Country

Kyrgyzstan

Explore historical and projected climate data, climate data by sector, impacts, key vulnerabilities and what adaptation measures are being taken. Explore the overview for a general context of how climate change is affecting Kyrgyzstan.

Adaptation

Kyrgyz Republic is a mountainous country and has a high vulnerability to the impacts of climate change across multiple sectors including water resources, agriculture, energy, forests, biodiversity and healthcare. The country is at risk to several natural and climate-related hazards, including land and mudslides, avalanches, squalls, downpours, icing, frosts, breakthrough of glacial lakes, floods, rise of sub-soil waters, epidemics, pests, crop diseases, river erosion and earthquakes. The total financial needs for adaptation is around $1.94 billion USD. In 2017, the country published its Third National Communication (TNC), which reflects development priorities and commitment to address climate change at the country level. The highest priority economic sectors, requiring the adaptation measures, have been identified considering the observed and expected climatic changes, including agriculture, water, health, forestry, etc. 

Adaptation Options for Key Sectors

  • Allocation optimization and agricultural production specialization;
  • Selection work on the cultivation of drought-resistant and salt-tolerant crops;
  • Phytomeliorative actions;
  • Integrated pasture management and development of grazing industry, including adaptation to climate change;
  • Improvement of the agricultural infrastructure to better adapt to the climate change impacts;
  • Improvement of the monitoring of food security and establishment of a yield forecasting system.
  • Improving the water resources management and the economic incentives introduction for the water rational use;
  • Rehabilitation of the existing infrastructure and the new water facility infrastructure construction;
  • Preservation of the upper watershed of the rivers - restoration and forest planting, compliance with the water protection zones regimes and bands of water bodies;
  • Giving the protected areas status to the key runoff formation zones;
  • Restoration and maintenance of a monitoring system of climatic parameters;
  • Awareness raising on of the qualitative and quantitative state of water resources;
  • Strengthening the international cooperation on adaptation of the trans boundary water basins;
  • Awareness raising on the socio-economic impacts of climate change, including a problem of increasing water deficit.
  • Improving the legal framework to prevent the climate change negative impacts on public health, including the construction of buildings for medical diagnostic and prophylactic purposes;
  • Monitoring on compliance with temperature standards in the medical institutions and typical buildings construction design;
  • Revision of the medical universities and colleges curricula on medical climatology;
  • Developing guidelines for seasonal and current secondary prophylaxis of coronary heart disease and stroke;
  • Monitoring of seasonal infectious morbidity;
  • Identification of vulnerable groups, accounting, medical examination, awareness raising on the climatic and meteorological impacts (early warning systems for mobile networks);
  • Monitoring of drinking water and food safety;
  • Developing an action plan for ensuring the medical institutions’ preparedness to the prolonged heat and cold periods;
  • Introduction of energy-efficient and energy-saving technologies in the health sector;
  • Use of renewable energy for hot water and electricity in the health facilities;
  • Educating local communities through the health centers.
  • Increasing the management efficiency of the protected nature areas;
  • Preservation and restoration of wetlands as a habitat of natural biodiversity species and a vital component of the nature environment to play a decisive role in the adaptation to climate change;
  • Accounting of the territories recreation capacity under the tourist activities design, etc.;
  • Promotion of social forest cultivation and a cooperative forest management;
  • Improving the forest management and reforestation.

Gaps and Needs

  • Many data collection stations are old or have closed completely. Other communications equipment is now obsolete, labor-intensive, or expensive. While more funding for these systems is vital, training of current and incoming staff is necessary to ensure that they have the skills needed to operate existing equipment.
  • Because of the country’s strongly dependency on hydropower, further exploration of the impacts of climate change and adaptation needs in this sector could increase the resilience of the current infrastructure and of potential future investments. These explorations could perhaps involve the country’s key hydropower companies.
  • Similar to other Central Asian countries, the global significance of the country’s biodiversity is acknowledged, but there seems to be fewer efforts underway to protect it when compared to other countries in the region, such as Tajikistan or Kazakhstan.
  • None of the current and planned adaptation projects and programs in Kyrgyz Republic have a specific objective of understanding and responding to the differential gender-based implications of climate change—a gap that should be filled the country is going to effectively engage in adaptation.
  • Increased capacity and understanding of the role of catastrophe risk management finance tools could greatly strengthen the country’s ability to manage costs brought on by climate hazards, as well as reduce climate risks by building resilience to weather-induced disasters.
  • More knowledge on how to budget for, facilitate, and access insurance protection will be necessary to buffer against future climate-related risks. Multilateral development banks can support the government to fill this knowledge gap.
  • Weak capacity to collect, interpret and communicate important early warning information leaves the Kyrgyz Republic highly vulnerable to emergency situations. These problems largely stem from a persistent lack of funding to hydromet systems during and since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
  • Adequate safety net programs will support those who are hardest hit by devastating climate-related disasters. To improve existing safety-net programs and develop new ones, a rigorous analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of existing programs will be required in order to make practical recommendations to address existing shortcomings.
  • Capacity-development support is needed to apply lessons learned from projects in health, water and extreme weather so they are effectively incorporated into national strategies and plans.
  • Increase enforcement of the legislation through the development of by-laws, resolutions, decisions, and directives, including maximum orientation of the policy towards executing supervisory functions.
  • Improve and encourage inter-agency interaction in the process of forming and implementing the policy (if it exists, it is caused by external factors), and support inter=agency coordination in natural resources and environmental management; likewise, improve decision-making processes by focusing on a program-based approach to planning that includes appropriate assessment mechanisms to allow for full understanding of the issues at hand before decisions are made.
  • Improve the political and socioeconomic climate for attracting, adapting, and developing procedures and mechanisms for efficient natural resources use and environmental management.
  • Improve environmental management practices to conserve the natural resource base of the Kyrgyz Republic. Specifically, this entails renewed institutional and policy support for addressing shortcomings in soil fertility management, water use, pest control, nutrient conservation, forest health, and illegal logging.
  • Studies of climate change impacts on forests and wooded areas of Kyrgyzstan are needed. This includes improved understanding for forest functions such as productivity, survival ability, or loss of plantations, all of which are critical to the country’s important forestry sector.
  • Improving weather and climate information systems in the country is essential for stable social and economic development, as well as a way to provide critical early warning information to support disaster reduction strategies across all sectors (transport, agriculture, and water resources management).
  • Forecasting and monitoring equipment in the Kyrgyz Republic is dated and often not functional. There is an urgent need to update and increase the spatial coverage of these systems to move the country’s weather services away from low-resolution hydrometeorological systems, which are less precise and consequently more likely to miss important data on local hazards such as floods, frosts, and storms.
  • Farmers will need to transition from the emphasis on inputs, entrenched during the Communistera (more seeds, more irrigation, and more fertilizer) to a system that is more adept at managing resources in the resource-constrained reality of today. This includes having access to and ability to make use of knowledge on new farming techniques and on using new farming technologies.