How drought is threatening Mongolia's traditional way of life

ITV News Asia Correspondent Debi Edward has spoken to herders about how Mongolia's drought has threatened their existence

Mongolia’s vast, enchanting landscapes are drying up.

Hundreds of rivers, lakes and mountain springs have evaporated due to rising temperatures and a lack of rainfall.

We travelled to the far west of Mongolia where the semi-arid lands that nomads have farmed for centuries have become uninhabitable due to a lack of water.

On what used to be the summer pasture housing 60 families we met Amankyeldi Zaimolda. He was using a motorbike to herd his yaks.

He used to ride a horse but switched to a motorbike to save feeding and watering horses.

For the same reason, he had to sell more than half of his yaks, and because there was not enough water, he still couldn’t milk the whole herd.

The last two years have been particularly hard in the mountains around Bugat village.

Water well dried up for years

This summer there was no rainfall and although it snowed twice at the end of September, the unusually hot sunny days quickly melted all the snow.

Where we met Amankyeldi should have been covered in snow by October but there was barely a dusting on the tops of the hills.

He took us to what was the last functioning water well in the valley. There was some snow at the bottom but he said it completely dried up two years ago.

Temperatures in Mongolia have risen three times faster than the global average and the ensuing summer droughts have triggered deadly winter snowstorms known as dzuds.

The extreme and sudden snowfalls used to happen once every ten years, but there have been six in the last decade.

Snow left millions of livestock dead

Last winter more than two million livestock died in snow which was double the seasonal average.

In the village of Tolbo, Erkhasim Nurmanbet lost eight horses, ten cows plus too many goats and sheep to count in the dzud.

On the day we visited, a friend had come from the nearest town with two small barrels of water.

In exchange, he gave his friend a pint of milk.

His friend has started coming more frequently under the guise of a friendly visit, bringing water as a gift.

It saves Erkhasim from having to search the hills to gather enough water for his remaining cattle or herd them long distances to drink.

He and his wife used to produce an abundance of milk and dairy but nowadays they just have enough for themselves.

Nearby we found the river Kharasai which Erkhasim used to rely on. Up until ten to 20 years ago, it was one of the main sources of drinking water in the area.

Pastures have become dry and infertile

We were told that it was a fast, plentiful and powerful body of water, and we could still see the large channel it had carved through the hillside.

But the glacier which fed into it has melted and even the mountain springs which still provide a small stream of water, are drying up. It’s a story being repeated across Mongolia.

The water shortage means that herders cannot properly fatten up their animals during the summer, so many are forced to slaughter the ones they fear won’t survive the winter.

The herd not only provides food, wool and fuel (from dung) but it’s their only source of income.

Nomadic herding is so important to the Mongolian economy that the country’s 65 million livestock are often referred to as the ‘National Wealth’.

The pastures in Sagsay village where Ayip Baysoltan’s family have lived for generations have become dry and infertile - the grass either doesn’t grow or not enough comes through.

When we sat down with him and his wife Kulza, he talked about not being able to sell his animals for a decent price at the market and said wool quality has dropped too.

His grandchildren come to help him in the summer, but he worries he won’t have a livelihood to pass on.

Drought threatens Mongolian life

Every year is worse than the last, and he says the changes are becoming noticeable, not over a 10 to 15-year period but in the space of 12 months.

In Ulgii, the biggest town in the area, we met with a team from the Centre for Water and Climate Analysis.

They’ve been monitoring levels of the river Khovd, which is the biggest in the Bayan-Ulgii province and one of the biggest in Central Asia, fed from the glaciers of the Altai Mountains.

Their studies show that between 2000 and 2019 water levels in the eastern city of Khovd fluctuated by around 0-0.5cm, but since 2020 it’s changed rapidly by 15cm.

There are two types of droughts affecting Mongolia – meteorological and hydrological.

The first is due to a rainfall deficit, the second is a deficit in surface and subsurface water flow.

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The combination, plus rising temperatures, in an already arid and semi-arid country is very concerning.

Drought is threatening a way of life that Mongolia is fiercely proud of and on which many lives depend.

The herders we met hope they are not the last generation of nomads.

In a modernising world, they have become increasingly rare, and climate change has placed them in a fight for survival.

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