Mongolia
Adaptation while balancing development and conservation of essential resources
Rimmed by mountain ranges, Mongolia's immense landscape switches quickly from permafrost to grassy steppe to desert. The traditional economic sector - pastoral animal husbandry and rain-fed agriculture - is extremely vulnerable to the vagaries of precipitation and temperature.
Community Values at Risk
Nomadic herders talk about zud (dzud), a dry summer typified by a shortage of food for herd animals, followed by a particularly harsh winter (down to -55°F) that freezes and buries already vulnerable livestock in snow. Climate models show winter precipitation levels on the rise over the next 90 years, accompanied by drying summers and radical temperature increases. Additional pressure is coming from inflated herd sizes (twice the size of just 10 years ago) that reduce pasture availability. This pattern devastates livestock and as herds starve, desperate nomadic families migrate in mass numbers to the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar.
While its traditional ways of life are threatened, Mongolia also has opportunities to gain from abundant mineral deposits and is shifting toward new industries such as mining, oil extraction and infrastructure development. But mining and oil development has the potential to fragment important ecosystems, remove grass cover and thereby advance desertification and diminish livestock food supplies through water usage.
Natural Solutions at Work
The Mongolian Ministry of Environment, Nature and Tourism and the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy are now using the Conservancy's ecoregional assessment, climate change and Development by Design methodologies. These methodologies are enabling the ministries to integrate environmental, social and economic data to create regional sustainable development plans. Strategies identified to date include:
- Pinpointing region-wide priority conservation areas, based on such factors as biological resources, water and forage sources, climate change patterns and anticipated development activities.
- Promoting sustainable and climate-resilient grazing practices. By ensuring that herd sizes match the forage that grasslands can produce, the likelihood of food shortages will be reduced.
- Establishing and maintain grass banks. Setting aside no-graze areas will ensure emergency forage supplies during drought years.
- Monitoring grasslands systems and the climate factors that affect them. Tracking temperature and rainfall patterns to predict likely years for drought and zud will allow herders to prepare their herds.
- Guiding development of mineral resources to appropriate sites across the nation's large and generally intact grasslands.
From Science to Action
The challenge for the Mongolian government is to balance the new development while also protecting the nation's ecological riches and traditional economic sectors - all at a time when climate threats are growing. Working with The Nature Conservancy, other partners and stakeholders, the Mongolian government is meeting the challenge head-on.
Combining the Conservancy's science-based methods with a people-focused approach, the regional plans will balance the interests of conservation with sustainable economic development, social welfare and nomadic traditions. They also will ensure government and popular support for the conservation of Mongolia's unique natural treasures.
