Zooming in on Mongolia and the DSL-IP Eastern Steppe Project

The project “Promoting Dryland Sustainable Landscapes and Biodiversity Conservation in the Eastern Steppe of Mongolia” (“Eastern Steppe project”) is one of the 11 child projects under the GEF-7 Dryland Sustainable Landscapes Impact Program and led by FAO in partnership with WWF as GEF implementing agencies and country level, and executed by the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) in collaboration with other partners. 

The objective of the project is to reverse and prevent dryland ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss through an inclusive, integrated landscape and value chain approach securing multiple environment benefits and sustainable, resilient livelihoods in the Eastern Steppe of Mongolia. The project interventions are implemented in nine soums of the three Eastern aimags of Dornod, Khentii and Sukhbaatar and six natural reserves which are key breeding sites and critical habitats of Mongolian gazelle, White Naped Cranes and Great bustards.  

The project is divided into four components, as follows.
1) Component 1: Strengthening the enabling environment for the sustainable management of drylands in Mongolia.
2) Component 2: Scaling up sustainable dryland management in the Eastern Steppe of Mongolia.
3) Component 3: Strengthening biodiversity conservation and landscape connectivity.
4) Component 4: Project coordination, knowledge management and monitoring and evaluation.

Through exchange with and alignment to the Global SFM/Drylands Impact Program, in particular the Global Coordination Project through the Regional Exchange Mechanism (REM), best practices and knowledge will be systematically documented and shared, and regional and global collaboration will be leveraged to have a larger and transboundary impact at biome and ecoregion levels.

Sustainably managing pastures in Mongolia for impact across Central Asia 

Restoring degraded pasture due to overgrazing or restoring indigenous knowledge on extensive livestock farming systems based on pasture carrying capacity is the main approach being applied by the project in the targeted aimag and soum in order to reverse land degradation and to prevent further biodiversity losses. The project is providing technical and financial support to strengthen cross sectoral, multistakeholder collaboration for integrated land management planning and monitoring as well as is supporting ongoing policy reform to promote land degradation neutrality at national and local levels. As a result, the following progress has been made so far: 

Integrated landscape management plans developed and approved through cross sectoral and multi-stakeholder working groups of aimags and soums that are comprised of various stakeholders – not only policy planners, but also land users in a participatory manner. A total of 11 173 citizens (47 percent men, 53 percent women) actively provided feedback and comments during the aimag and soum land management planning processes for data sharing and collective decision making. 

• Environmental considerations incorporated: The land degradation, climate change and biodiversity considerations were incorporated into the integrated landscape management plans. Land degradation status was calculated using QGIS-Trends Earth Tool, taking into consideration the changes in soil organic carbon, soil cover, and soil productivity in the last 10 years. Forecasting of future climate change trends using IPCC’s interactive atlas was helpful to identify the exact locations for ecosystem restoration and environmental conservation related interventions, such as resting degraded pastures over 1,6 million ha, planting trees at 8 425 locations covering 2,9 million ha, establishing 38 water reservoirs, and protecting 607 springs etc. 
• Legal environment for sustainable pasture use improved: Soum-specific responsible pasture use regulations adopted in four target soums enabling legal environment to manage 2 055 795 hectares pastureland and hay making area. Based on the regulation annual pasture management plan in 13 baghs of six soums adopted which enabled the restoration of 331 027 ha pastureland by resting degraded pastureland. 
• Applied and participatory grazing impact photo-monitoring promoted: Bagh community leaders and herders were engaged in conducting an annual photo-monitoring survey which has been previously conducted by the soum land officer alone. The result of the survey is introduced at the bagh community meeting for collective decision making over pasture management planning and monitoring. 
• Improved guideline introduced for planning: An existing guideline for aimag and soum land management planning was improved to the landscape level. The methodology was replicated in the land management planning efforts of the other aimags and soums by the GCF funded ADAPT project, EU funded STREAM project and land planners benefited from capacity building activities of the project to other regions. 

Integrated protected area management which includes herders in the decision-making processes is of high interest for the Mongolia child project and as such a possible core theme that the DSL-IP Global Coordination Project through the Regional Exchange Mechanism (REM) for Central Asia will support by sharing evidence good practices and tailored capacity enhancement based on the identified gaps at country level.