Pastures, Conservation and Climate Action, Mongolia

•  Carbon offsets in rangelands
•  Biodiversity Conservation
•  Livelihoods and wellbeing

The ‘Pastures, Conservation and Climate Action, Mongolia’ programme, managed by the Mongolian Society for Range Management (MSRM), is a community-led initiative which is taking place at three different sites across Mongolia. For the initial commitment period (2015-19) it will be financed through the sale of ‘carbon plus’ credits from herders’ activities at the three sites. ‘Carbon plus’ denotes that these credits are about much more than just carbon. In line with the new Plan Vivo standard, the ‘Pastures, Conservation and Climate Action, Mongolia’ programme is making important contributions to nomadic herders’ livelihoods and wellbeing, to the conservation of a globally important biodiversity heritage and to a range of ecosystem services, as well as to carbon sequestration through enhanced rangeland management.

This is being achieved in the following ways:

1.   Participating herder groups receive direct payment for ecosystem services (PES) over the initial 4 year period, which amount to 70% of the PES sale price, less a 10% risk buffer.
2.   These payments are based on a suite of interlinked activities, which are monitored according to agreed and approved protocols and variously include:
a.   Carbon sequestration through improved land managed and reduced grazing pressure, achieved through restoration of traditional seasonal mobility between pastures and/or reduction in livestock numbers;
b.   Biodiversity conservation through herders’ cooperation to protect key wildlife species and habitats, for example Mongolian gazelle, ibex, red deer, marmot, saxaul forests, and through protection of key grassland resources.
c.    Improvements in livelihoods/ well-being, for example through herders’ collaborative processing and marketing of livestock products, livelihood diversification, protection of locally important cultural landscapes and resources.
Financial payments from the scheme are thus designed to provide holistic support to the linked human- environmental systems of Mongolia’s rangelands.
The credits generated by the programme are certified by the rigorous and internationally recognised Plan Vivo Standard.
The programme is collaborating with more than 100 herder households with territories covering a total area of some 77,000ha., to sequester more than 100,000 tCO₂ through improved grazing management practices. This equates to significant expected financial benefits, to be delivered and administered through existing community organisations, which will make direct payments to herders. Given typically poor pre programme livelihoods and annual incomes equivalent to less than £2000pa for the majority of participating households, projected payments offer the prospect of real transformations in livelihoods, in conjunction with protection and conservation of a valuable and internationally recognised biodiversity heritage.
We would like to invite you to simultaneously offset your carbon footprint and demonstrate your commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) through purchasing Plan Vivo certified credits from the Pastures, Conservation and Climate Action, Mongolia programme.
The project ‘Pastures, Conservation and Climate Action Mongolia’ was set up as a result of a research project by the University of Leicester and MRSM, funded by the Darwin Initiative, which aimed to develop and implement novel approaches to conservation in Mongolia.

For more information, please contact:
The Mongolian Society for Range Management
web: www.msrm.mn
email: dulmaa@msrm.mn
Phone: + 11-70151458

CLevel
web: www.clevel.co.uk/
email: contact@clevel.co.uk