Calling the situation brought about
by the dzud “a catastrophe not only for the herders but for the entire
Mongolian economy”, Akbar Usmani, the resident representative for the United
Nations Development Program, has expressed concern that “the ripple effects
will be felt for months and years to come.” The UN estimates that the current
disaster may prompt as many as 20,000 herders to abandon their nomadic life and
flee to cities.

The disaster poses a challenge to a government already struggling to address
the needs of the third of the population that lives in poverty. But it also
raises a host of thorny questions about climate change, environmental
degradation and whether the pastoral way of life that sustains many of the
country’s 3 million people has a future, says a recent report in The New York
Times.

Mongolians are fiercely proud of their millenniums-old nomadic ways. Although
mining and tourism are a growing portion of the Mongolian economy, a third of
the population still depends entirely on husbandry for its livelihood. “The key
question we have to ask is whether this way of life is sustainable,” said Mr.
Usmani. “It’s a very sensitive issue.”

Despite the severe winter,
one of the more sensitive long-term issues, oddly, is how to curb the explosive
growth in livestock, which has quadrupled to 40 million head since the 1990
revolution that ushered in democracy and ended a socialist system that tightly
controlled the size of the nation’s herds to prevent overgrazing.
Environmentalists and government officials agree that the two decades of
unbridled privatization and a boom in cashmere exports upended the traditional
mix of livestock, which had long favored sheep over goats.

In the past, sheep made up
80 percent of small-animal herds and goats the rest. But as the price of
cashmere soared over the last decade, that ratio reversed, with devastating
results for the ecology of the steppe. Voracious eaters, goats often destroy
the grass by nibbling at the roots. Their sharp hooves also damage fragile
pasture by breaking up the protective tangle of grass and lichens, allowing the
wind to sweep away topsoil and encouraging desertification.

The other wildcard is
climate change, which many herders blame for the increasingly inhospitable
weather. Winters are longer and colder, the winds blow stronger and the
summers, they say, are drier. “I don’t know what happened to the mild spring
rains that the grass needs to drink,” said a lifelong herder who lost his
entire flock. “Now, when the rains come they are heavy and create flash
floods.”

A recent World Bank study
found that hundreds of rivers and lakes had disappeared in Mongolia, and the
diversity of plant species had plummeted by a third since 1997, although
researchers partly blamed the proliferation of goats.

Those lucky enough to get a
spot on the crews in a work-for-cash program, financed with a USD1.5 million UN
grant, to gather animal carcasses and bury them in pits are happy for the
income, but at best, the money will only delay a looming crisis among families
who have run out of food and are saddled with bank loans they took on to buy
emergency feed. A herder who lost 1,000 animals, said he owed over USD1,800, a
huge sum given that the average Mongolian earns USD3,200 a year. He said he
lost most of his most prized animals — horses, cows and about 200 yaks — and
that it would take at least a decade to replenish his herd of goats and sheep,
about 100 of which survived.