Strengthening Customary Herders Groups

Country: Mongolia
Project Location within Country:
Tuv, Uvurhangai, Bayanhongor provinces

Project Duration: 16 months

Name of Client: UNDP Mongolia, Ph: 327585

Total No of person-months of the project: 16

Start Date (month/year):
August 2000

Completion Date:
(month/year):
February 2002

Name of associated firm(s) if any:
No

No. of Person-Months of Professional
Staff Provided by Associated Firm(s):

Name of Senior Staff (Project Director/Co-ordinator, Team Leader) involved and functions performed
Dr. Enkh-Amgalan, Project Designer/Manager, Centre for Policy Research /CPR/

Detailed Narrative Description of Project:

On April 3-6 2000, CPR hosted the SURF International Seminar ‘Recovery with Incomplete Reforms’ which was attended, among others, by top officials of UNDP missions in Asian countries. A paper ‘The Productivity Consequences of Incomplete Reforms of the Extensive Livestock Industry in Mongolia’ was presented by Dr. Enkh-Amgalan, the Founding Director of CPR which included a proposal to launch a small project to pilot the registration of informal grazing rights of customary herding communities. UNDP Mongolia was supportive of the project proposal and it started discussions with CPR on launching a new project possibly funded by UNDP.

The project objective is to develop and pilot a model/framework of activities that gradually would lead the extensive livestock industry of Mongolia to sustainable path of development through addressing the primary challenge.

Detailed Description of Actual Services provided by your Company:

CPR was involved in the project from its designing stage and currently administers the whole project.

• Using a combination of holistic and bottom-up approaches the project piloted ways to shift the extensive livestock industry in Mongolia into sustainable path of development though enhancing collective actions among herders, especially strengthening customary groups of herders
• Project undertook the first in Mongolia empirical testing of strengthening informal groups of herders based on shared use grazing areas and wells through identification and registration of their grazing rights, upgrading collective actions among members into formal organizations of herders /NGO’s and cooperatives/, introducing self-sustainable mechanisms for maintenance of supplementary fodder and veterinary services, breeding activities, providing micro-credits for launching alternative income generation activities
• Investigated ways of community-based resolutions of grazing conflicts in collaboration with bag and district governors through introduction land possession/use contracts between herding communities and district governors
• Designed and piloted ways to improve the use grazing resources through introduction of sum level land management plans to secure access of herding communities to seasonal pastures in normal years and reserve pastures in emergency cases
• Piloted the preparation of series of sum-level digital maps to facilitate community-based pastureland planning, monitoring and the introduction land use agreements
• Piloted the feasibility of community-run revolving funds of supplementary fodder, veterinary medicines and releasing micro-loans to herders groups for non-herding income generation activities
• Piloted capacity building activities for herders groups including on-site training seminars in elementary animal breeding and veterinary techniques and the development and implementation of business plans for the winter-spring and summer-autumn seasons