 401,9 37 219,6 89 497,7 78 929,5 105 146,7 65 618,8

Mean 1.64 3.72 8.95 7.89 10.51 6.56

Table 24 – Average size of land owned by jamaats members by quintiles of cattle ownership Privately owned plots of land tend to be small in Kyrgyzstan. Even in the northern part of the country where Suusamyr and Naryn project areas are located and plots tend to be comparatively larger than in the south, 79 percent of households own plots between 0 and 2 hectares, and

almost 97 percent own plots between 0 and 5 hectares (World Bank 2007). According to table 24, the distribution of land size among members of jamaats shows quite a different picture, as less than 40 percent of households own less than 2 hectares of land and less than 60 percent own less than 5 hectares of land. Jamaat members in the surveyed areas tend to own larger plots of land than the average in northern Kyrgyzstan. Even so, small landowners are represented in jamaats as 20 percent of members own less than approximately 1 ½ hectare of land. More important, as the key indicator for poverty is meant to be cattle ownership, households who own a small number of livestock are equally represented, although as a minority, in jamaats. From survey data we know that in 2015 in quintile 1 households own between none and two cows, and in quintile 2 two cows.

These can be considered respectively as very poor and relatively poor households, as from Martiniére´s typology previously used rich herders are those who own six or more cows. These households owning up to two cattle represent 40 percent of jamaat members. This whole picture is consistent with qualitative data collected in the field asserting that, based on jamaat conditionalities, each jamaat has to include approximately 2-3 poor households out of 8-10 making up the jamaat.

Further useful information can be extracted from table 23. With the exception of quintile 4, we observe that the larger the number of cattle, the larger the size of land. Concentration of livestock goes hand in hand with concentration of land. However, within the land-sharing cooperative arrangement of jamaats, the poor can benefit from larger scale that is supposed to be mainly provided by larger land owners. This hypothesis is partially confirmed by table 25 below.

1 2 3 4 5

Cattle quintiles size of land in jamaat Total

Size of owned land, sq. m. Integrated/owned land Portion of land integrated into jamaat, sq. m.

Mean Mean 13231.30 16401.90 80.7% 51680.3 37219.6 138.9% 104236.4 89497.7 116.5% 77725 78929.5 98.5% 105215.6 105146.7 100.1% 70575.2 65618.8 107.6%

Table 25 - Portion of individual land share integrated into jamaat Table 25 shows data on the portion of land owned or rented by households and integrated into jamaat land-sharing and the respective ratio. When joining the jamaat community, a household may join with its own land plot or may take additional land for rent, whereas poor households can join jamaats without any land plots, as their land plots may be located very far away. This explains why in some cases land integrated to jamaat is more than 100 percent of owned land. We observe that relatively small and mean cattle owners are the groups that contribute proportionally with more land to jamaat. Smallest cattle owners – whom we know also own less land – are those who contribute less. However, largest cattle (and land) owners contribute very significantly, with 98.5100 percent of the land they own – possibly they do not contribute with more than 100 percent because they don´t need to rent additional land. Therefore, it can be confirmed that larger cattle owners are those who most contribute to land-sharing in jamaat because they own larger land and share approximately 100 percent of it. Such a contribution is supposed to benefit all members including poor members, as for them land-sharing is an opportunity to gain productive scale.

Benefits from jamaat membership This leads us to the second question addressed in this subsection on jamaat, which refers to economic and non-economic benefits of jamaat membership. Survey data indicate that income for jamaat members has been increasing continuously since 2009.

HH average income (Som) 57784 46820 35131 21640

2009

27807

25476

2010

2011

29905

2012

2013

2014

2015

Figure 12 – Evolution of average income of jamaat member households, 2009-2014 From figure 12 we observe that the average income of jamaat member households grew 267 percent, well above the accumulated inflation rate of the period (54.7 percent). This confirms the “rationality” of a productive strategy based on cooperative arrangements.

As for herders above, we analyse the perception of jamaats´ transparency (defined as “access to information, free opinion in debate”), openness (“proposals from all herders are considered at decision making, all members can influence decisions”) and capacity to represent its members´ interests (respectively vis-à-vis governmental bodies at all levels, other economic agents such as sellers, truck drivers, various entrepreneurs, and in general).

Perception of Jamaat 59.5

37.9

34.5 25.3

21.9

15.1 2.4 trans pa rency

3.2 opennes s

government

Good & very good

2.5 2.2 economi c a gents genera l i nterests Bad & very bad

Figure 13 – Perception of Jamaat, different dimensions, Good and Very Good, Bad and Very Bad rates.

From figure 13 above we see that jamaat receives a very positive rate only for Openness, but quite polarised as this item also receives the highest Bad/Very Bad rate. This might suggest that although the majority of jamaat members succeed in influencing decision-making, a significant minority of members exists that is excluded from participation in jamaat management. For all other items,

perception is median as negative rates are very low but at the same time positive rates still lag behind fifty percent. Especially the capacity of jamaat to represent its members´ interests vis-à-vis government and other economic agents looks weak, suggesting that its non-institutional nature (different from PUA-PC) undermines its legitimacy or autonomy in political and economic transactions. The same picture emerges when quintile data are used (see Annex 2 for data).

5.3.6. Environmental implications and climate risk management The discussion above has important implications for the protection of pastures.

Pasture management and limits to indefinite livestock growth We have seen that apparently the pace of growth of cattle is reducing in the last years. This is a positive trend from an environmental perspective, as cattle are more dangerous to pasture conservation than sheep/goats (whose expansion is slowing down too) and horses (whose number is constantly increasing instead). Incentives to sheep and goats breeding would be environmentally beneficial, although they would face the obstacle of the increasing market demand (and resulting price) for beef meat.

Survey data also show that just a minority of herders receives and then follows grazing plans. Even so, the majority of them moves with herds to remote pastures. The fact of transhumance being revived is certainly positive because pressure from overgrazing in valley pastures is reduced, and at the same time the increase in grazing in mountain pastures is supposed to diminish the presence of noxious bushes and grasses that resulted from lack of grazing in post-Soviet years. However, pasture rotation without adequate planning does not guarantee pasture conservation. Pasture plans based on the use of the electronic Jayit system calculate the optimum carrying capacity of pastures, a crucial criterion for establishing limits to livestock expansion according to the locality. If pasture plans keep not being followed, further livestock growth in the future will likely threat the conservation of pastures.

This leads us to a broader discussion of the strategy of rural poverty reduction in the KR. Such a strategy is mainly based on the promotion of livestock expansion – implying an extensive rather than intensive use of natural resources. However, natural resources – in this case, pastures and their carrying capacity – are limited, and sooner or later the growth in livestock, even if properly planned and regulated, will lead to overgrazing again, resulting in a trade-off between socioeconomic and environmental goals. Besides that, also from a non-environmental perspective, we have previously discussed that livestock quantitative expansion without productivity increase (e.g. through the introduction of more productive breeds and the intensification in the technological content of the value chain) will keep benefiting mostly large herd owners thereby contributing to further wealth concentration. However, in order to attend the need of smaller herders and at the same time environmental conservation, light and diffused technology should be adopted – for instance, small-scale and disseminated processing plants – coupled to credit and technical assistance for best breeding purchase to poorer herders.

Climate risk management Even within a properly planned process of livestock expansion where quality is prioritised rather than quantity, threats are posed by climate changes both to the socio-economic and environmental systems of Kyrgyzstan (UNDP 2015). Negative impacts are experienced already in terms of more frequent and intensive droughts, reduction in water availability for irrigation, decrease in agricultural grain production and in livestock productivity threatening energy and food

security as well as human health (ibid.). Mainstreaming climate risk management (CRM) into policy, programmes and projects needs to be a critical component of poverty-environmental strategies. In Suusamyr Valley several CRM activities have been carried out, including (i) the customisation of the E-pasture management plan to integrate climate-change parameters (temperature and precipitation data and forecasting, avalanche, mudflow and flood hazards layers); (ii) preventive actions to mitigate the effects of droughts (water in-take construction, recalculation of irrigation costs to justify the expansion of irrigations systems, introduction of new, climate-resistant barley and holy-clever types to increase fodder supply); (iii) studies for the implementation of early warning systems (EWS) of adverse weather conditions for herders in remote pastures and purchase of automatic weather stations (AWS); (iv) installation of facilities (dead animal disposal devices, veterinary facility with refrigerator and solar panel) to mitigate the risk of increasing epizootic diseases associated to rising temperature and increasing animal morbidity; (v) training of women on sanitary-epidemiological implications of climate change; (vi) training for energy-saving stoves buildings; and (vii) general awareness raising through seminars, media tours and meetings.

The results of these CRM activities in Suusamyr Valley need evaluation in the future for best practices replication.

5.4.

Summary

Poverty and especially extreme poverty are reducing in Suusamyr and Naryn project areas as indicated by the general growth in livestock number and herders´ income. Even so, wealth concentration at the top of herders´ socioeconomic stratification, although slowing down, is still significant. Poor herders are mostly affected by low scale and lack of access to added-value chains. In contrast, poor farmers joining jamaats benefit from upscaling through land-sharing.

