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Support to infrastructure development in rural areas (with focus on irrigation) of Batken, Osh and Djalal-Abad regions of the Kyrgyz Republic

Kyrgyzstan

European Commission

Delegatura KE w Kirgistanie

Within the framework of EU Central Asian Indicative Programme for 2007-2010, Priority Area 2 ”Poverty reduction and increasing living standards”, focusing on support to rural development and social protection in rural areas, it has been foreseen to allocate 2,5 M€ for the Support to infrastructure development in rural areas (with focus on irrigation) of Batken, Osh and Djalal-Abad regions of the Kyrgyz Republic. The proposed project is aimed at empowering target groups so they themselves can improve their irrigation and infrastructure efficiency, reversing land degradation in doing so improve the quantity and quality of agricultural products. This will result in target groups producing sufficient yields for home consumption and more cash crops for sale on the market, part of which will be used for the maintenance of the rehabilitated infrastructure, water and drainage systems. Increase in food production among the target groups is expected to reduce food insecurity at household level. There will more irrigated land in production and more land use opportunities. In turn, this will attract more investments on land that will improve livelihood systems in the traditional irrigation areas. The full participation of existing community-based structures in the selected villages will ensure the project’s participatory nature and sustainability. Ownership will be ensured at local level. More specifically the proposed project will: - Increase agricultural productivity through improved access to water to irrigate fields and rehabilitation of other rural infrastructures; - Ensure better access to water suitable to fulfil to basic needs (safe drinking water, clean water required at medical points, bathhouses, sanitary latrines, etc); - Decrease cross border tensions through rehabilitated social infrastructures (along the Kyrgyz-Uzbek and Kyrgyz-Tajik borders where are tensions originating specifically due to the lack of irrigation water); - Develop and strengthen existing community based structures to make them active stakeholders in their socio-economic development and local government through their involvement in the implementation of the activities and further ownership of the projects outputs;

Start date: 2008-04-01

End date: 2008-07-31