Pastoral systems, where humans depend on livestock, exist largely in arid and semi-arid ecosystems in Mongolia, where climate is highly variable. In many ways, pastoral livestock systems are intimately adapted to climatic variability. Extensive nomadic systems are found in the most variable regions; less extensive, more intensive modes of livestock management occur in areas where forage dependability is more secure. Direct feedback exists between nomadic land-use systems and ecosystem dynamics. Interactions between ecosystems and nomadic land-use systems co-shaped them in mutually-adaptive ways, making both the rangeland ecosystem and nomadic pastoral system resilient and sustainable. This chapter shows how changes in climate variability, ecosystem dynamics, and socioeconomic factors have been interacting in novel ways to determine nomadic land-use systems during the past several decades in Mongolia. The traditional resilience of pastoral community-cultural landscape systems is being affected by climate and socioeconomic changes related to global warming, mining, and goat-cashmere production, which have led to losses in resilience and further degradation of the rangelands, peri-urban areas, and water bodies. This is an example of a “tragedy-of-the-commons”. Opportunities still exist, however, for a sustainable transformation pathway to conserve ecological, social, and cultural resilience associated with these rangeland ecosystems. Different policies need to be applied in different ecological-economic zones of Mongolia. Traditional pastoral community-cultural landscape systems should be strengthened in the western part of the country; modern de-centralized technologies should be introduced, such as renewable energy and wireless communication technology; and value-added approaches are needed to manage livestock, raw materials and sustainable tourism in central part of the country.
Book / book chapter