Mongolia

I. Introduction

1. Mongolia is a large landlocked country in East Asia facing severe climate change impacts. It is one of the world’s most sparsely populated nations, with a population of approximately 3.4 million but a population density of two inhabitants per square kilometer.[1]

2. Mongolia’s economy is “characterized by a poorly diversified economy with extreme poverty affecting some 28% of the population.” As an economy heavily reliant on rainfed agriculture and pastoral herding, Mongolia is particularly vulnerable to climate disruptions.[2]

3. Despite contributing only 0.1% of global CO2 emissions in 2022, Mongolia has experienced temperatures rising at three times the global average.[3] This has led to increasingly extreme climate events, including desertification, dzud disasters, and water scarcity, all of which have significant human rights implications.[4] The impacts of climate change threaten the rights to food, water, health, the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and the right of self-determination. These impacts will disproportionately affect Mongolia’s rural and herding communities. Given Mongolia’s minimal role in causing climate change, the responsibility of high-emission states in exacerbating these harms must be considered under international human rights and environmental law.

II. Agriculture

4. Agriculture is a key industry in Mongolia, responsible for around 13% of the nation’s GDP and employing over half of the population. Unfortunately, climate change is actively harming this industry.

5. In Mongolia, the growing season for crops only lasts 95-110 days. Increasingly unpredictable weather conditions are now impacting crop production.[5]

6. Extreme weather events have resulted from climate change impacts, bringing environmental disasters like chronic drought, heat waves, sudden frosts, flash floods, and dust storms that have impacted crop production and destroyed farmland.[6]

7. Rising temperatures and reduced precipitation are accelerating desertification in Mongolia, leading to the loss of both farming and grazing lands.[7]

8. Additionally, livestock farming alone contributes to nearly 90% of Mongolia’s agricultural output and roughly 10% of its GDP.[8] Increases in summer temperatures and decreases in winter temperatures have decreased the growth of plants in pastures and impacted the availability of water, reducing livestock productivity.[9]

9. Crop production, desertification, and livestock farming impacts have human rights implications, with the human right to adequate food being explicitly affected. Impacts on food production also implicate economic self-determination, the right to development, and even the right to life.

10. We urge Mongolia to respond to such disruptions using a human rights-based framework and to consider ways to promote and protect the right to adequate food, the right to development, and the economic dimension of self-determination.

III. Dzuds

11. A dzud is a weather event which poses a unique challenge to Mongolia’s herding community.

12. Dzud events come in multiple types. A white dzud involves deep snow in the winter that buries pastureland, causing livestock to starve. A black dzud occurs after a dry summer, resulting in little available water reducing plant growth, and threatening both starvation as well as dehydration. An iron dzud covers grazing areas with ice, preventing livestock from grazing and leading to starvation. Finally, a combined dzud involves a mix of these conditions.[10]

13. Previous dzud events have caused the GDP of the agricultural sector to decrease by up to 40%, decimating the number of herders, increasing unemployment and poverty, and pushing migration to cities.[11]

14. Climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of dzud events in recent years, resulting in widespread livestock death. This has impacts across Mongolian society, culture, and economy.[12]

15. The death of livestock results in families losing their source of food, income, and transportation, increasing economic precarity and food insecurity. These events often have ripple effects that increase food prices across the nation.[13]

16. The death of millions of livestock during a dzud event can create a health hazard, as melting snow and runoff can carry contaminants from decaying animal carcasses, contaminating water sources, and increasing the risks of disease outbreaks and waterborne illness.[14]

17. Finally, dzud events impact education, with thousands of children from herding communities being unable to attend school, creating a cycle of poverty.[15]

18. Dzud events directly impact the rights to food, water, health, and education, all of which are protected under the ICESCR, which Mongolia has ratified. We encourage Mongolia to consider the impact that dzud events have and how their prevalence is increasing due climate change.

IV. Water Resources

19. Water scarcity is another pressing issue facing Mongolia, especially in rapidly urbanizing cities like Ulaanbaatar. The problem is worsened by climate change impacts that are reducing the amount of precipitation and accelerating desertification.