Stakeholders are affected by pasture management reforms and support provided to them by Suusamyr and Naryn projects in different ways.

Overall, adhesion to PUA/PC arrangement is very high. Larger livestock owners tend to have the older membership in PUA/PC and pay pasture fees with higher frequency than smaller livestock owners. The picture that is suggested in some literature that PUA/PC arrangements are manipulated by rich herders seems exaggerated. Although herders who own livestock numbers slightly above the average are to some extent over-represented in PUA/PC management, this is not sufficient to conclude that PUA/PCs are dominated by herders´ elites. Perception of PUA/PC also point to quite transparent and open arrangements.

In Suusamyr and Naryn projects´ areas livestock number grew faster than at the respective oblast level or the national level, possibly because of infrastructure which has been provided – and positively rated – to access remote pastures. This has benefitted herders in general, contributing also to a more intensive reduction in poverty and extreme poverty than regionally or nationally.

Although the redistributive purpose of pasture reforms still lags behind as concentration in livestock ownership is still high, signals emerge that, when PUA/PCs are adequately supported, not only can poverty and extreme poverty be reduced, but also accumulation of livestock at the top of herders´ socioeconomic stratification can be mitigated. Nevertheless, mechanisms favouring largest livestock owners persist. These are mostly the consequence of the small scale of livestock of poorer herders, for whom the unitary cost of remote pasturing is too high, having to rely on Mal Koshuu services provided by large livestock owners (rather than the other way round as suggested in the literature) and also suffering from limited access to high adding-value livestock fattening

process in remote pastures.

Besides, poor herders are most affected by the lack of modernisation in animal products´ processing and trading channels, whereas rich herders can guarantee high income simply by selling high volumes of big livestock alive. In this respect, the extensive rather than intensive use of natural resources is confirmed in the KR. As a result, the income of richest herders is perceived by interviewees as growing more intensively than the income of other herders´ groups. Objective data on income also suggest that a high social mobility is common among herders, opening up opportunities for some and increasing vulnerability for others, although respectively the richest and the poorest seem to be proportionally less affected by such mobility. Therefore, the concentration of benefits from a booming beef market in the hands of a few “fatteners-finishers” is a threat to the redistributive purpose of the Law of Pastures that cannot be underestimated as mentioned in Martiniére (op.cit.), although we found no strong evidence that it can be related to lack of empowerment of medium-small herders deriving from the manipulation of PCs by wealthy and powerful livestock owners, as from Kasymov and Thiel (op.cit.) and Kasymov (op.cit.).

Processes at work favouring income concentration seem to be of an economic rather than political nature, as it is also the case in animal products´ trading whereby PSIA survey results seem to confirm that a large part of the added value can go to traders and intermediators, with whom pastures users are engaged in constant bargaining on prices and conditions as according to Kasymov (op.cit.).

In contrast, the problem of scale has been positively addressed in jamaats by means of landsharing and cooperative working and marketing arrangements. Different from Mal Koshuu, scale is searched for on equitable bases in jamaats (actually, the relationship among parties is also different – cooperative rather than contractual). Jamaats´ composition reflects the overall economic structure whereby livestock and land concentration go hand in hand, but the landsharing arrangement of jamaat favours the poor more than herding as in jamaat they benefit from larger scale in land, whose main contributors are large cattle/land owners. Therefore, an articulate farming/herding strategy is recommendable for the reduction of rural poverty and attainment of the redistribution purpose of pasture reforms. According to the typology of Martinière (op. cit.), destitute farming families (FFS1) when included in jamaats may have the opportunity to access the market and improve living conditions, and farming families who are not marginalised from the market but are vulnerable due to the small scale of production resulting from the lack of capital (FFS2) might increase their sustainability, as productive factors in general (including capital) are upscaled from the pool of resources in jamaats and efficiency is gained from the division of labour of jamaats.

As demonstrated by the experience of jamaat, introducing further cooperative arrangements in the herding side of this strategy (for instance in joining small herds to upscaling for easing remote pasturing) could contribute to improve the distributional impact of reforms.

Last but not least, the fact that a minority of herders actually receives and follows grazing plans is clearly a flaw in PUA/PC performance, with negative environmental consequences. This is possibly related to some of the institutional fragilities of PUA/PC as previously discussed, including the low enforcement of sanctions as confirmed by the present PSIA survey. More broadly, the need to revise a rural poverty reduction strategy based exclusively on quantitative livestock growth and of including climate risk management in pasture use management has been stressed.

5.5.

Qualitative and focus groups analysis

In this sub-section qualitative information from literature review, individual interviews with key informants and focus groups is analysed focusing on women and the youth.

5.5.1. Women Disadvantages of women in the labour and land markets Official statistics indicate that in the KR women are disadvantaged compared to men by the labour market dynamics. The level of economic activity of women is 52% versus 77% of men; the general rate of unemployment is respectively 9.5% and 7.7%, but the gap is wider in rural areas (7.1% versus 9.1%); and the salary of women is 74.3% of the salary of men on average (National Statistics Committee 2011, 2013 and 2014).

Quoting from Kim (2014), among the rural poor, women tend to be more vulnerable to poverty and deprivation. In the KR, 53% of rural households which are headed by women are classified as poor, and 15% of them live in extreme poverty (Rural Poverty Portal, 2014, quoted in Kim 2014:6).

In addition, even in rural families above the poverty level, women experience the double burden of housekeeping and raising children on the one hand, and participating in cattle breeding on the other. They also follow their whole family to remote pastures for summer herding, where childraising is affected by the lack of infrastructure.

In general, women are constrained in the economic realm, including to work outside home, and tend to find “niche” opportunities for income generation (Kim op.cit.). Case-studies from the same report show that entrepreneurial activities by women are concentrated in small-scale agriculture, manufacture, service and trade, and that these activities can be successful (although implying an additional workload), provided that women involved learn adequate skills, including by participating in trainings by international organizations projects (ibid.). Successful entrepreneurial activities bring about both economic and social benefits to women, including a certain degree of empowerment and increased participation in public life (ibid.). Nevertheless, these successful stories are not the rule, and the role of women in local governments is “almost invisible” (Kim op. cit:8) – it is worth noting that at the time Kim´s study was conducted, only three out of eleven members of Suusamyr AO were women, and overall, women represented only 6% of members of pasture committees (ibid.).

According to a study by UNECE (2010)28, due to gender discrimination women in the KR often also experience barriers to access legal ownership of land through ownership transfer or inheritance.

Even when legal title of ownership is obtained, women may face difficulties in keeping it because of financial hardship, which is reinforced by further discrimination in access to credit and productive inputs (including knowledge of market-based farming practices and related technologies).

Most of these findings have been confirmed in the present PSIA fieldwork, together with some opportunities for women advance in the political, social and economic sphere.

Household division of labour and decision-making

Labor Children rearing

men Mean 40.94

women Mean 93.30

28 http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/hlm/documents/Publications/cp.kyrgyzstan.e.pdf

House cleaning and 2.98 96.03 laundry Cooking 4.47 95.53 Family budget management and 85.11 58.56 control Decision making 95.04 40.45 Irrigation 95.78 5.21 Agricultural work 97.52 8.93 Crops growing 87.34 25.06 Breeding small size 96.53 15.38 livestock Breeding cattle 98.26 9.93 Herding 95.53 11.41 Breeding poultry 56.82 49.63 Marketing and selling of agriculture 76.67 23.82 products Marketing and selling 81.14 25.81 of animal products Employment outside 66.50 12.90 the household Other .99 1.74 Total 67.60 35.86 Table 27 – Domestic and productive tasks´ allocation by gender Data from table 27 confirm the indications from the literature review above whereby domestic tasks are almost entirely concentrated among women (although with significant participation of men in child rearing), whilst at the same time women provide significant contribution (with associated work burden) to crops growing, marketing and selling of both agricultural and animal products, and especially poultry breeding. It is also confirmed that cattle breeding is almost exclusively a male-related activity, and that women´s participation in employment outside the household is small. Quantitative data from PSIA survey also show that women do have a role, although not dominant, in household´s decision-making especially as far as family budget control and management is concerned. Focus groups by the present PSIA in Suusamyr and Ortok villages confirm such tasks division in households: in a typical family, women do housekeeping, help breeding cattle and milking cows especially in the summer including by following the herd to the jailoo, and work with kids´ help in the garden. Male sons in working age usually help fathers, whilst daughters help mothers, so reproducing established gender roles across generations.

According to focus groups, women in general earn some money by selling kumys, melted butter, kurut, suzmo, but earning could improve if mini-workshops were established, like milk processing plant and handicraft shops for instance. However, in focus groups only men are reported to attend meetings related to land and deal with providers, customers, hired workers, micro-finance companies, specialists in agriculture.

Focus groups confirm also harsh work conditions for women. Waking up is as early as 5 am and going to sleep as late as 1 am. When women are employed or self-employed domestic tasks add up to work; if they are not employed, besides homework they help in herding or farming. Overall, routine is the same for employed women, women grazing cattle and women in farming: homework

and child rearing (including helping in school work) early in the morning and late in the afternoon/at night, preparing meals at noon and in the evening, and working whether in employment, grazing or farming most of the morning and afternoon. Homework conditions are made harder by lack of water at times and overall lack of washing machines and other equipment.

