This workshop held at the German-Kazakh University in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on 28 and 29 October 2024 seeks to explore application and cooperation opportunities for participatory approaches of stakeholder involvement in rural development, natural resource use, and food security.

Putting forward a transdisciplinary agenda, our goal is to bring together higher education representatives with a broad range of practitioners from state authorities, civil society organisations, and (inter-) national development cooperation.

Hence the event seeks to forge a dialogue between different actors on contexts and formats of applying participatory methods in sustainable development and planning processes at the local level.
At the same time, the event seeks to present outcomes of and lessons learnt from a participatory project on agricultural strategy-building (TRANSECT).

Over the past five years, the project TRANSECT (Agrarian Transformations and Social-Ecological Complexities: Local Bioeconomy Scenarios in Central and South Asia), funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), has scrutinised agricultural and bioeconomy development scenarios
in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan. In addition to an in-depth understanding of agricultural development processes at the local level, the focus of the project was to apply and test a participatory methodological tool case with rural stakeholders. By doing so, we gained an in-depth
understanding of human well-being factors, the provisioning of eco- and social system services, undergoing risks and threats to the social-ecological environment. Through the pro-active participation of local smallholder farmers, we could also identify and rate existing and future key
development strategies for land-use and agriculture in the given areas.

The purpose of the workshop is to link similar initiatives and those interested in creating a
learning platform for participatory methods in action. We jointly address the following questions:

 How and in what fields of research and decision-making can participatory methodology be considered a meaning- and helpful tool for good governance and societal improvement in Central Asia?

 What are (practical) strengths and weaknesses of such approaches and how can the latter be minimised?

 What can be done in policy-making and rural development to enable more participation in development planning processes in Central Asia?

The workshop seeks to provide an arena for knowledge transfer, but also for exchange of experience, discussion, and elaboration of what can be achieved with participatory approaches more broadly. Therefore, we ask participants with a related professional background in social science
and natural resource management, state organisations, NGOs, and development agencies for their active participation, preferably over the duration of the whole workshop. Workshop languages will be Russian and English (with translation provided), and participation is free of
charge.
In the course of the two-day workshop, we are planning to present our findings from the TRANSECT project, host roundtables and apply a World Café format for mutual discussion of experiences with participatory stakeholder approaches in the field of natural resource use, agriculture, bioeconomy, rural development and food systems. The workshop participants can expect
a professional input into the strengths and weaknesses of participatory approaches. From the workshop participants we expect the presentation of own contributions (no longer than 10 min. each) and/or expectations to the application of participatory methodology tools in their respective fields of natural resource use research and development.

Please, send an e-mail to Henryk Alff, henryk.alff@hnee.de, or Michael Spies, michael.spies@hnee.de until 18 September 2024 to confirm your participation.

A detailed workshop programme will be circulated by mid-September 2024.