Work will start soon on a project under the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research to examine if traditional livelihoods in Mongolia and mining can co-exist in a changing climate and how public-private partnerships in the country can be strengthened to reduce risk and address loss and damage. The project leader is Dr. Vigya Sharma of the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining at The University of Queensland, Australia, and the project collaborators are Dr Byambajav Dalaibuyan from the same centre, Dr Gerelt-Od Erdenebileg of Civic Solutions NGO, Ms. Saruulzaya Adiya of the Institute of Geography, Mongolian Academy of Sciences, and Dr Myagmartsooj Natsag of the Mongolian State University of Education.
The proposed project has two primary aims: a) to identify risks from climatic changes for Mongolia’s two primary economic sectors – mining and herding, and b) to build in-situ capacity in these sectors to adapt to changing conditions with a view to reducing the resulting loss and damage through both incremental and transformative changes. By bringing together these key economic enterprises, the project highlights that despite being in conflict in the past over access to environmental resources such as land and water, there is much scope for drawing out synergies between the two sectors in relation to exchanging resources, knowledge and skills. It is the project’s hypothesis that by focusing on a shared challenge, the sectors will be able to better co-ordinate their strengths and enable effective collaboration with government and civil society to address climate-related natural disasters.
The project will undertake workshops to bring together multiple stakeholders to not only take stock of current knowledge, resources and instruments available to deal with climatic disasters but also address their concerns including current and potential risks from climate change, stakeholder priorities and knowledge gaps in relation to building resilience to natural disasters and strategies for developing practical implementation and partnership-building plans, going forward into the future.