At times, women also have to go to the wood to bring firewood. Time for leisure (watching TV, visiting friends) is very short, if any. “Resting” time is mostly dedicated to sewing.

When moving to remote pastures, women´s working conditions get worse than at home. Women have to wake up earlier, milking animals more frequently, and serving a lot of people who visit the jailoo. They experience fear of wolves and discomfort with wind and rain. There is no power in mountains, nor shower.

Income-generating activities for women A sewing workshop was visited during field work in Suusamyr, where ten women and two men are working wool to make felt boots, carpets etc. based on orders. The sewing shop was said to be an autonomous initiative of women. It helps disposing the black wool that nobody wants and that pollutes the environment, and represents a relevant economic opportunity for women as it provides them with an additional income of 3000 Som/month on average individually. Women involved in the sewing workshop also stated that room for expansion of the activity exists and that they intend to take advantage of it: they are saving in order to purchase a new equipment to help in the preparation of felt and to build an external roof to increase the workshop usable area, but they would need also to expand their marketing channels beyond the village boundaries in order to have more stable orders.

A different picture emerges from women in focus groups who had been members of the sewing workshop, which is defined as a jamaat. In Suusamyr there are no other women´s jamaats beyond this sewing shop. They recognize that the jamaat brings them more income together with scale and problem-solving capacity. But in Suusamyr women from the focus group didn´t stay long in the jamaat, because orders were lacking – although they think that opportunities to earn income existed. In addition, women´s participation in the jamaat does not reverse traditional gender roles: family is still priority, “work is next”; in the time they stayed in jamaat, they worked at home because they “are housewives”. Who runs the sewing jamaat is a man. In contrast, in Orkut women are stable members of jamaat, where they work as volunteers, without remuneration, although they have projects (breeding chicken, processing wool and hides, selling garlic and fodder) but no support to implement them.

Focus groups show that at present none of participating women are landowners – the owners of the land are their husbands or fathers. In fact, one women in the focus groups state that one day she could become the owner of the father´s land, not that she will.

Women in management positions in PUAs/PCs and jamaats From qualitative field-work we found that, in pasture committees, women are under-represented – there is one woman out of nineteen members in Suusamyr pasture committee, and three women out of eleven members in Ortok pasture committee. In general, men argue that pasture management is not women´s issue as it involves conflicts. However, a different perspective might be emerging in Suusamyr, whose pasture committee has established that, starting from the next pasture committee election, gender quotas will be adopted, whereby at least one out of three representatives from each of the six villages of Suusamyr AO needs to be a woman.

According to the focus group, in households women take decisions (on grazing) with husbands, as

“we are all one family”. Women from the focus groups participated in PC meetings on tax payment for the jailoo: “We have such disputes at pastures all the time. Sometimes authorities forbid us to graze cattle in some places. In such situations women’s voices have more influence … We can yell unlike men.”

With regards to jamaats, findings from PSIA fieldwork indicate that (i) in Suusamyr Jamaats Association, three members out of five in the Audit Commission are women, as well as four out of eleven in the Management Board, but (ii) only seven or eight women are leading jamaats out of 128 existing jamaats in Suusamyr.

In focus groups, women in management say that they have the same influence as other people who are managers in PUA/PC, have full access to information and express freely their opinion in management meetings. They also participate in meetings with external stakeholders at times, depending on the issue – for instance, one woman was in meetings on road construction and solar panels distribution. In their opinion, men “are all right” with women being in PUA/PC management admits that work now is on the first place, ahead of family. She also reports that her self-esteem and awareness grew, together with work opportunities after she left PUA/PC management after 10 years in charge.

In Ortok´s jamaat women feel they “have become noticeable, as many matters are not solved without our participation. If someone turns to us, we will try to find all possible ways of solving a given problem. We can help in obtaining funds for solving a given problem by turning to Aksakal court or Aiyl Okmotu”. In Ortok, about one-third of participants in last Village Administration meeting were women, but they were not able to influence decisions at all. Women in the jamaat also contribute to the process of obtaining loans and actively participate in selling and storing.

From the picture above vulnerabilities and opportunities emerge for women.

Summary Most women experience the double burden from housekeeping/child raising and working, whether in employment, grazing or farming. Burden is heavier in remote pastures because of more intensive workload, longer working hours, and discomfort.

Women often earn a small income from the sale of home-made products but would need both capital and technology for business to grow. Jamaat can be seen as an opportunity for increasing income from upscaling of the productive process, although limited by the lack of capital and technology too and by a fluctuating demand for jamaat products. In addition, within the jamaat the discussion of traditional gender roles is hardly an issue.

Women contribute to household and at times village decision-making on herding but are underrepresented in PUA/PCs, although they are reported to be considered as equal to men when represented in PUA/PC management. Women are quantitatively better represented in jamaats´ management.

Under the present, still male-dominant mentality, jamaat as a family-based arrangement is probably more favourable to open up opportunities for women empowerment than PUA/PCs, as pasture management is still considered as an exclusively male task. One entry point for further strengthening the role of women in CBOs´ management – including pasture management as it also involves non-pastoral skills for planning, budgeting, interpersonal relations etc. – is to provide training courses on such issues exclusively for women. Also the idea of Suusamyr PC of women quotas should be taken as a reference.

In terms of economic opportunities, it seems that niches exist for women, stemming from the division of labour in jamaat productive organisation, which is expanded compared to the household level. Also in this case gender-exclusive training and technical assistance could be provided; these should include a citizenship/participation component to foster women´s empowerment and the reversal of traditional gender roles.

5.5.2. Youth A new generation of young activists Young people are emerging as AO active leaders in At-Bashy, opposing the older generation of former Soviet party members. In addition, Youth Committees have been formed in At-Bashy, working closely with the Village Committee and reaching out to members of the National Parliament, the Oblast and the Rayon with new ideas and proposals.

In Suusamyr, one young man from the focus group is Chair of the Sports Committee and a free style wrestling trainer. He is paid for that and also raises funds to take the athletes to competitions.

Another young man is a local leader in Tunuk village in Suusamyr valley and liaises with the Village Administration to solve problems related for instance to water provision, electricity, health services etc. He also advocacies for the village with a MP and the Aga Khan Foundation. In Suusamyr focus groups, the young show full knowledge of PUA/PCs and participate in them. They are usually listened to the same as older members. They are articulate about the issues and challenges the PC is dealing with and provide useful suggestions, for instance on the need for nearby PCs to collaborate to repair roads of common use and for disease control through ecological check points.

They also raise the issue of herders hiding animals and the need for social control by PC and community on correct animal counting for fair pasture fees payment by all herders.

In Kara-Suu, some of the young who were interviewed in the focus group work in the Village Administration or are members of a youth organization. The latter are invited to political meetings and liaise with different parties´ members. In their opinion, the young have equal say in meetings as older people, although they recognize that the youth organization has not been very effective in providing benefits to the community. Opinions on the effectiveness of the local PC – where five members out of 18 are young people – are overall negative, mainly due to high turnover of its members. The interviewees state that the opinion of the young is not influential in PC´s decisions.

The young in farming and herding With regard to farming, some of the young own their own land usually as part of their father´s land, but others do not, as when collective land was shared among families it was given to their parents: “We would like to separate from our parents and build new houses but there is no place for us”. Some of them are members of jamaat – the main motivation was to receive seeds, cheaper fuel from village administration, and advantages of working together in terms of scale and investment capacity. The young have equal or even stronger influence on jamaat decisions than older members.

A specific group of the young who are particularly disadvantaged is represented by the newcomers to herding – most of newcomers are actually young people starting their own, usually small, herds.

For small herders, accessing remote pastures might be unprofitable for lack of scale and the consequent too high unitary costs (FLERMONECA 2014: 8). Arguably the young are not experienced enough to be contracted for Mal Koshuu services by livestock owners to take their

herds to somehow risky remote pastures.

Academic training for the young Academic institutions are supporting capacity-building of the young from the regions of Suusamyr and Naryn: in 2015 Naryn State University was about to start a bachelor degree course for Pasture Specialists, and the Kyrgyz National Agrarian University has signed an agreement with Suusamyr PC to train young students from Suusamyr PC´s constituency – both initiatives are aimed at better qualify the young so that they decide to stay or return to villages as a new generation of skilled leaders.

Summary As for women, the situation of the young has been addressed from two perspectives – political (empowerment, opportunities for participation) and economic (vulnerability and opportunities).

Pasture committees and jamaats associations, when properly functioning and financially selfsustainable, can provide new opportunities for the young to engage and lead. This is also the case for local self-governments, where opportunities exist for successful fund-raising from international donors and NGOs; well trained and dynamic leaders would be strategically positioned for that. It would be important to build upon the lessons from Naryn State University and the Kyrgyz National Agrarian University (capacity-building of the young from Naryn and Suusamyr regions) and to promote a national network of institutions for training future leaders of pasture committees, jamaats associations and self-governments, with whom these institutions should enter into agreements to select the “best and bright” from local villages.

