Mongolian herding vision 2050 for adaptation to climate and social changes

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19KK0022
• Research Category: Fund for the Promotion of Joint International Research (Fostering Joint International Research (B))
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Medium-sized Section 4:Geography, cultural anthropology, folklore, and related fields
• Research Institution: Nagoya University
• Principal Investigator: Shinoda Masato 名古屋大学, 環境学研究科, 教授 (30211957)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 小宮山 博 日本大学, 生物資源科学部, 教授 (40442719) ; 宮坂 隆文 名古屋大学, 環境学研究科, 講師 (80635483)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-10-07 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: 遊牧 / モンゴル / 気候変動

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In recent decades, drylands in the Eurasian inland have been experiencing dramatic changes in climate and society; climatic changes include marked continental-scale warming and drying trends, while social include a regime shift from planned to market economy in the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Mongolia, nomadic pastoralism, which uses lands dispersedly and extensively under extreme environments with arid, cold climate, has been sustained for thousands of years, still being one of the main industries. However, it faces a threat that rapidly increased animals under the market economy may exceed the pasture capacity.
With this background, this study aimed to make an assessment of ecological and economic sustainability of herding in Mongolia towards 2050 by using a newly developed coupled herding society-ecosystem model and to propose a vision of healthy herding to enable the society to realize both the sustainability and food security.

Free Research Field

地理学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

乾燥地は世界の陸地の約4 割を占め、そこに世界人口の3 分の1 の人々が暮らしているが、その多くは健康・福利の面で困難に直面している。さらに、乾燥地のなかで最も乾燥した、モンゴルを含む移動牧畜地域は、世界でも最も貧しい辺境地である。このような社会経済状況の下、ユーラシア乾燥地では近年、温暖化・乾燥化が著しく、本研究は、乾燥地の気候変動適応研究として大きな意義があり、数千年間維持されてきた遊牧を救済することにつながる。