Kyrgyz Republic Pasture and Livestock Management Improvement Project — Community Pasture User Unions

Kyrgyzstan's 2009 Pasture Law transferred management of the country's state-owned pastures — its single largest agricultural asset — from central agencies to locally elected Pasture User Unions (PUUs) and their executive Pasture Committees, covering every rural municipality.

To help implement the law, the World Bank approved US$15 million equivalent (US$8.25 million concessional credit plus US$6.75 million grant) for the Pasture and Livestock Management Improvement Project (PLMIP), implemented 2014-2019 with the Department of Pasture, Livestock and Fisheries (DPLF). PLMIP supported preparation of Community Pasture Management and Use Plans, funded pasture-boundary demarcation and inventory, and financed 475 small Pasture User Union infrastructure subprojects such as watering points, bridges and veterinary posts.

According to the World Bank's Implementation Completion Report, PLMIP reached more than 190,000 direct beneficiaries across 140 participating communities. Beneficiary surveys cited in the ICR found 58.6% of pasture users satisfied with PUU pasture management and 95.5% satisfied with the private veterinary services introduced alongside it.

Independent, peer-reviewed research is more circumspect about the reform's depth. A study in Mountain Research and Development found that the community-owned governance envisioned by the Pasture Law "has not yet been entirely realised" in practice, and a companion paper in the journal Pastoralism similarly concludes that community-based pasture management in Kyrgyzstan has produced real institutional change but has not comprehensively achieved its intended on-the-ground outcomes, pointing to elite capture and capacity gaps in some PUUs.