Background:
For productive and economic reasons during the Soviet era many people were displaced from mountainous areas to the more fertile lands of the Yokshu river valley to grow cotton. A development of a massive flood control berm to protect those new villages from the river was then linked to this policy. However, now without large scale investment and national maintenance policies, the Soviet infrastructure is crumbling. Since 1992 villages in the area have experienced more than 13 floods with the threat increasing as the infrastructure continues to disintegrate.
In 2005-2006 Mission East implemented a flood disaster mitigation project supported by DIPECHO within the Yokhsu River Valley that reached 19 villages. Aspects of this project included Small Scale Mitigation Measures (SSMM), Early Warning System (EWS) and Disaster Preparedness and Response at the village and institution level. This new program focuses on increasing the capacity of the villages and the local institutions to be prepared and respond to flooding and does not include small scale mitigation measures. This is related to the fact that the scope of the physical repair is well beyond our capacity and mandate. At the same time we hope to enable the affected population to take better care of themselves and their livelihoods during flooding incidents.

Action:
The Institutional and local capacity to deal with disaster while developed during the initial program phase, still lacked the capacity to appropriately respond. As a result Mission-East decided to strengthen the capacity of local community and institutions to react to disaster through some "refreshers courses" and more in depth training, but also through some new program elements such as:

• GIS Mapping whereby Mission East with INGO FOCUS will develop GIS flood mapping within the program area. The GIS mapping will include hazard ranking, medical facility locations and facility descriptions, safe haven/shelter point locations and facility descriptions, evacuation routes, and critical infrastructure locations and ranking. And finally Mission East will extend their activity to 5 new villages (866 additional families).

• Mission East will also develop an Access database for use by the government to maintain information on disaster incidents. This database will provide the government with an important reporting tool as well as information that can be easily used to develop long-term management plans.

Project Aims: Reduce the impact of disaster in Tajikistan by better prepaing the vulnerable population in the Yokshu valley to the recurrent floods.

Donor: ECHO

Project Code: TAJ-DIPECHO-03

Location: Eastern Khatlon

This project is funded by the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid Department