Includes bibliographical references. ; Presented at the Building resilience of Mongolian rangelands: a trans-disciplinary research conference held on June 9-10, 2015 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. ; After 70 years of communist regime, Mongolia chose a radical transition for democracy and a market economy in 1990. Since the 2000s, the Mongolian government has been promoting the mining industry to increase its foreign exchanges. The mining sector may offer local job opportunities and revenues, but might also cause loss and degradation of pasture land the local people depend on. An empirical study is conducted to investigate whether the immigration of rural people from a mining area is different from that of a non-mining area using a probit model based on a 2013 workforce survey of Mongolia. The result shows that mining soums receive fewer outsiders than the non-mining soums, suggesting local mining activities exert limited economic linkage in local community for a case of Mongolia.
Includes bibliographical references. ; Presented at the Building resilience of Mongolian rangelands: a trans-disciplinary research conference held on June 9-10, 2015 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. ; Socio-ecological boundaries delineate landscapes containing natural resources that are differentially accessed and managed by stakeholders. These boundaries may be human-demarcated and biophysical serving as tangible and intangible features delineating landscapes. Our purpose is to explore Mongolian herders' perceptions of their pasture and boundaries through participatory mapping processes. Our research questions include: 1) what boundaries are depicted on herders' participatory maps? and 2) how are boundaries discussed through herders' participatory mapping narratives? We conducted participatory mapping and informal interviews (n= 35) with herder groups and district officials in Arkhangai, Tuv, Dornod, and Dornogovi. We qualitatively coded participatory mapping narratives and applied visual grounded theory. Tangible features on participatory maps included economic, hydroclimatic, geomorphological, and ecological boundaries portrayed as springs, landforms, vegetation types, seasonal camps, wells, and roads. Non-physical intangible boundaries such as governance arrangements were evident in participatory mapping narratives and served as human demarcated boundaries for accessing seasonal camps, markets, government assistance, and resources for herder migration. The relationships among herder mobility, governance boundaries, and biophysical pasture boundaries are coupled and dynamic, resulting in multi-dimensional outcomes of herder livelihoods.
Includes bibliographical references. ; Presented at the Building resilience of Mongolian rangelands: a trans-disciplinary research conference held on June 9-10, 2015 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. ; Mongolia's socio-ecological rangeland systems face a number of critical, contemporary challenges. Climatic change, persistent poverty and growing land use conflicts, especially around mining, pose complex problems both for herders and policy-makers. Furthermore, there is renewed emphasis on meeting Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Aichi targets, following the publication of Mongolia's 5th National CBD report in March 2014, and the development of a new National Biodiversity Strategic Action Plan. (E)valuation of the contributions of rangeland ecosystem services (ES) to biodiversity and livelihoods/wellbeing are highlighted as priorities for future planning therein. ES thinking, valuation and commodification are becoming increasingly influential in other contemporary policy initiatives, not least through the development of the national REDD+ roadmap, Business and Biodiversity offset programmes and Government commitments to the 'Green Economy'. Nonetheless critical questions remain about the ES paradigm itself, values/ valuation of ES and how these may be enacted and supported through policy. Here we report on a three year Darwin-Initiative funded project, which aimed to 'generate policy and practice relevant knowledge of values of ecosystem services (ES) in Mongolia, and test the efficacy of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes, in order to enhance biodiversity and livelihoods'. Aims were realised through i) participatory mapping and analysis of ES, including cultural ES, with 300 herder households across four case study sites, and the development of innovative methods for non-economic valuation; ii) co-development and implementation of a novel rangeland payment for ES (PES) scheme at the four sites, through the Plan Vivo standard; iii) analysis of the impacts ES and of the PES scheme on biodiversity and livelihoods. Methods used included deliberative valuation approaches, mapping, ranking and choice modelling to examine group and individual values and trade-offs between ES across ecologically contrasting areas. We also applied the SOLVES (Social Values of ES) GIS model to highlight spatial, place-specific dimensions of ES values, as part of a series of wider biodiversity, livelihoods and ES assessments. Results highlight spatial and temporal diversities in ES values, importance of cultural ES for wellbeing, and the potential of carefully designed PES schemes to contribute to more resilient socio-ecological rangeland systems in the future.
