EU helping Georgia’s Vashlovani Protected Area in adapting climate change

Four thousand hectares of degraded land are now being rehabilitated and a 300-hectare long sheep migratory route is coming back to life by 2017 thanks to the European Union (EU) funded Clima East Project at the Vashlovani Protected Area.

The Clima East project will help 500 families who live at the Vashlovani Protected Area, in the South-East Georgia. They have suffered from the climate change and the human interventions.

The EU together with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Georgia aimed to help preserving the natural heritage of Vashlovani Protected Area. The project whould stabilise the effects of the climate change, with additional watering points created on the sheep migratory route to enable a better organisation of sheep movement.

"Clima East assists national governments to mitigate and adapt to the climate change by introducing innovative practices of pasture management, which in turn improves the lives of the local residents,” said Alvaro Ortega Aparicio from the Delegation of the European Union to Georgia.

The Project noted that the pastures of the Vashlovani Protected Area have strongly effected with the climate change and human action. As a result, the structure of the ground vegetation is destroyed and the population of many rare plants is reduced. The traditional pastures are being degraded by excessive grazing by domestic livestock.

"Modern practices of pasture management can offer Vashlovani a way out. This can include rotational grazing and weather monitoring to allow sheep owners to effectively use natural resources,” said UNDP representative Tornike Phulariani.

The pilot project has been implementing since 2013 focusing on rehabilitating the pastures, introducing sustainable land management practices and improving living conditions of the local population.

The Clima East project, which covers the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) East countries and Russia, supports partner countries to be better equipped for the greenhouse gas emission reductions and better prepared to deal with the impacts of climate change. (Agenda.ge)