20. Droughts have worsened due to rising temperatures, which results in increased dzud events in the winter, creating a cycle of extreme weather that reduces the availability of water for humans and livestock.[16]

21. Glaciers in the Altai Mountains in Mongolia are critical to water resources, especially during dry summers. However, increased temperatures because of climate change have resulted in increased glacial melting. This short-term increase in water supply masks a longer-term water crisis, as continued glacier retreat will permanently reduce Mongolia’s freshwater reserves.[17] Loss of glacial water implicates permanent sovereignty over natural resources.

22. Desertification resulting from overgrazing, climate change, and unsustainable pasture practices also contributes to water scarcity, with hundreds of lakes and rivers drying up in recent years, directly impacting sources of water that many rural Mongolians rely on.[18]

23. Climate change has also caused the groundwater table to drop, resulting in many wells drying up and increasing the cost of a new well to be built.[19] Groundwater supplies around 82% of the water used in the nation as well as the water used in many major industries, including agriculture and mining.[20]

24. In the Southern Gobi region, projections show that water demand will exceed resources by 2030, which will have impacts on the agriculture, pastoralist, and mining industries, all of which use large amounts of water.[21]

25. Water is an essential resource that is required for the existence and survival of people in Mongolia. A people cannot be deprived of its means of subsistence, including its water resources. Climate change impacts that are causing glacial and water loss are therefore depriving Mongolia of its means of subsistence, which also implicates Mongolia’s self-determination.

V. Health

26. Climate change is also responsible for certain health impacts in Mongolia by spreading disease and contributing to increased mortality from weather events.

27. Rising temperatures are linked to increases in heat-related illnesses, which can disproportionally threaten vulnerable populations, such as the elderly, young children, and those with pre-existing medical conditions.

28. Increasing temperatures combined with water scarcity can increase the spread and occurrence of waterborne diseases and bacteria.[22]

29. Dzud events often result in malnutrition and starvation among herding communities, resulting in reduced growth in children and an increase in respiratory illness linked to the burning of coal necessary to stay warm indoors.[23]Dzud events can also increase the spread of waterborne pathogens due to livestock carcasses contaminating melting snow.

30. The number of sandstorms in Mongolia has tripled in the past decade, and the storms are responsible for both human and livestock casualties as well as respiratory illness due to airborne debris.[24]

31. We encourage Mongolia to consider threats to the right to health caused by climate change impacts, and to formulate policy responses that promote and protect the right to health.

VI. Socio-Economic Impacts

A. Migration

32. Climate change has drastically exacerbated the migration of rural populations to the capital of Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia, where the city is facing overcrowding issues because of the displacement.[25] Studies have shown that around 26% of the total migrants from 1995-2013 have moved due to environmental pressures contributing to the massive population growth in Ulaanbaatar.[26]

33. Ulaanbaatar faces infrastructure challenges due to the rapid influx and overcrowding of rural migrants, including housing shortages, rising income inequality, ever-present air pollution, and lack of social services. Mongolia tried to solve the issue by banning migrants from 2017-2020, but recent research shows that the issue was only worsened by the ban, with migrants continuing to move into the city without residency registration and thus, lacking access to critical public services.[27]

34. Instead of restrictive policies, Mongolia should focus on developing adequate infrastructure and social services to accommodate internal migration, particularly to Ulaanbaatar and other major urban centers. Under the ICESCR, Mongolia has obligations to progressively ensure economic, cultural, and social rights. In addition, the promotion and fulfilment of such rights must take place on the basis of non-discrimination.

35. We further encourage Mongolia to consider ways to protect and promote the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment within Ulaanbaatar, and to adopt policies to ensure clean air.

B. Cultural Destruction

36. Climate change is impacting the cultural life of Mongolia’s nomadic herders, forcing many such communities to leave such lifestyles.[28]

37. Mongolia should consider policies that can ensure the continuing existence of cultural traditions within such communities.

