Kyrgyz Republic · 11 February 2014 · 1 min
In the Kyrgyz Republic, AKDN’s Mountain Societies Development Support Programme works to improve the living conditions in select mountain communities in Osh and Naryn oblasts, covering a population of more than 320,000.
“Institutional support is required to provide ongoing inputs explicitly focused on the problems and potentials of mountains and mountain peoples. The challenge of improving agricultural production and productivity on a sustained basis illustrates this readily. Grains, horticulture and the cultivation of specialised plants for medicinal and other specialised purposes require careful selection in order to succeed. This requires field-based knowledge and capacity, as well as the means to mobilise the best science that is relevant, wherever it can be found. It will require the ability to undertake highly contextualised research, as well as the delivery capacity to bring that research to the field in a form that can be utilized in field conditions... Research and training of this type – applied to the whole range of knowledge and human resources needed to support mountain development – is one of the premises for the creation of the University of Central Asia.”
His Highness the Aga Khan speaking at the Plenary Session of the Bishkek Global Mountain Summit, Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic - 31 October 2002.