The Aral Sea region, facing severe desertification, is a key area for innovative projects, including planting saxaul shrubs and empowering local communities through micro-nurseries.
Photo: www.gov.kz
Qazaq Carbon, a Kazakhstani platform, is leading the development of a voluntary carbon market in the country, with an emphasis on environmental restoration and community welfare, The Caspian Post reports citing Eurasianet.
- The Aral Sea region, facing severe desertification, is a key area for innovative projects, including planting saxaul shrubs and empowering local communities through micro-nurseries.
- The development of agroparks, supported by carbon revenues, is seen as a potential driver for economic growth and sustainable agriculture in Kazakhstan.
Alim Sailybaev knows how to drive change: he is literally developing Kazakhstan’s voluntary carbon credit market from seed. And he is doing it on the parched bed of the Aral Sea.
When we meet at a planting site in Aralkum, one of the planet’s youngest deserts, 31 miles northwest of the fishing village of Karateren, Sailybaev is brimming with ideas: micro-nurseries for seedlings, an eco-corridor, a green e-currency and a crowdfunding platform. His salt-and-pepper hair sways as he excitedly discusses concepts ranging from green ecology, sustainable development, equity finance, anthropology, and Richard Florida’s theory of transformation.
“One thing is to create a new ecosystem. Another is to certify the carbon model [to make it financially sustainable],” he says.
Sailybaev, 50, was born in Almaty and majored in international relations at “Q” University, which fashions itself as Kazakhstan’s first private university. In the late 1990s, he moved to the UK to study diplomacy at the University of Reading, then received another master’s degree in 2003, this time in business and cultural studies at City, University of London.
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He has spent most of past few decades working in the development sector, including with the United Nations Development Programme. But what his career has really been about is innovation and creating transformative value for communities and businesses. Lately, his focus has been on going green.
“Carbon-wise, Aralkum is terra incognita”
In 2023, Kazakhstan adopted a strategy to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, seeking to offset emissions with the development of carbon sinks. The state regulatory framework for carbon quotas is set out in the Environmental Code of January 2021. However, the agricultural sector is left out of the national plan for carbon units. And the voluntary carbon market, which is just beginning to take shape, looks more like a financial Wild West than a Holy Land of opportunity.
In February 2023, roughly coinciding with the launch of the government’s carbon strategy, Sailybaev founded Qazaq Carbon. The platform aims not only to solve environmental challenges but also restore degraded land, conserve biodiversity and improve community welfare.
In May, Qazaq Carbon teamed up with the Aral Oasis public association to implement a series of projects in the Aral Sea region, which over the last 60 years has largely dried up and developed into an environmental disaster zone.
After 2005, the World Bank’s eight-mile-long Kok-Aral dam brought water back to some areas. Elsewhere, efforts have focused on creating new ecosystems by planting saxaul – green, hardy shrubs whose roots can hold up to 8,818 pounds of sand.
“We’re in the middle of the new desert, but carbon-wise it is terra incognita,” said Sailybaev, meaning there are no ready-made solutions for measuring the carbon potential of saxaul plots on the exposed Aral Sea floor.
Qazaq Carbon works with a Scottish entity, Plan Vivo, and Swiss-based Open Forest Protocol. Both help smallholders generate carbon credits. But their expertise is mostly designed for tropical and subtropical climates and is not directly transferable to Kazakhstan, which is 99 percent dryland. So, thinking outside the box is key.
Carbon revenues, a financial lever for agroparks?!
In April, trading prices in the European Union exceeded $60 per metric ton (2,200 pounds) of CO? equivalent. But Kazakhstan’s oil sector, heavily weighted with state companies, is unwilling to pay more than $5, according to Sailybaev.
Creating a voluntary carbon market will inevitably drive up prices, he added, with a knock-on effect of higher electricity, petrol, and fuel bills. It is no surprise, then, that the move has so far received little political support, he said. Amendments to environmental and stock market legislation are needed to introduce auctioning of carbon allowances, but such measures have had trouble gaining supporters in parliament.
Even so, Sailybaev is ready to break new ground: “There is a lack of affordable long-term investment in agriculture in Kazakhstan; it is a high-risk business.” The idea is to use carbon units as a financial tool to create a value chain for the development of local agroparks.
Given Kazakhstan’s proximity to China, such agroparks have the potential to enable Kazakh organic foodstuffs grown to European standards to find new, large markets in China. “Carbon revenues would replace agricultural subsidies, making it a viable financial lever.”
Qazaq Carbon helps farmers design planting models with carbon targets in mind. Certification can be done through NGOs such as Plan Vivo. Sailybaev is also considering an e-currency backed by carbon units. This would be a way for companies to buy products directly from agroparks in exchange for carbon offsets, he said.
But for all the zeal, there are still formidable challenges. Large Kazakh clients, including banks and airlines, are reluctant to buy carbon units from small farmers, preferring bundled deals instead.
Kazakhstan’s nascent voluntary carbon market is unknown to US and EU traders working with Western industry. “We are just starting out, we do not have much background, and competition is fierce,” he said.
The price-setting machinery also is still in its infancy. Kazakhstan’s Emissions Trading System, launched in 2013, has faced criticism for creating a surplus of free quotas.
“The green economy is neo-nomadic”
Sailybaev is well aware of the hurdles he faces. But as a former cultural studies scholar, he argues for a broader perspective. “The low-carbon economy is a cultural phenomenon. It is about new mindsets and new values,” he said. “In the Aral Sea region, a whole generation has grown up on handouts,” he added, referring to social payments in the zone of environmental disaster. “And that has corrupted people terribly.”
“Our goal is to help young people break out of this victim mentality,” he said. In May, Aral Oasis and Qazaq Carbon launched “100 Micro Nurseries.” The new project aims to empower communities to plant seedlings for “green belts.”
“We want local people, especially women and girls, to grow saxaul saplings from seeds in three auls [villages],” said Zauresh Alimbetova, head of the Aral Oasis public association. “We will then buy these saplings for 100 tenge [about $0,20] each and plant them on the [exposed portions] of the Aral Sea.”
The aim is to create an eco-corridor to the Barsakelmes biospherer eserve, a former Aral Sea island inhabited by free-roaming kulans [wild donkeys] and dzerens [goitered gazelles]. By October 2025, some 250,000 saplings will have been planted on 300 hectares. At a later stage, the communities will also set up “green belts” around their auls as a barrier against encroaching sands.
So far, the project has been funded by Freedom Holding Corp. and the GEF Small Grants Programme. In January, a crowd-funding platform will be launched to explore additional funding options. High-resolution satellite maps will help track green developments online, and three auls will compete in a quirky face-off.
Sailybaev is ready to play a long game. “We are gearing up for the next 20 years,” he said. “We are the descendants of nomads. Autonomy, tolerance, openness, mobility, and adaptability have accompanied us across the steppes.” These values, in a modern guise, will drive Kazakhstan’s green transition, he mused. “They are, in fact, neo-nomadic.”