In the economic realm, vulnerabilities of newcomers to pasture use – mainly young people – have been discussed, focusing on the small number of their herds and the consequently high unitary cost of moving to remote pastures. Two solutions can be thought for these cases: (i) providing young newcomers with a waiver or discount in pastures fees if they access remote pastures (the impact on the pasture committee budget should be small as they own a small number of livestock too); and (iii) promoting grouping and cooperation by means of appropriate incentives, in order to small proprietors gain scale. With regard to landless young people, productive inclusion can be promoted under jamaats.

6. INFLUENTIAL STAKEHOLDERS FOR PASTURE REFORMS This section is focused on the stakeholders who potentially can influence – positively or negatively – the consolidation and further advancement of pasture management and use reforms in the KR. Different stakeholders are identified and analysed according to a framework that includes the following dimensions: A. B. C. D.

role with regard to pasture reforms; interests; strategy; power and power relations (in the sense of the capacity to influence effectively the course of action with regard to pasture reforms).

The main stakeholders have been grouped into general categories (government, university, NGOs etc.) in order to make the presentation more didactical.

The KR government, and specifically the Pasture Department, are committed to improve pasture reforms including by incorporating in national policy best practices from Suusamyr and Naryn projects. For that, support from international donors, the academy and organised bodies from civil society is strategic, but further efforts are necessary to improve the coordination among these partners.

6.1.

Key stakeholders in government

6.1.1. Pasture Department (PD) The PD is a department of the Ministry of Agriculture and is institutionally responsible for pasture reforms in the KR. The PD was a very powerful agency in Soviet times but it retains a key influential role at least with regard to pasture reforms. The PD has been the main mentor of the Law of Pasture and is the ultimate responsible for its implementation and success, politically accountable vis-Ă -vis the Minister of Agriculture and the Parliament. The implementation of Pasture Committees (PCs) which followed the issuance of the Law of Pastures in 2009 was guided by the PD even when the NGO ARIS was contracted to support it. Successively, the PD has engaged in a wide range of activities supporting PCs, including awareness-raising and capacity-building, promotion of law amendments, and supervision.

The PD has manifested a genuine interest in the implementation of pasture reforms according to the spirit of the law, to the point of imposing the closure of and successive re-election in PCs whose members had not been selected according to principles of transparency and participation.

The actions of the PD apparently are motivated by the pursuit of effective strategies and tools to overcome the barriers that hinder pasture reforms from unleashing their potential.

The PD explicitly recognises the partnership with UNDP and the influence PEI has exerted on mainstreaming the interrelationships between poverty and environment in national planning and in budgeting both at the national and local level, including in pilot projects in Suusamyr and

Naryn29. As a consequence of these projects, the PD aims at picking up, disseminating and upscaling good practices and successful approaches to pasture reforms implementation. This is the case for UNDP-piloted practices: the PD has officially determined that both the PC´s electronic pasture management system30 and the jamaat/revolving seed fund arrangement are to be part of the KR pasture management reform effort, and that they need to be upscaled nation-wide. This stance has been formalised both in official documents and in public statements, including a 2015 meeting in Naryn31. This attitude by the PD is crucial, as it implies that both the electronic pasture management system and the jamaat/revolving seed fund arrangement are meant to move from the project level to the policy level.

At the same time, however, the capacity of the PD to implement effectively the replication of these good practices nationwide looks fragile, and in the end its strategy tends to be opportunistic by following existing partnership opportunities rather than leading them. On the one hand, the official position of the PD is that no funds from the Treasury will be available to support such replication, and that the latter will depend on donors´ financing (see below). To some extent, dependency on donors´ funding is not exceptional in KR policy implementation, as explicitly recognised in the National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2013-2017 document. However, such an approach is severely jeopardised by the PD unwillingness or incapacity to exercise a more proactive role and to coordinate effectively the strategies of different stakeholders, including international donors. This should be the main task of the Coordination Council – an advisory body to the PD, made up of representatives from government agencies and civil society – but according to some interviewees the Council is subject to political interferences and to some extent ineffective. Another advisory body to the PD, the Pasture Reform Support Group, made up of technical specialists, apparently has technical but little political influence.

Beyond actions depending on donors´ funds, the PD aims at continuing strengthening pasture reforms by means of improvements to the legal and policy framework.

6.1.2. Ministry of Agriculture (MA) No representative from the MA was met during the mission. Information below has been extracted from documents and interviews with third parties.

The MA has among its responsibilities both pasture management and use (through the PD – see above) and water regulation and use. The latter, as previously seen in the section on Pasture Reforms, has an indirect influence on the former insofar as water use is a potential source of conflict with pasture use.

Apparently the overall interests and strategies of the MA are aligned to the specific ones of the PD as mentioned above.

The MA contributes to the implementation strategy of pasture reforms by the PD by providing support at the rayon level through technical support units. Indications from fieldwork are that the 29 UNEP-UNDP 2016. The same influence of PEI on mainstreaming poverty-environmental issues is recognised by the Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Agriculture, KDIL and SAPEF. The property of the electronic pasture management system has been formally transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture by the Ministry Order n. 142 of 2014, which stats that the system will be integrated to into the national system of pasture management in the KR until 2017.

31 The meeting in Naryn has been organised by the Coordination Council and was attended by approximately sixty-five representatives of PCs, AOs, experts, FAO and UN Women.

30

decentralised MA/PD Naryn Oblast department (or technical unit) provides support to pasture reforms implementation through awareness raising and community mobilisation activities.

The institutional capacity of the MA has been the object of criticisms in Parliament, to the point of questioning the role and usefulness of the ministry itself. Specifically, it has been criticised for (i) limiting itself to produce statistics and keeping a central-planning soviet style of work which is outdated in a market-oriented rural economy based on individual property, and (ii) for being staffed (mainly in the Veterinary Services Department, but also partially in the PD) with retirementage officers who reinforce such old-fashioned practices. However, there is consensus among pasture-related stakeholders that the MA should be maintained because the KR is still a dominantly rural country, but it should innovate in order to be more effective and influential.

6.1.3. Kyrgyzgiprozem (Kyrgyz Design Institute on Land Management – KDIL) KDIL is the institution responsible for land planning, monitoring and inventory in the KR, and is hierarchically dependent on the PD within the MA. It has already supported pasture reforms, specifically by executing the landscape and botanic inventory under both Suusamyr and Naryn projects, so updating in the areas benefitted by these projects the last pasture inventory and pasture boundaries demarcation that KDIL itself had realised more than twenty years ago.

According to the KDIL, nationwide inventory and pasture boundaries demarcation should be key elements in the strategy of pasture reforms implementation. This point has been confirmed by all stakeholders that have been interviewed as well as by the literature review (see section on Pasture Reforms).

Although KDIL is provided with the technical and institutional capacity to perform these tasks at the national level, it has no budget for that, and apparently negotiations on this issue with the PD/MA have not been successful as the latter are equally lacking funds. Consequently, the capacity of KDIL to concretely influence pasture reforms in the field is dependent on international donors´ financing. Nevertheless, as we shall see further on, some of the international agencies that at the moment have large scale projects and significant resources to implement a nationwide inventory are unwilling to contract KDIL, asserting that it is too expensive and preferring a simpler and cheaper community-based approach based on traditional knowledge of pasture users. KDIL, in turns, is sceptical about the technical feasibility of such an approach. It is worth registering that recent internationally financed projects that had been criticised by KDIL for outsourcing boundaries demarcation (in this case, to private contracted firms) suffered from the poor quality of the products.

6.1.4. State Agency of Protection of Environment and Forestry (SAPEF) The role of SAPEF has been already addressed in the section on Pasture Reforms and its current financial difficulties have been stressed. As discussed previously, SAPEF can be influential with regard to pasture reforms by widening and strengthening opportunities of cooperation between forestry agency and PCs building upon the already existing 2013 agreement whereby forest pastures can be transferred under PCs management. UNEP-UNDP PEI has supported SAPEF in the preparation of the National Report on the Environmental Conditions of the Kyrgyz Republic for 2006-2011 (UNEP-UNDP 2016).

6.1.5. Self-government administrations – Ayil Okmotus (AOs) As discussed in the section on Pasture Reforms, (i) the interests and strategies of AOs may clash with the attributions of PC, as under the Law of Pastures the latter have incorporated functions related to pasture management and pasture use fees collection that previously were under the responsibility of AOs; in addition, (ii) we have seen that potential conflicts between AOs and PCs are fuelled by ambiguities in the legal framework and lack of knowledge by the parties on their respective roles and responsibilities; finally, (iii) AOs still keep the attribution, and therefore the power, of vetoing the investments in infrastructure proposed by PCs. Cooperation between AOs and PCs as well as Jamaats is key to pasture reforms implementation.

