Poor Land Management Threatens Pastures

Responsibility for land management in Kyrgyzstan needs to be concentrated in the hands of a single authority to avoid a crisis in grazing land, say NBCentralAsia observers.



During a roundtable discussion on pasture management, the agriculture and water minister, Sooronbay Jeenbekov said that almost a third of all grazing land in Kyrgyzstan is at risk from degradation. Other participants said the problem – seen in increasing salination of the soil, waterlogging, erosion and poorer-quality grass cover - is largely due to poor management of the land.



Village, district and regional administrations are all responsible for the upkeep of pastureland, but the regional and district levels often pass the buck to the village authorities without exerting proper control over the decisions taken.



Gotz Schreiber, a World Bank consultant, explained that land quality is affected when pastures are carved up into plots and leased out separately. As a single ecosystem, pastureland suffers when it is used unevenly.



Kyrgyzstan’s nine million hectares of mountainous pasture make up half of the country’s total area and 90 per cent of its farmland. The degradation of pastures can also make temperatures rise, causing glacial melt.



Experts polled by NBCentralAsia say Kyrgyzstan’s land management system and pasture regulations need urgent reform to reverse the trend.



Abdymalik Egemberdiev, head of pastures at the ministry of agriculture, water and processing industries, suggests introducing a compulsory rotation system whereby land used for grazing livestock one year is used for hay the next.



“Pasture rotation is an efficient method for preventing pasture degradation, which is possible if the land is divided up into plots for alternating grazing, as was the case in the Soviet Union,” he said.



Such a measure would need to be enforced, but Egemberdiev believes that special rural administration pasture committees could be set up to make sure farmers comply with the rotation.



Kenesh Joldoshev, head of fodder production research at the Institute for Animal Husbandry, says the first step towards protecting pastureland is to introduce a land law that transfers management to just one of the three levels of local government.



The village administrations are currently responsible for managing grazing in the area immediately around settlements, while district authorities take care of the most intensively used areas, and regional government manages distant pastures used seasonally when livestock are driven up to the more remote mountain areas.



Joldoshev argues that this division of responsibility is allowing land quality to slip and the entire system should be handed over to one level of authority – preferably the village.



In contrast to the widespread belief that pastures suffer from excessive grazing, Tatiana Zelinskaya, an expert on the subject, says land can actually come to more harm if it is not used by livestock. If pastures which have been used in the past are suddenly laid to rest, there is a risk that weeds will grow instead of fodder grasses. Such weed-covered areas can accidentally catch fire in hot weather, doing even more serious damage, she explains.



“The large-scale degradation of pasture in Kyrgyzstan is due to the low numbers of livestock grazing there. Animal numbers of should be increased, and [new] flocks of sheep should be introduced,” said Zelinskaya.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)