Disaster, Desertification and Climate Migration: A Woman Herder’s Tale of Resilience in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia

Livestock grazing in dzud-affected pastures

The 35-year old Tsetsgee (name changed) beams as she proudly shares being the recipient of the Honour Medal of Maternal Glory for raising four children, before sharing the poignant tale of the cost of climate change and desertification in the steppes of the Gobi Desert in southern Mongolia. Having grown up in Sukhbaatar, Tsetsgee moved to Omnogovi province after marrying into a family of herders who inherited the traditional occupation of pastoralism. A mother of four children, she taught herself how to milk animals and learnt to live the pastoralist life, having been raised away from the desert and its camels.

However, this choice carried the weight of human and environmental stressors that is testing the ancestral heritage of nomadic pastoralism in Mongolia. While traditionally herders’ lives are marked by nomadic movement in search of healthy pastures and water, oscillating between their summer and winter camps as they let grass replenish, her family was forced into continuous migration due to climate change induced extreme weather events like heavy rainfall, snow and flooding. Extreme weather events have become commonplace in the Gobi Desert for the past 15 years. Year after year, the region is ravaged by dust and sandstorms, droughts and the deadly dzuds that kill millions of livestock. Blizzards, dust and sandstorms cause great damage in a short amount of time to the economic resources in grasslands. Winds carrying dust also cause soil erosion and lead to difficulties in driving livestock from one region to another. Tsetsgee recalls gusting winds weakening her ger (traditional mobile homes of pastoralists) and waking up to its canvas walls lined with sand and covered in yellow dust.

Tsetsgee's ger covered in snow during the dzud

Extended periods of deficient rainfall that deplete pasturelands, weaken livestock and increase the possibility of dzuds are a major risk that herders in Gobi battle with. One such devastating drought two years ago forced Tsetsgee’s family to take a difficult call. She was to leave behind her four children and move 2000 kilometers away to Dornogovi, carrying everything her family owned and travel for four days and four nights. After this ordeal of leaving behind their home, pastureland and children, the youngest being three years-old, the local people and authorities of Dornogovi refused to give her family space and asked them to go away. While the Constitution of Mongolia recognizes the freedom of movement of its citizens anywhere in the country, herders face hostility from fellow pastoral communities in exercising this right to migration as they scrounge for land and water as pastures decrease and animals in these resource-scarce areas increase. This has caused severe distress to many herder families like Tsetsgee’s who are forced to become climate refugees and forego of their primary identity as herders of livestock in a region ravaged by extractives and shrinking land available for grazing due to competing land use in addition to the impacts of climate change and desertification.

Tsetsgee transporting her dead livestock

“Our livestock would starve and die if we stayed behind” says Tsetsgee, pained by the sense of betrayal she felt in her own country. Life as climate refugees who moved to a new space in hope of respite for their livestock was filled with challenges as they were in for a harsh winter where it was difficult to find food for livestock. Herders had to be around their livestock round the clock lest they would die. What followed was a dzud, a slow-onset disaster unique to the steppes and deserts of Central Asia that killed millions of livestock due to harsh winter conditions leading to prolonged malnutrition and cold stress, a gradual death caused by hunger and cold. The winter of 2023-24 was a landmark event of loss and suffering for pastoralists across Mongolia as mercury dipped below -40°C, killing more than 13 million animals as 90 percent of the country faced extreme risk of dzud.

At such a time, Tsetsgee’s mother-in-law, who was taking care of her young children, died in a car accident, leaving the little ones traumatized. As her family had to rush back to Omnogovi, they struggled finding someone to take care of the livestock they were leaving behind.

Tsetsgee's efforts at combating desertification by planting saplings of the poplar tree

This series of disasters did not shake their belief in continuing the traditional livelihood passed on since generations. Tsetsgee moved back with the intent of putting her family’s attention on their children’s education and health. Her resilience shines through as she recounts how they resumed rearing camels and nurturing plantations in their efforts to combat desertification and climate change that led her family into this plight. “We might lose our livestock over a few days, a month or over a winter, but we can always rebuild” says Tsetsgee as she runs a small business, tends to livestock and is preparing her children to stay rooted in the pastoralist tradition by teaching them how to ride horses and camels, take care of animals and preparing them for life.

“We want tangible solutions, not symbolism” demands Tsetsgee as she explains the extent of desertification that has left no grass and water in south Mongolia. The herder women attribute this to mining and infrastructure projects in addition to climate change. The southernmost province of Mongolia in the Gobi Desert is the most mined region of the country, with gold, copper, coal, fluorspar, limestone mining dotted between pasturelands that pump out groundwater, fence expansive grasslands, with their speeding trucks killing animals and leaving the air, water and soil contaminated beyond repair. Mining has reduced the pastures available for grazing, leading to higher concentration of livestock and grazing in decreasing grasslands leading to overgrazing and conflicts between herders struggling to keep their landscapes, livestock and livelihoods alive.

Tsetsgee tells us that throughout the region, livestock numbers have significantly dropped, while herders are blamed for overgrazing and desertification. This narrative, she suspects, is for the government to make it easier to alienate herders from their lands, make way for mineral extraction and make quick money as against the ethic that herders represent, of pastoralism that bears fruit in the long-term and marks a sustainable way of living that Mongolians have embraced for generations. She implores decision-makers and parliamentarians to come and see for themselves how there is nothing remaining to protect in the degraded landscapes where herders live.

Tsetsgee’s story is not hers alone. It reflects the lived reality of pastoralist families across Mongolia’s Gobi region. Climate change, desertification, mining and infrastructure expansion are pushing traditional pastoralism to the limits of its resilience. There is a need to fairly assess all land use factors contributing to rangeland degradation and place herders’ traditional knowledge, participation, and rights at the center of decision-making. This is what herders like Tsetsgee demand: that no development, extractive or infrastructure project should be implemented at the expense of herders’ lives, rangelands, water, mobility rights, and cultural heritage. Herders of Mongolia make this clear in their jointly developed declaration, Nomads’ Red Line Initiative for Sustainable Pasture Rights, as they call for the legal protection of their seasonal transhumance, migration routes, and water sources, and fair and just adaptation and restoration policies that do not place the burden of climate change, disasters like dzud, drought, and desertification risks on pastoral communities. For, while herders suffer the worst blows of environmental degradation that they did not cause, they are not merely victims. They are rights-holders, knowledge holders, and stewards of nature who have protected and restored rangeland ecosystems for generations and can guide the world towards greener pastures.