VII. Adaptation Strategies

38. We encourage Mongolia to consider adaptation options for arable farming such as the implementation of effective irrigation strategies, the cultivation of drought-resistant and high-yielding crops, and the improvement of soil fertility to combat climate change impacts.[29] Indigenous and nomadic farming practices, such as traditional soil conservation methods, pasture rotation, and other grazing practices should be integrated to better protect the grazing ecosystem. Groups like the Buryat Mongol and their relationship with nature provide a new perspective towards humanity’s relationship with nature that are worth considering.[30]

39. Additionally, Mongolia should consider adaptation options for livestock farming such as the breeding of highly productive animals, pasture management, irrigated hay feeding, and early warning systems against drought-dzud risks.[31] Moreover, some nomadic herders have combatted climate change events by pooling resources, with research finding that those who banded together significantly reduced household vulnerability to dzuds.[32]

40. Specific strategies to combat desertification include the planting of saxaul trees, the only tree native to the region, to increase forest cover and keep the soil fertile with roots, cooperative conservation projects with local nomadic herding communities, and the improvement of sustainable agriculture methods to keep the soil healthy.[33]

41. We encourage Mongolia to consider strategies that combat water scarcity, which are essential to adapting to climate change. Potential adaptation strategies include the development of integrated water supply and sanitation systems, the improvement of monitoring of surface and groundwater quality, incentivizing upgrades in water treatment in other industries, and integrating investment for flood protection in urban areas.[34]

42. We encourage Mongolia to protect the right to health throughout its climate change adaptation strategies. Adaptation strategies to combat health harms resulting from climate change include increased investment in water sanitation, flood protection, and improved emergency response.

43. Instead of restrictive policies, we also encourage Mongolia to consider policy solutions to climate change migration to Ulaanbaatar that address both rural revitalization and urban resilience. One strategy is reverse migration strategies, which have successfully been used in other Asian nations to reduce population density due to climate migration.[35] Additionally, urban planning projects and the expansion of social services can ease the burden on community resources and expand access to housing and other necessary resources for migrants.

VIII. Legal Responsibility for Climate Change Impact

44. Given that Mongolia has not materially contributed to the emissions that are now causing climate change, we encourage Mongolia to consider how the actions of high-emitter States have possibly injured Mongolia under international law.

45. Many of the impacts caused by climate change threaten core components of Mongolia’s self-determination, including its economic self-determination. Mongolia will be forced to expend considerable resources to manage impacts that it did not cause.

46. We therefore encourage Mongolia to index and categorize such injuries and consider whether it is entitled to reparations under the law of State responsibility on account of injuries caused to Mongolia from responsible, emitter States.

IX. Recommendations

47. We encourage Mongolia to consider a human rights-based approach in managing the impacts of climate change, particularly impacts on economic, cultural, and social rights.

48. We draw particular attention to implications on Mongolia’s food security and the right to health of its people caused by climate change impacts. We also draw attention to the loss of culture as climate change impacts accelerate.

49. We encourage Mongolia to seek technical and financial support to prepare for the impacts of climate change, including from increasing dzud disasters.

50. While Mongolia has not materially contributed to the climate crisis, we encourage Mongolia to take responsible steps to implement a just transition to renewable energy and climate resilient lifestyles, consistent with Mongolia’s overarching right to develop.

51. We encourage Mongolia to consider the impacts on its self-determination from climate change impacts.

52. We encourage Mongolia to reflect on and consider its place in a world rapidly changing from climate disruption.

[1] https://www.giz.de/en/downloads/giz2023-en-macro-impacts-e3-mongolia.pdf, 4.

[2] https://www.unicef.org/mongolia/media/4921/file/English.pdf, 4.

[3] https://www.iea.org/countries/mongolia/emissions.

[4] https://www.itv.com/news/2024-10-15/how-drought-is-threatening-mongolias-traditional-way-of-life.

[5] https://www.unicef.org/mongolia/media/4921/file/English.pdf, 4.

[6] Ibid, 5.

[7] https://www.unccd.int/sites/default/files/ldn_targets/2019 08/Mongolia%20LDN%20TSP%20Country%20Report.pdf, 5

[8] https://www.preventionweb.net/news/how-climate-change-fueling-dzud-crisis-mongolia#:~:text=Since%202005%2C%20Mongolia%20has%20warmed,a%20black%20dzud%20in%20winter.

[9] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2024/03/12/how-mongolia-s-herders-faced-climate-change#:~:text=Mongolia's%202%C2%B0C%20increase,make%20up%20for%20productivity%20losses.

[10] https://www.preventionweb.net/news/how-climate-change-fueling-dzud-crisis-mongolia#:~:text=Since%202005%2C%20Mongolia%20has%20warmed,a%20black%20dzud%20in%20winter.