Supporting Kazakhstan to advance their NAP process

The Republic of Kazakhstan is the world’s largest landlocked country, and ninth largest overall. Its climate is characterised by scorching summers and equally harsh winters with its highest temperature recorded as 49°С  (1995) and lowest -57°С (1931). The Kazak economy, the largest in Central Asia, is primarily driven by its oil reserves, and has industrialised significantly over the last three decades. Around 61 percent of its workforce is employed by the services sector, while only 18 percent work in the agricultural sector, down from 45 percent in 1991. With this shift has come reductions in the poverty rate, which decreased from 64 percent in 2001 to 7 percent in 2015. Despite such gains, however, Kazakhstan has begun to experience an increasing number of droughts, floods, landslides, mudflows and ice jams as a result of climate change, which threaten the advances made by the country’s development. Water resource management especially, will become ever more critical, with its high irrigation demands – currently 90 percent of national water consumption - set to become problematic as changing rainfall patterns increase the intensity and frequency of droughts.

 

Consequently, the Government of Kazakhstan is actively addressing the oncoming threats of climate change to protect and advance the development gains made over the last few decades. The Concept of Transition of the Republic of Kazakhstan to Sustainable Development is a key policy document that guides the country’s efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The Department of Climate Change is also a critical cog in the institutional mechanism and is mandated to coordinate technical issues related to climate change, although it is primarily focused on mitigation planning and action. The country’s INDC, which later became their First NDC when they ratified the Paris Agreement in 2016, is also heavily focused on mitigation and does not consider adaptation activities. 

 

However, Kazakhstan’s Third-Sixth National Communication to the UNFCCC does present feasible adaptation measures for a number of sectors. The document emphasises that the agriculture is expected to be worst hit by climate change as a result of soil degradation, desertification and decreased freshwater resources, and lays out anticipated adaptation interventions for its priority sectors: agricultural, water resources, health and natural resource sectors. Furthermore, in 2016 the government initiated the process of developing a NAP, that seeks to provide sector-specific guidance for the greater integration of adaptation considerations into policies and programmes.