A major part of Mongolia’s land is degraded through overgrazing, deforestation, and climate change. Climate change has significant impacts on Mongolia’s grassland ecosystems and the livestock farming which consequently threats the food security of the country. In the entire value chain of livestock sector, the nomadic herders and rural livestock farmers are most vulnerable as they are directly facing the adverse impacts of climate change on the animals, pasture lands and scarcity of water and nutritional food for animals. Due to loss of the livestock’s life from erratic weather events and climate disasters (e.g., dzud), the herders are increasing the livestock leading to overgrazing of pastures. The pastures are lacking the nutritional values, and due to this reason the livestock weights have also decreased.
With the existing players in the market, the value-adding process like meat production, processing, packaging and selling are several steps away from these communities. Hence, communities are also suffering as their livelihood is depleting, making them more vulnerable to the climate change. Lack of institutional capacity, barriers to the market and lack of adequate risk mitigation measures and financing are further adding to it.
The CTCN support is requested to strengthen climate-resilient livestock farming while deriving the economic sustainability for vulnerable herding communities in Bayantümen sum, Mongolia. The CTCN Technical Assistance (TA) will support in two folds:
- By enhancing the capacity and knowledge of herding communities on climate-resilient livestock farming
- By facilitating the decision making to invest in community-scale sustainable meat-processing system to improve the livelihood from livestock farming
The CTCN TA will enable the vulnerable communities to derive the best value from the livestock farming while dealing with the adverse impacts of the climate change. The TA would contribute to the Nationally Determined Contributions and national priorities of Mongolia in the field of climate change adaptation and mitigation.