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Good practice Imported

Almaty's Green City Action Plan — Central Asia's First, Under NGO Scrutiny (Kazakhstan)

Kazakhstan · Almaty · See the Kazakhstan profile · See the Almaty profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 89% 27/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Almaty became the first Central Asian city to approve an EBRD Green City Action Plan (Nov 2022), targeting air quality, land use and green space across seven sectors — but the watchdog CEE Bankwatch has publicly challenged its public-participation record.

Almaty's Green City Action Plan — Central Asia's First, Under NGO Scrutiny (Kazakhstan)

Details

Promoter
Almaty City Akimat (Municipal Administration), with the EBRD Green Cities Programme (plan funded by the Republic of Austria)
Period
2019-2022
Keywords
urban planning, air quality, municipal governance, civic participation

Context

Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city, joined the EBRD Green Cities programme in 2019 and in November 2022 became the first city in Central Asia to formally approve a Green City Action Plan (GCAP), developed with funding from the Federal Ministry of Finance of Austria and setting targets across land use, transport, water and wastewater, waste management, energy, buildings and industry.

Activities

The plan responds to Almaty's chronic air pollution, chaotic construction and shortage of green space.

Conclusions

The watchdog network CEE Bankwatch has published analyses questioning whether specific investments under the plan represent genuine environmental improvement or 'destructive creation', and has raised concerns about the adequacy of public consultation during plan development. No independently verified figures for hectares greened, trees planted, or measured air-quality change under the GCAP were found, so this entry should be read as a governance framework with contested implementation rather than a plan with confirmed ecological results.

Implementation
Indicative cost
High (€500k–€5M) — Plan development funded by the Republic of Austria; implementation-phase investment costs not disclosed in sources reviewed.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — GCAP membership from 2019; plan formally approved November 2022.
Staffing & skills
Almaty City Akimat (Municipal Administration), EBRD Green Cities Programme technical assistance

Conditions for success

  • plan development funded by the Republic of Austria
  • formal seven-sector target framework (land use, transport, water/wastewater, waste, energy, buildings, industry)

Common failure modes

  • public-consultation gaps flagged by independent watchdogs (CEE Bankwatch)
  • risk that individual investments undermine the plan's stated environmental goals ('destructive creation')

Where it fits

Governance type
municipal government with international donor support (EBRD)
Scale
city-wide (Almaty)
Income level
upper-middle income (Kazakhstan)

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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