The Altai Assistance Project (AAP) was started in 2003 by Chagat Almashev of Gorno Altaisk, capital of the Altai Republic, and Matthew Foley of Wadhams, a small town in New York State’s six million acre Adirondack Park.

The goal was to build on the “Conceptual Program of Sustainable Land Use in the Altai Republic”, a plan prepared in the mid-1990s at the request of the Altai Government in consultation with Russian and American scientists by Ecologically Sustainable Development, a nonprofit land use consulting firm based in the Adirondacks. This far-sighted land use plan, modeled on a plan in use in the Adirondack Park since 1972, had been prepared over a three year period but never put into practice due to the difficult socio-economic circumstances facing people in the Altai in those times.

The AAP logo: The three-peak summit of Mt. Belukha. Colors are blue, green and white as embodiments of nature, mountains, rivers/lakes and eternal skies of Altai.

By 2003, the Altai economic situation had greatly changed for the better; thousands of tourists were arriving every year, and the agriculture-based rural economy was recovering from the post-Soviet slowdown, both with effects good and bad.

To meet the new challenges, Altai Republic stakeholders were interested in creation of a Nature Parks system, finding ways to regulate land use, and development of ecotourism and alternative energy. They wished to reconnect with people and places in other countries which had served as inspiration and model for the plan of sustainable land use.

Taking this into account, Matthew Foley, a volunteer of the ESD project in the Altai and Chagat Almashev, Director of the Foundation for Sustainable Development of Altai (FSDA), designed the Altai Assistance Project. The Altai Assistance Project is a long-term program aimed at assisting various environmental and cultural initiatives and partners in the Altai with the support of foundation and private donors.

The directions of AAP’s initiatives have largely been determined by the interests of our Altaian partners:

• Strengthening and Developing Altai Protected Areas. Capacity building.
• Promoting Sustainable Land Use in Altai. Sustainable Land Use Planning.
• Demonstration of Sustainable Energy in Altai. Alternative energy.
• Development of Community-Based Tourism Network in Altai (CBT). Sustainable tourism.
• Promotion of Altai Mountain Cultures. Throat singing.