Sustainable land management and climate-friendly agriculture (Turkey) – GCP/TUR/055/GFF
The project objective is to improve sustainability of agriculture and forests land use management through diffusion and adoption of low-carbon technologies with win-win benefits in land degradation, climate change and biodiversity conservation and increase farm profitability and forest productivity. The project will achieve this objective by addressing three barriers:
Barrier #1: minimal experience among key government and civil society stakeholders in developing and implementing sustainable land management and forest management practices.
Barrier #2: farmers under-exposed to innovative low carbon technologies for farming and farm waste management.
Barrier #3: inadequate enabling environment (legal, regulatory and institutional framework) and capacity for sustainable land management.
The project will address these barriers through interventions structured under the following three inter-linked components.
- Component 1: rehabilitation of degraded forest and rangeland
- Component 2: climate-smart agriculture
- Component 3: enhanced enabling environment for sustainable land management
Expected outcomes
Outcome 1
Outcome 1
Under this component the GEF project will build on the baseline scenario by financing the incremental costs associated with:
- Increased attention to rehabilitation of degraded land in production landscapes
- Production of soil organic maps for pilot sites;
- Preparation of integrated SLM and biodiversity conservation land-use plan for the Mt. Karacadağ pilot area;
- Certification of forests and rangeland landscapes by internationally recognized environmental standards that incorporate biodiversity considerations;
- Establishment of biodiversity monitoring systems and
- Quantification of ecosystem services value in areas of KCB.
Outcome 2
Outcome 2
Key activities under this component will include the incremental costs associated with:
- Development of models for conservation agriculture demonstrations on private farms;
- Information dissemination on TIGEM’s experience in terms of conservation agriculture;
- Pilot-scale investments in bio-digesters to recuperate methane from agricultural waste and produce electricity;
- For high-potential opportunities, incentives for the investment in the development of the infrastructure to capture methane;
- Monitoring the adoption of climate-smart agricultural technologies, including monitoring of GHG mitigation and biodiversity impacts;
- Different management practices such as reduced tillage, mulchin, organica and inorganic fertilizer and suitable irrigation increase soil carbon pool and storage in plant tissue and soil body.
Outcome 3
Outcome 3
Under the current baseline there is very little energy being focused upon building a strong constituency for agricultural practices that delivery SLM, climate change, and biodiversity conservation benefits. Without this constituency it is very difficult to generate and/or support the implementation of necessary enabling environment improvements. Using GEF funding, the project will directly address this barrier. The project will set in place in a farmer field school model that is designed specifically to empower farmers and ranchers to become better informed regarding steps they can take to improve production, maintain ecosystem integrity, and reduce the long-term economic risks associated with degradation. This project will be interwoven throughout all project components, using the various investments as way to strengthen the knowledge base of focal resource users and government extension officers. The farmer field school model will provide a conduit for continued delivery of learning between government staff and farmers. This conduit will also provide the impetus, information and support required to generate enabling environment improvements.
Timeline: from October 2014 to October 2019.