This is especially the case in the initial stage of jamaats until they gain financial self-sustainability or to pasture users and PCs in times of hardship or staff turnover. In fieldwork, cases have been witnessed of productive collaboration between open-minded and dynamic AO chairmen and PCs or jamaats. These cases include the following: (a) in Dobolu, the building for a mini-poultry farm was provided by the AO, which also provided the office to the PC and mobilised external resources (ARIS, individual contributions), to rehabilitate 20 km of roads; in Dobolu the AO also supervises the pasture committee in the (frequent) transitions between different chairmen; (b) in Ortok the AO collaborated by mobilising people, organising meetings to disseminate the experience of Suusamyr, paying for fuel, buying an excavator, and helped organising jamaats that did not receive seeds; it also cooperated with PEI in providing a cleaning facility for an irrigation canal; (c) in KaraSuu, the AO is considered to be very active, attracting external investments worth KGS 15 million in 2014, and already 12 million in 2015, which have been used for irrigation, purchase of a harvester, excavators, a lorry for pasture management, as well as for building and purchasing equipment for health centers and improvement of schools; the AO also provided land to jamaats from the Redistribution Fund, and contributed to paying for fuel; during the 2014 drought, the Rayon of AtBashy supported Kara-Suu with priority access to water for irrigation when seeds were delivered by the UNDP.

6.2.

Key stakeholders in university

6.2.1. Kyrgyz National Agrarian University (KNAU) KNAU is a leading institution in the KR in agricultural research and rural extension. As an academic institution, its interest and strategy are focused on contributing to the progress of the country by developing and applying innovations in the agricultural realm. Its capacity to influence effectively the course of pasture reforms builds upon its academic prestige and R&D capacity, and is materialised by means of awareness-raising, opinion-making, and through technical assistance in the field when contracted by projects.

KNAU has collaborated with both Suusamyr and Naryn projects providing technical assistance in developing and implementing jamaats´ revolving seed fund. KNAU´s expertise is a very valuable resource for the replication of PEI practices supporting pasture reforms, including in the adaptation of the revolving seed fund outside valley pastures where it has been originally conceived, and in fostering the production and use of seeds to improving grazing pastures degraded by weeds resulting from long-term lack of pasture use.

6.2.2. Naryn State University (NSU) NSU is an academic institution with both a strong regional presence and national projection. Partly because of its location it has developed a valuable expertise in pasture management. As an academic institution, it shares the same interests as KNAU above. However, its strategies to support pasture reforms have been different, and can be grouped under three headings: (i) evaluations: NSU has conducted assessments of PCs in the region, where low educational level of PC staff, lack of accountancy and management skills have been highlighted as the main PCs weaknesses; in addition, NSU has developed a methodology for the economic assessment of pastures; (ii) capacity-building: NSU together with UNDP have trained three university´s IT specialists to provide local maintenance to PCs in the E-pasture management system (three more IT specialists are to be provided by NSU alone); it is also starting, in September 2015, a Bachelor´s Degree course for Pasture Specialist; (iii) advising to policy-making: based on its experience in the field with PEI, NSU has suggested amendments to the Law of Pasture.

Future strategies of NSU to support pasture reforms include to make itself available to lead the creation of a network of universities as regional hubs for nation-wide capacity-building and support to PCs.

6.3.

Key stakeholders in the non-governmental sector

6.3.1. Camp Alatoo Camp Alatoo is a public foundation, founded in 2005, as the successor of Central Asian Mountain Partnership (CAMP), funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Its mission is to promote sustainable development in the mountain regions of Kyrgyzstan. Camp Alatoo has constructed a reputation as an NGO with solid technical expertise, deeply rooted presence in pasture communities and effective networking with, and presence in, international donors´ activities – these are also the assets it built upon its capacity to influence the course of pasture reforms. In addition, its strategy focused on methodological systematisation and improvement, participatory approach, and legal/policy advocacy to pasture management has already made it an influential stakeholder in pasture reforms in the KR. Camp Alatoo has not been involved directly in PEI activities so far but collaborates with UNDP already in the Poverty Reduction Programme.

The next steps of Camp Alaato strategy include the elaboration of a proposal for a minimum common content of pasture management´s steps to be systematised and made mandatory for all national and international stakeholders, in order to achieve basic coordination among them. Given the relative vacuum in effective coordination related to the attitudes of the PD as seen above, this can represent a milestone for the advance of pasture reforms.

6.3.2. Association of Kyrgyzstan Pasture Users The Association of Kyrgyzstan Pasture Users (AKPUKJ) is a national-level association of local and regional associations of pasture users. It was formally registered in August 2015 and at present it has more than 400 members, including local PUAs and 26 regional pasture users´ associations. Its basic functions refer to provide PUAs with capacity-building, consultative services, promote communication and information sharing among PUAS, and provide a platform for coordination of PUAs. According to its Strategic Plan 2016-2020 its objectives are to strengthen its own capacity through fundraising and partnerships, demand-based capacity-building of PUAs and promoting the rights and interests of PUAs. Its main partnership has been so far with IFAD´s Livestock and Market Development Programme (see below). Considering its role as national representative of PUAs and

its objectives, it is a potentially critical partner for UNDP to disseminate best practices from Suusamyr and Naryn projects.

6.4.

Key stakeholders among international organisations

6.4.1. FAO FAO strategy in the KR is summarised in the joint FAO-KR Ministry of Agriculture Country Programme Framework 2011-201532, where priority actions range from supporting smallholder agriculture and rural income growth together with poverty alleviation, to management of natural resources in the rural sector.

Specifically, FAO is about to start a new US$ 24.5 million project (co-financed by GEF) that will marginally interact with pasture management reforms insofar as it focuses, among other issues, on integrated land use planning and forest/agriculture/pasture conflicts.

The possibility of specifically FAO-GEF project including the replication of PEI-piloted practices as part of its strategy to support pasture reforms is small, as the perception by FAO representatives we met of PEI (as well as Suusamyr) practices is negative, and their assessment is that (i) the electronic system is too complex for PCs and the experience in its use not participatory, and (ii) the revolving seed fund arrangement is applicable to valley pastures only (which prevail in Suusamyr and Naryn provinces but not in other KR regions).

6.4.2. GIZ Relevant operations of GIZ for pasture reforms include (i) the project Forest and Biodiversity Governance Including Environmental Monitoring (FLERMONECA), one of the four components of the Regional Environment Programme of the European Union for Central Asia, and (ii) the research project Economics of Land Degradation (ELD). FLERMONECA facilitates dialogue between Central Asian policy makers in order to promote reforms for the sustainable management of forest, pasture and wildlife resource, focusing on the support to the institutional and legal framework sectors related to forests, and on biodiversity protection including in pastures. ELD is a research project on economic and environmental accounting systems to assess the value of natural resources and to include it in the GNP account, whereby the selected ecosystem for the KR is the high mountain one. GIZ and UNDP collaborate, together with the KR National Statistics Committee, in this initiative and a division of labour exists whereby UNDP is responsible for the assessment of pastures and GIZ for the assessment of forests.

By means of these projects GIZ is not contributing to the mainstream of pasture reforms, but it is influencing pasture-related dimensions that are not secondary, such as forests-pasture conflicts, pasture biodiversity, and it is adding value to pasture reforms process through the joint effort with UNDP focused on the economic dimensions of natural resources conservation.

6.4.3. UN-WOMEN UN-Women activities that are relevant for pasture reforms and PEI-piloted practices focus on (i) the economic empowerment of women in rural contexts (mainly through non-agriculture engagement, as agriculture is labour-intensive with special burden on women reproducing the gender agenda), and (ii) participation of women in decision-making. UN Women has also supported the preparation of gender-sensitive budgets in two AOs in At-Bashy. Its contribution to 32 Available at ftp://ftp.fao.org/TC/CPF/Countries/Kyrgyzstan/Kyr_CPF11_15.pdf

pasture reforms and the replication strategy of Suusamyr and Naryn projects´ approach should mainly focus on providing already tested, practical methodologies for women´s empowerment both in the economic and political realm, for which manuals have been prepared and whose content might be included in specific policy documents.

6.4.4. IFAD and the World Bank IFAD and the World Bank are the major international donors in the KR in terms of funding for agriculture and livestock development. In the PSIA mission no representatives from either of these institutions could be met – only the coordinator of IFAD was briefly contacted by phone as he was on annual leave.

IFAD is co-financing with the World Bank the USD 62.5 million Livestock and Market Development Programme (Phases I and II), covering five KR provinces, and focusing on (i) a participatory planning approach for pasture and livestock development supporting PUAs/PCs; (ii) support to private veterinary services and national health programmes; and (iii) market and value-chain initiatives to raise the return of livestock farmers. In Naryn PD Coordination Council meeting the replication of the electronic pasture management system was endorsed by proposing to include it in the budget of IFAD/World Bank/FAO project. IFAD coordinator confirmed the interest in the electronic pasture management system, including for use in management of other natural resources (e.g. water). According to the IFAD coordinator, however, due to budget limitation the inventory methodology of Kyrgizgiprozem, including its geobotanical survey component, is considered too expensive, and a lighter and community-based approach will be adopted instead.

6.5.

Summary

The KR government is committed to the improvement of the legal and institutional framework of pasture reforms and replication of PEI best practices, but it needs strengthening its capacity to coordinate different stakeholders (mainly international donors) to follow common and coherent guidelines in supporting pasture reforms.

