'Sustainable Development' becomes core strategic thinking of development agenda in last three decades and recently the 'Green Economy' terminology becomes the only tool to achieve it. Both terminologies are not well understood not only among conventional citizens but also among scientists. Sustainable Development is well defined but not the Green Economy. Hence, policy makers face serious challenges to convert the vague concept of Green Economy in the planning processes. The paper investigates the level of knowledge of both terminologies from policy makers and monitoring and evaluation officials of government organizations in Mongolia. A survey was conducted among 267 officials including 157 planners and 110 monitoring and evaluation officials in 2014. The result shows that the most of the planners, and monitoring and evaluation officials view that the 'Green Economy' is an environmentally friendly economies. However, important two aspects of the Green Economy misunderstood or never taken into account, which are improving human well-being and social equity. Planners' understanding of Sustainable Development and Green Economy is better than the monitoring and evaluation officials. The author recommend that to improve the knowledge of the Green Economy and its diverse terminologies among planners and monitoring and evaluation officials.
This dissertation deals with two issues related to the competitiveness of the Mongolian agricultural sector: pastoral livestock production and sea buckthorn farming. The pastoral livestock sector plays a vital role for rural development in Mongolia. Pastureland is a public good and herders are free to let their livestock graze. The number of livestock heavily influences sectoral development. Increasing numbers of goats causes pastureland degradation due to goats' grazing habits. Nonetheless, nomadic herders hold more goats than other types of livestock because cashmere is the basis for their cash income. However, it is unconfirmed whether goats are the most competitive/profitable animal compared with sheep, cattle, horse and camel. The aim of this study is to analyse the competitiveness of livestock production in Mongolia using the Policy Analysis Matrix approach. The approach takes into account private and social revenues and costs to analyse the competitiveness of production. The literature to date has not yet worked with primary, disaggregated, individual farm data for nomadic pastoral livestock husbandry in Mongolia. We use two years of panel data from 176 herder households in Bulgan County, Khovd province of Mongolia, and analyse five types of meat, milk and hides, and four types of hair/wool. We conclude that the estimated cost of pastureland has little effect on the competitiveness of livestock production. Our results show that pastoral livestock production in Mongolia is privately and socially competitive. Cattle is the most competitive livestock type from both the private and social perspectives, not the goat as the current management implies, in particular because cattle require less labour than goats. The most competitive households have larger numbers of livestock, lower mortality rates in Dzud disaster, cattle based production, and less mobility costs than the least competitive households. Sea buckthorn (Hippophae Rhamnoides) provides multiple products that are very nutritious and healthy. Plus, sea buckthorn mitigates against desertification. The most valuable output is oil, extracted from the pulp and seeds of the sea buckthorn berry. Scientists in the fields of ecology, botany, environmental sciences, food and medicine have studied sea buckthorn. However, there is no solid economic and market analysis for sea buckthorn, which traces back to a lack of data. We analyse the private and social competitiveness of sea buckthorn farming of 21 households in Bulgan county of Khovd province in Mongolia. We confirm that half of the interviewed sea buckthorn berry farmers are competitive, yet their level of competitiveness is not very high. This could be caused by lack of experience in sea buckthorn farming. Interestingly, the private competitiveness level is lower than the social one. Output prices are high due to government support policies; however input prices are also and even more distorted. Consequently, producers display low levels of private profitability. Hence, to improve the private competitiveness, the policies should focus towards decreasing the costs of inputs of the production system. The level of competitiveness of sea buckthorn farming has increased from 2012 to 2013, which might be due to the government's "Sea Buckthorn National Programme". According to interviewed producers, the most serious challenge facing sea buckthorn production is lack of finance, which is also evidenced that more than one third of the total cost of the farming is composed of investment costs.
The perennial shrub sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides L.) provides multiple products that are beneficial to human health. In addition, the plant can also be used to combat desertification. In contrast to the vast ecological, agronomic and nutritional literature on this species, little is known about its economic and marketing aspects, particularly in Central Asia. We therefore analysed the private and social competitiveness of sea buckthorn farming in 21 households of Bulgan county of Khovd province in Mongolia. The results show that half of the interviewed sea buckthorn farmers are privately competitive. We found that social competitiveness exceeded private competitiveness because while private output prices are supported by government policies, which increases private profits, input prices are also supported, which reduces the competitiveness. The net effect of supports to input and output prices taxes producers and reduces private competitiveness. In our study area the most competitive households had larger land sizes, fenced wild sea buckthorn areas, and were more experienced than others. The competitiveness of sea buckthorn farming increased from 2012 to 2013, which may be due to a government subsidy programme. Given the social and environmental benefits of sea buckthorn production, future government programmes should consider supporting the production through subsidies to make private households more competitive.
