Ashgabat, 11 May 2021: The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Project "Supporting Climate Resilient Livelihoods in Agricultural Communities in Drought-prone Areas of Turkmenistan” with the assistance of USAID’s Competitiveness, Trade and Jobs Project, held an online webinar with the involvement of international experts from Israel and Ukraine on the following topic "The use of multicluster agro-ecological maps in the process of planning adaptation to climate change".

The goal of the webinar is to promote digital technologies and innovative instruments for climate change adaptation and implementation of new approaches for a more sustainable agro-production planning at the local level.

Methods for increasing the resilience of agroecological systems (the degree of productivity of agricultural production) to climate change and the mechanism for developing more information-based measures can now be significantly simplified due to digital technologies, specifically through the implementation of national agroecological zoning (modeling) and creating an agroecological information system for subsequent analysis and forecasting. It should be noted that current agro-ecological modeling and forecasting require improved methods of data sharing from short-term and long-term agronomic experiments, ways of taking into account differences in research methods and factorial plans when summarizing the results of field experiments conducted in different soil, climatic and agrometeorological conditions.

The webinar was attended by representatives of UNDP and USAID, departments of the Ministry of Agriculture and Environmental Protection of Turkmenistan, State Committee for Water Management of Turkmenistan, Turkmen Agricultural University named after S.A. Niyazov, Turkmen Agricultural Institute in Dashoguz, Enterprise No. 5 of The Ministry of Defense of Turkmenistan, the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs of Turkmenistan, the Scientific Information Center of the Interstate Commission on Sustainable Development, as well as representatives of NGOs and international organizations engaged in environmental activities in Turkmenistan.

 “UNDP is keen to continue supporting efforts in implementation of the national strategy of Turkmenistan on climate change by introducing innovative methods and tools, which in turn will contribute to planning of long-term public investment policies in the agricultural and water sectors in order to adapt to future climate events,” emphasized Farhat Orunov, UNDP Programme Analyst on Resilience, Climate and Energy portfolio.

During the event participants were familiarized with the experience accumulated by the project and the lessons learned during the work on agroecological modeling, tools and methods used in the work.

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It is assumed that seminar (webinar) of "Using multicluster agro-ecological maps in climate change adaptation planning" will enhance the capacity and skills of participating scientific institutions, contributing to a better understanding of the "agro-ecological zoning" definition and a more effective application of "agro-ecological design" using geo-information technologies and regionalized standards for solving problems, which in turn will allow them to continue working in this direction in the future to develop models of agroecological zones; evaluate and integrate research results into development plans.

In general, new technical knowledge and skills provide an opportunity to assess climate impacts on zones with different soil and climatic parameters (agroecological zones) and contribute to the introduction of more sustainable technologies among the private and public sectors. Detailed design of agro-ecological zones will also contribute to the long-term planning of public investment policy in the agricultural and water sectors in order to adapt to future climate events.