The motivation of the KR government, and specifically of the PD, to proceed in pasture reforms and overcome their shortcomings is apparent. Its strategy is two-fold: improvement of the legal and policy framework on the one side, and replication of good practices in the field on the other, based on international donors´ funds. The risk exists, however, that without effective conceptual integration and operational coordination at the PD level, best practices following donors´ individual strategies will result in a patchwork with little coherence and synergies among them. A possible entry point to advance in this picture is to (i) supporting improvements in the legal and policy framework, joining partners from the academic, non-governmental and international development sectors with specific capacities and proposals, and focusing on the systematisation and institutionalisation of a common minimum content for pasture management as suggested by Camp Alatoo (which would be likely to include the E-pasture system) and its enforcement procedures, to be followed by all stakeholders in the field; and (ii) investing in the dissemination and capacitybuilding in this set of “minimum content common guidelines” through channels such as the territorial technical units of the PD, universities, the Coordination Council and the Association of Kyrgyzstan Pasture Users.

7. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER PEI-LED SCALING UP OF PASTURE MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES AND POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE POLICY REFORMS The results of PSIA analysis from the previous sections of this report provide indications for upscaling PEI best practices as well as policy recommendations for the advancement of pasture reforms in the KR. Overall, increasing the access to natural resources (pastures, water, territories under the responsibility of forestry agency) to pasture users, regulating its use in order to promote a fair access, and gradually moving from an extensive to a more intensive strategy of use of natural resources grounded on improved productivity, are the key issues for achieving pasture reforms´ purpose of growth with redistribution and environmental sustainability.

In the literature review above it has been stated that the design of pasture reforms is meant to correct economic, power and information asymmetries in favour of small/medium herders and livestock owners. The analysis of affected stakeholders has offered useful insights in this respect.

In the first place, we found no strong evidence of monopolisation of PUA/PC by the very elite of herders and livestock owners – redistribution of power and information seems to be reasonably successful.

On the economic side, notwithstanding a nationwide high adhesion by herders to PUA/PC arrangement, no speed up effect is apparent from pasture reforms on post-2009 livestock growth.

This can be associated to a slower pace of reduction in rural poverty (but not in rural extreme poverty) over the same period. However, a different picture emerges in Suusamyr and Naryn projects´ areas, whereby a higher growth in livestock and faster reduction in poverty are registered than at the national or regional level, suggesting that technical assistance to pasture reforms´ implementation is crucial to improve their effectiveness. This is possibly related to the supply of infrastructure and services by UNDP and other donors in these areas. Signals of mitigation of concentration of livestock ownership at the top of herders´ socioeconomic stratification are also apparent.

At the same time, failures in both the provision (by PCs) and following (by herders) of grazing plans are recorded in Suusamyr and Naryn projects´ areas, which are likely to jeopardise the expected conservation effects of pasture reforms on the environment especially in a situation of growing climate-related risks. These failures seem to be related to lacking or ineffective incentives and sanctions from PUA/PCs to herders. Besides, data analysis shows that insufficient scale in livestock number and still underdeveloped value chains in animal products´ processing and trading mostly affect poorer herders to seizing market opportunities and grow.

In contrast, problems of scale and cooperation are successfully addressed in the revolving seed arrangement in jamaats, leading to higher income to members including poor ones whose membership in jamaats is mandatory and widely accepted. The revolving seed fund is the engine of jamaat arrangement, providing incentives for the socio-organisational dimensions as well as for productive/income generating ones; through the revolving seed fund, jamaat turns into a selffinancing arrangement with embedded mechanisms for targeting of the poor and replication.

We also saw that women are still somehow marginal to decision-making in herding although contributing with heavy workload to it as well as to farming. Possibly, a wider room is potentially available to women in jamaats, where both niche market opportunities and broader participation in management exist. The young also suffer from low scale in both livestock and land ownership, but at the same time opportunities are opening up for young, dynamic leaders in village government and PUA/PC management.

7.1.

Gaps in pasture reforms implementation and recommendations

From the picture above, three general types of gaps emerge in pasture reforms and their implementation, referring respectively to (i) the effectiveness of grazing plans, (ii) critical lack of scale for vulnerable groups and consequent need for cooperation, and (iii) flaws in added-value creation in the production, processing and trading value chain.

In the rest of the present section, recommendations are provided focusing on these three gaps from the perspective of legal, policy and institutional design, and from the perspective of implementation whereby issues of institutional development and capacity-building are crucial ones. In the discussion that follows contributions are extensively used from the analysis of pasture reforms in section 4.

Design Grazing plans Mechanisms for calculation and enforcement of compensation from secondary pasture users and for pasture fees calculation among different sectors.

Mechanisms for enforcement of penalties for violations of PUA/PC rules and instructions.

Scale and coordination

Value chain

Implementation Improvement in information generation and handling: inventory and pasture border demarcation, livestock census procedures, indicators that are used to allocate social benefits, AA socioeconomic passports.

Capacity-building and broader participatory use of the Electronic Pasture Management System.

Supporting an upward data flow and a centrally consolidated Electronic System.

Defining/improving regulation of Setting a minimum common content relationships between PCs on one side of pasture management and promote and AOs, Specially Protected a more proactive coordination role of Territories, Water Users Associations on government agencies and the other – extending SAPEF-PD international donors. agreement´s applicability.

Formalising jamaat revolving seed fund arrangement in national legal and policy framework.

Adapting the revolving seed fund principles to other ecosystems.

Revising the legal and policy framework on cooperatives.

Investment in technical assistance training, technology and marketing

for vulnerable groups.

Table 28 – Synthesis of recommendations for further PEI-led scaling up of pasture management activities and policy recommendations for future policy reforms In the section on pasture management reforms we have seen that conflicts often emerge – between PC and AO in the same or different AAs, PC and territories under the responsibility of forestry agency, protected areas or WUAs, and PCs and secondary users – and that in most cases these conflicts are related to gaps and ambiguities in the legal framework about duties, rights and responsibilities of different institutions, lack of formal mechanisms for intersectoral and interinstitutional cooperation and for enforcement of sanctions against violations.

Inter-institutional and inter-sectoral coordination: fees and secondary pasture use Pasture fees calculation by different institutions is one of the sources of conflict reflecting on the ineffectiveness of grazing plans, pointing to the need for an improved legal and institutional design for inter-institutional and inter-sectoral coordination including on common pasture fees´ definition.

Improvement is needed also for revenues sharing from secondary pasture use (e.g. hunting) between PCs and AOs. With regard to secondary pasture users, the specific relations between tourism activities and pasture use also need to be regulated.

Penalties enforcement Also mechanisms need to be improved for the definition and enforcement of penalties for violations (e.g. in livestock census and lack of adhesion to pasture use plans).

Capacity-building and institutional strengthening in information generation and use In previous sections we also discussed that failures in PC performance and specifically in grazing plans effectiveness are associated to the low capacity level or incomplete knowledge of PC staff, lack of supporting tools, problems related to pasture border demarcation, lack of updated maps and inventories of pastures´ conditions, unreliable livestock census numbers, and little clarity about the type of services PCs have to provide. For that, institutional strengthening and capacitybuilding need to focus on issues of information handling in the first place, such as (i) improving livestock census procedures through cross-checking of different sources such as PUAs, veterinary records and AOs; (ii) as the number of livestock is used as a reference for subsidy allowance, it is suggested too to substitute it for other indicators, as under the present indicators system herders are incentivized to hide the number of livestock they own in order to get social subsidies (USAID et al 2013); (iii) PCs should take in due consideration the existing environmental plans when preparing pasture management and use plans, and access the available information on secondary pasture users, given that a basic guideline of the Law on Protection of the Environment stresses transparency and access to information; socio-economic passports of local self-governance (the main socioeconomic features of each Aiyl Aimak are synthetised in a “passport”) should also include the main considerations of the plans of local institutions that manage natural resources (USAID et al 2013); and (iv) providing tools for the identification of pasture boundaries, inventory and ecological monitoring.

Eurasian Economic Union and livestock census

Since August 6, 2015, Kyrgyzstan formally joined Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Armenia as a member of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). EEU introduces the free movement of goods, capital, services and people and provides for common transport, agriculture and energy policies for an integrated market of 183 million people 33. Free trade among member countries imposes rules and standards including sanitary certification for animals and animal products, to be based, among others, on the introduction of cattle passport identification. The broad adoption of this passport can be a deterrent against herders hiding the real number of their livestock, as unidentified animals and their products will have access denied to lucrative markets. In addition, the adoption of the passport would likely reduce the presently increasing trend of smuggling animals and animal products to Kazakhstan as well as contribute to move meat trading away from informal markets (as seen above) to more structured, adding-value marketing channels.

A menu of different methodologies for landscape inventory With regard to the inventory methodology, more clarity is necessary: (i) there is wide consensus that the inventory is fragmented at the national level, that it is not effective in separate pieces of land, and that an integrated inventory is necessary; however, there is no consensus on how to make it; (ii) it has been said that the inventory methodology adopted in Suusamyr and Naryn projects is costly and complex; first, this might not be the case: the cost of expert inventory services in one AO has been USD 2500; according to Kyrgyzgiprozem, the cost of the inventory using its methodology for the whole country would be up to USD 1 million; second, a cost-benefit analysis of different methodologies should be realised; (iii) if different methodologies showed a good cost-benefit relation, there would be no problem in the Pasture Department proposing a basket of different methodologies each project could choose from according to its budget, local applicability etc. - provided that results of different methodologies are comparable.

