Purpose

The project will bring an effective approach to promoting improved, secured, and sustainable livelihood strategies developed, demonstrated, and validated in selected areas, and institutional capacity created so that these strategies can be replicated and scaled-up in a second phase of the Program.

Sustaining Livelihoods on Mongolia's Pastoral Commons: Insights from a Participatory Poverty Assessment Robin Mearns Development and Change, January 2004, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 107-139(33) This article draws on the findings of a country-wide participatory poverty assessment conducted in 2000. Blending quantitative and qualitative data, these findings help to bring into sharper relief the broad outlines of an integrated approach to building secure and sustainable livelihoods both on and off the pastoral commons. PDF

Mongolia: Participatory Living Standards Assessment 2000 Robin Mearns, Enkhtor Dulamdary, Meera Kaul Shah, 2001 The Participatory Living Standards Assessment 2000 (PLSA) aims to inform national policy, in part as an essential component of Mongolia's PRSP. The paper reflects on issues such as social differentiation, vulnerability and access to assets that will need to be tackled at public policy level in order to help create an enabling environment within which all groups in Mongolia may achieve more secure and sustainable livelihoods. PDF

Use of Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches


The Sustainable Livelihoods Project supports the first phase of the Sustainable Livelihoods Program. The project will bring an effective approach to promoting improved, secured, and sustainable livelihood strategies developed, demonstrated, and validated in selected areas, and institutional capacity created so that these strategies can be replicated and scaled-up in the second phase of the Program.

The project consists of four components:

1. Pastoral risk management will reduce the vulnerability of herders and enhance their resilience to drought, dzud (winter disasters), and other shocks through risk forecasting and contingency planning, grazing and pasture management, herder self-help initiatives, and hay and fodder enterprise development.
2. Micro-finance outreach will provide micro-finance services to targeted poor and vulnerable non-poor households and individual achieved in remote rural areas of the eight core aimags through the creation of a micro-financed development fund and the strengthening of revolving loan funds.
3. Local initiatives fund will establish effective mechanisms by which all members of the targeted communities can come together to identify their key infrastructure development needs and prioritize them for potential sub-project financing.
4. Project management will build on existing program management structure for project implementation.