Electronic Pasture Management System: training networks and participatory use A further relevant issue for improving grazing plans´ effectiveness under the “implementation” heading refers to the need for capacity-building in, and broader use of, the Electronic Pasture Management System, considering the low skill level of pasture committees staff in IT; the provision of local IT training and support – rather than depending on Bishkek´s IT specialists – is crucial. In this respect, the UNDP-Naryn State University provision of local IT trainers in the electronic system is an important initiative. A wider participatory approach to the electronic system use should also be promoted. At present the system´s use is concentrated in the hands of pasture committees, but opening up the system´s data and use to pasture users at large would promote better informed participation in decision-making, with potentially positive motivational effects as far as following grazing plans is concerned.

A national pasture management electronic system Besides, supporting an upward data flow and a centrally consolidated national Electronic Pasture Management System can be strategic, as: (i) centralised data (coupled to an audit system) may contribute to better enforcement of pasture committees and pasture users, as different administrative levels accessing data can perform cross-checking; and (ii) an E-gov project is already in place at the AO level, promoting the standardisation and computerisation of data, but it is hampered by the high turnover of AOs staff, and its use is still sporadic (e.g. just one out of four AOs we visited in Naryn and At-Bashy provided printed figures); an eventual effort to create an upward data flow for the electronic system could benefit from articulation with the E-gov project and reciprocal support.

33 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Economic_Union.

Extending intersectoral regulatory agreements With regard to scale and coordination issues, under the “design” heading the main issue at stake is how to improve mechanisms to finance or co-finance improvement to infrastructure in order to extend the access to pastures so reducing the competition for scarce and endangered natural resources. For that, the relations between PCs and AOs need better regulation. Specifically, more efficient decision-making procedures must be developed for investment in infrastructure (at present, PC´s decisions in this area need approval by the AO). Also the relations between PCs on the one side and forestry agency or managing authorities of protected areas on the other, as well as their respective roles, responsibilities and procedures, need a more enabling regulatory framework. For this, the agreement between the Pasture Department and SAPEF is a promising initiative that is being tested. A similar arrangement could be thought to promote the collaboration between PCs and Water Users Associations. Specifically, in (USAID et al 2013) it is suggested that cooperation can be strengthened by “including institutions managing natural resources (pasture committee, Association of Water Users, forestry agency, regional divisions of State ecological technical inspection within the Government of KR) to implementing regular coordination meetings at district/water basin scale under the responsibility of district administration” (ibid:46).

A specific legal framework for the revolving seed fund in jamaats A further and critical issue of legal and policy design refers to the revolving seed fund in jamaats.

The benefits of jamaats, including for poor farmers, have been highlighted in the previous sections.

It has been argued also that jamaats should be integrated as a full component in pasture management reforms, both for their potential as forage-providers and for their counter-balancing effect on trends to livestock ownership concentration within a family farming system perspective.

Law n.36 of 2005, amended by Law 144 of 2014, regulates jamaats as voluntary associations “of local community members living within one street, one block or any other territorial area in a village or a city, and aiming at jointly resolving local issues at their own responsibility”. It applies to most citizens´ voluntary associations and is of little use for regulating the specificities of the seed revolving fund arrangement developed under jamaats in Suusamyr and Naryn projects. In the law, land – the key asset together with seeds in the seed revolving fund arrangement – is not even mentioned among the common properties that jamaats can establish. Further amendments to the law are therefore necessary.

Experimenting the revolving seed fund in different ecosystems In parallel, the replication of the revolving seed fund arrangement needs technical support. As previously mentioned, some limitations to this arrangement have been highlighted by professionals who have been interviewed: (i) the forage seeds fund is only applicable to valley pastures – these should be mapped, then, and adaptation for other types of cultivation should be sought to other contexts in order to keep the incentive effect of the seeds fund; (ii) seeds fund should be developed for pasture too, as these are deteriorating where grazing has been absent for a long time. Support from international donors and academic institutions should be provided for mapping and adaptation.

A minimum common content for coordinating initiatives supporting pasture management A more general issue needs to be addressed under the “implementation” heading as far as scale and coordination are concerned. We have already pinpointed the interest and commitment of the Pasture Department in fostering pasture reforms and upscaling best pasture management practices. We have also observed that the Pasture Department needs international donors´ funding for that. At the same time, a general framework for coordinating different donors´ activities supporting pasture reforms is lacking. Camp Alatoo is addressing such gap as a technical

rather than as design problem34, suggesting that a minimum common content of pasture management is established, including: (a) inventory of livestock; (b) pasture management plan according to carrying capacity; (c) pasture conditions assessment plan (which can be either easy or complex, e.g. with or without economic analysis); (d) activities planned for 2-3 years, e.g. for infrastructure, capacity-building etc.; and (e) a budget to execute such activities. Different stakeholders would have to follow such minimum common content guidelines (being free to add up any other content they might prioritise). In this way, the Pasture Department would be provided with operational guidelines to perform a more proactive role in coordinating different actions supporting pasture reforms.

Scale and value chain: cooperatives and technical assistance Finally, actions are recommendable to improving the value chain both in herding (specifically for animal products) and farming. Fostering cooperative arrangements – for instance for young newcomers to herding or small livestock owners– is also a means to improve the value chains by aligning and upgrading productive, processing and marketing arrangements. However, obstacles exist to cooperative arrangements in KR´s legal framework. Suusamyr Jamaat Association has been thinking to evolve into a cooperative, but they desisted because the number of taxes they would pay would rise from two to twelve. In addition, cooperatives are reportedly often misused in the KR as they are often created just to obtain bank loans but no cooperative productive arrangements are set. This is also the case of women´s cooperatives at times, whereby the control on the resources through loans is held by men who are those who actually decide about their use, whilst women keep working individually at home. International technical assistance would be indicated to study and propose amendments to the present legal framework on cooperatives. In addition, in the institutional development and capacity-building dimension, investment would be necessary in easily accessible processing mini-plants and marketing tools and techniques, and specifically for women, investment is also priority both in training in management skills (including an empowerment component) and in production technology.

Potentially supporting stakeholders Most of the recommendations above can be supported by UNDP and other stakeholders.

Specifically, contribution can be provided by academic institutions in adapting jamaat principles to other ecosystems (KNAU) and for large-scale capacity-building of PUAs/PCS (NSU). Camp Alatoo is already very active in both suggesting improvements to pasture management legal framework and in PUAs/PCs mobilisation and capacity building, and the development of operational guidelines for a minimum common content of pasture management would be well received considering Camp Alatoo recognised legitimacy in the international donors network it is inserted in. On issues of pasture-forests conflicts and economic evaluation of pastures (as part of inventory activities) support can be provided by GTZ. UN Women is strategically located to support a women training empowerment component. Finally, under IFAD-World Bank project, large-scale capacity-building of PUAs/PCs can be provided under the participatory planning for pasture and livestock development component, whilst poorer herders can be mostly benefitted by the market and value-chain initiatives to raise the return of livestock farmers´ component. AKPUKJ is already an active partner of IFAD and would strategically contribute to PUAs/PCs mobilization and capacity-building. Overall, UNDP must actively interact with IFAD-World Bank project based on the common interest in disseminating the Electronic Pasture Management System.

In synthesis, the recommendations above can be summarised as follows under four headings.

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As a matter of fact, coordinating institutional arrangements already exist – the Coordination Council and the Pasture Reform Support Group – but they are hardly effective.

E. Improvements to the legal framework: amendments are suggested to existing laws regarding (i) the regulation of the revolving seed fund in jamaats, and (ii) cooperatives taxation.

F. Further development of the policy framework, including (i) the enforcement of penalties for violating PCs´ rules, and (ii) the development of a minimum common content for coordinating pasture management initiatives.

G. With regard to institutional architecture and institutional strengthening, it is suggested to strengthen inter-institutional and inter-sectoral cooperation on issues of (i) pastures fees, (ii) investments of common interest of different sectors, and (iii) secondary pasture use, including by expanding the applicability of inter-institutional and inter-sectoral cooperative agreements.

H. At the operational level, recommendations are (i) to invest in capacity-building in information handling with emphasis on livestock census, landscape inventory and electronic pasture management system use; (ii) to advance in the experimentation for the extension of the revolving seed fund to other ecosystems; and (iii) to prioritise different technical assistance activities in order to improve pasture-related value chains.

SDG Indicators National adaptation of SDGs is important in order to increase the effectiveness of SDGs in orienting national policy. In addition, SDGs indicators are critical tools to track the progress in policy-making and policy implementation towards the attainment of SDG targets. We have previously discussed that the KR is currently adapting a set of indicators for the transition from MDGs to SDGs. In addition, the analysis of NSSD and SDP showed a lack of concordance of national policy to SDG 2 – end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.

Other relevant SDGs in the realm pasture management reforms are: SDG 1 – End poverty in all its forms everywhere; SDG 5 – Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls; SDG 13 – Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impact; and Goal 15 – Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.

An Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goals Indicators has been established under the UN Economic and Social Council to develop SDGs indicators, with special attention to environmentally fragile countries including landlocked countries as Kyrgyzstan (UN Economic and Social Council 2015, 2016). Specific suggestions for the development of indicators for SDG targets is beyond the scope of the present PSIA, but some general recommendations can be provided: (i) all indicators need to be disaggregated by gender, age (focusing the youth and elderly) and by socioeconomic stratifying criteria (poverty and extreme poverty line, livestock number ownership as used for social allowances allocation) and at the most local level as possible; (ii) indicators should try to relate livestock stock, animal products production, productivity and income for the groups under (i), tracking wealth concentration/distribution processes and their underlying factors; (iii) indicators should focus on key inputs for the groups under (i), such as access to infrastructure, credit, technical assistance and technology supply as well as multi-sectoral participation of beneficiaries in different policies and programmes; (iv) it is critical for the KR to develop indicators for capacity-building and inter-institutional coordination and apply them at different government levels as a critical gap exists between policy design and implementation, which is mainly the result of poor institutional capacity and fragile coordination

mechanisms/incentives; (v) georeferenced indicators should be developed to mapping and monitoring properly managed pastures, including key indicators about their land, soil and biodiversity conditions – as most of these indicators already exist, the main issue at stake is their nationwide application, which could be made simpler by selecting “sentinel sites” where simple sampling repeated measuring would be made; (vi) indicators on food production and availability must be disaggregated so to track their evolution for the most vulnerable groups; and (vii) indicators for monitoring climate change related hazards (droughts, floods etc.) should also be disaggregated in order to identify and prioritise for urgent CRM intervention the most affected areas.

7.2.

Risks

It is important to identify the potential risks that might jeopardise the expected positive effects of the recommendations suggested in the present section.

No immediate exogenous shocks can be detected as likely (e.g. shocks in prices, new economic crises, political instability, shrinking market for animal products), but, as previously discussed, negative effects from climate change are likely to be growing, and CRM needs both to be mainstreamed into policy and applied to pasture management in the field.

In the socioeconomic realm, wealth concentration into the hands of few herders based on differentiated capacity to take advantage of scale opportunities from wider availability of pastures and from the animal products´ market expected growth is a concrete threat to the distributive purpose of pasture reforms. We have seen that trends in this respect are apparent although not linear and possibly based on a dynamic social mobility, suggesting that opportunities are available to a relatively broad group of herders. It is important to further widening such opportunities and making access to them universal, mainly promoting cooperative arrangements that allow the poor to gain scale (as it is the case in the revolving seed fund arrangement under jamaat) and providing credit and technical assistance to build up a higher added-value chain.

Institutionally, scaling up of PEI best practices will be demanding in terms of institutional capacity including coordination at the central level and extensive coverage at the local level – capacitybuilding efforts need to be scaled up to follow up replication of PEI best practices. Other risks in the institutional realm include the possibility of much needed reforms of the Ministry of Agriculture (e.g. strengthening its planning capacity and renewing its staff) not taking place because of internal resistance by the “old guard”. Leadership and political will are crucial elements to promote the reforms in the Ministry of Agriculture. A further risk, as already mentioned, refers to the failing proactive role of the Pasture Department, which will allow influential stakeholders keep following their own individual strategies in an uncoordinated way. The role of the Coordination Council needs to be strengthened for that.

At the field level, three risks can be identified hampering PEI best practices scaling-up. First, capacity-building supply for the electronic pasture management system use can be insufficient. A network of training institutions must be organised for large scale training in the system use.

Second, the revolving seed fund might result not being adaptable to other ecosystems or contexts.

In this case, different arrangements need to be developed keeping the main principles of the revolving fund system – the inclusion of the poor and the embedded incentives for selfreplication. Finally, the inventory methodology can result being too complex or too costly for

replication – in this case, participatory inventory methods under appropriate technical supervision might be a solution for upscaling.

Finally, political economy conflicts might continue (e.g. within PUAs, between AOs and PCs, and between pasture management institutions and institutions responsible for water, forests, etc. ) due to flaws in the legal and institutional framework. Two types of risk can be identified in this respect: either institutional improvements do not occur because of the opposition of some stakeholders, or stakeholders enjoy room for manoeuvre in the political economy game because their strategies are not bonded by adequate institutional arrangements or legal frameworks.

Specifically, due to failing amendments to the legal framework coupled to insufficient institutional development and capacity-building, the following conflict-related risks are possible: (i) no enforcement / penalties are set against deviant behaviour of pasture users (e.g. hiding livestock number or not following pasture use plans), and (ii) conflict rather than cooperation prevails between PCs and other stakeholders. Investment in capacity-building and institutional strengthening coupled to monitoring of the effects of this investment.

7.3. Final remarks Key messages emerge from PSIA report in three areas.

A. Short and long term poverty and distributional impact of pasture management activities on different vulnerable groups: the effects of pasture management activities supporting pasture reforms in Suusamyr and Naryn projects´ areas show an overall improvement in the well-being of herders in terms of livestock number and income growth, with a very significant reduction in the incidence of extreme poverty and, to a lesser extent, of poverty.

At the same time, however, these effects affect the very rich in a limited way, as the trend of wealth concentration among large livestock owners is not reverted. In agriculture and specifically forage production, the poor significantly benefit from joining the revolving seed fund arrangement in jamaats. Improvements in women´s economic situation are very punctual, hardly sustainable and limited to a small number of cases of small-scale, lowtechnology productive activities. At the same time, the double burden of work and domestic duties on women shows no signs of regress, especially when families move to remote pastures. Structural disadvantages of the young with regard to livestock and land ownership also seem not to be addressed by pasture reforms.

B. Unforeseen incentive effects, unwanted rent-seeking opportunities and changes in power relations: these issues show different patterns respectively in the economic and political realm. As far as economic aspects are concerned, the introduction under the Law of Pastures of livestock tickets and pasture fees based on the number of livestock seems to have incentivised herders to hide the real number of livestock they own. This seems to be the case especially of large livestock owners. These, at the same time, benefit from improved access to remote pastures because of the lower unitary cost (per livestock head) of moving herds to the mountains, and exploit rent-seeking opportunities by selling Mal Koshuu services to small livestock owners for whom such unitary cost is too high and making profit from selling live big animals in high volume to the market. These processes tend to reinforce wealth concentration as discussed above. If the distributive purpose of pasture reforms has been attained just partially in economic terms so far, in the political realm, instead, pasture reforms´ goal of redistributing power and information asymmetries

in favour of small and medium herders and livestock owners shows a higher degree of success. Both objective and perception data from PSIA survey show no decisive evidence of PUAs/PCs being “captured” by herders´ elite. Rather, transparency, open discussion and the capacity of influencing decision-making by most PUA/PC members seem to be the rule.

Whilst the submissive role of women within the family seems to keep being undisputed, PUA/PCs and jamaat associations can offer women opportunities for exercising their decision-making capacity. Unfortunately, however, in quantitative terms the number of women in management positions in these CBOs is still limited. Opportunities in PUAs/PCs, jamaat associations and village government exist for the young too and a new generation of young activists seems to taking advantage of them on a larger scale than women.

C. Further recommendations on adaptations/adjustments/considerations for further PEI-led scaling up of pasture management activities, and policy recommendations regarding the sequencing and costing of future national reforms: recommendations for PEI best practices scaling up and policy recommendations for the advancement of pasture reforms have been discussed extensively in section 7.1 above. The key messages that emerge from such discussion in terms of priorities (and so, sequencing) are the following: (i) capacitybuilding of PUAs/PCs is the first priority and coordination among international donors, civil society organisations and universities is crucial if the desired scale is to be attained; no single stakeholder alone can reach it; coordination instances (e.g. the Coordination Council) and tools (common operational guidelines) are to be reinforced through technical assistance; (ii) conditionalities, incentives and sanctions need to be strengthened to overcome the institutional flaws that still hamper the implementation of pasture reforms: political will and sensitive institutional design are necessary for that; the case of SAPEF-PD agreement shows that political will can be mobilised when the opportunity arises, whilst international technical assistance can provide the necessary know-how for innovations in the institutional and policy design; and (iii) specifically for the replication of PEI best practices – the electronic pasture management system and the revolving seed fund – it is important to acknowledge their organisational and locally-sensitive dimensions beyond the purely technical ones; differences emerge between them in this respect, as whilst the revolving seed fund has been designed in such a way that it can work as a self-contained arrangement (for instance, embedding conditionalities for targeting the poor and for selfreplication), the performance of the electronic system is often dependent on contextual organisational aspects, such as the high turnover of PC staff that makes capacity-building efforts ineffective. In this respect, it is recommendable that the introduction of the electronic system in PUAs/PCs is supported by an institutional diagnosis of the working conditions of PUAs/PCs and technical assistance strategies to mitigate their flaws 35.

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In the present PSIA estimates of costing for the implementation of recommendations are not possible at present as they depend on variables beyond the consultant´s control and in-depth information on quantities and unitary costs of specific activities to be carried out (which can be variable depending on the institutions who would execute such activities).

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