Mongolia’s global rank on the INFORM 2019 risk index (101 out of 191 countries) indicates moderate levels of exposure to hazards and vulnerability. Storms, dust storms, windstorms, thunderstorms, and snowstorms occur frequently in Mongolia. In the beginning of the 21st century, storms affected over 1 million people in Mongolia with dire implications on public health, the economy, livelihoods, and the economic prosperity of the population. Droughts are a recurring natural hazard that affects Mongolia and results in negative consequences on their economy, agriculture, and livestock sectors as well as poverty alleviation efforts. Dzuds (extremely harsh winters) frequently affect Mongolia and negatively impact their agriculture and livestock sectors, hamper poverty reduction efforts, shock the economy, and contribute to urban migration.
This section provides a summary of key natural hazards and their associated socioeconomic impacts in a given country. And it allows quick evaluation of most vulnerable areas through the spatial comparison of natural hazard data with development data, thereby identifying exposed livelihoods and natural systems.
The charts provide overview of the most frequent natural disaster in a given country and understand the impacts of those disasters on human populations.
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Climate change is now recognized to have a significant impact on disaster management efforts and pose a significant threat to the efforts to meet the growing needs of the most vulnerable populations. The demands of disaster risk management are such that concise, clear, and reliable information is crucial. The information presented here offers insight into the frequency, impact and occurrence of natural hazards. Source (PDF)
Understanding natural hazard occurrence as well as historical climate conditions, in relation to development contexts, is critical to understanding a country’s historical vulnerability. This tool allows the visualization of different natural hazards or historical climate conditions with socio-economic and development datasets. Select the Development Context and either a Natural Hazard or Climate Condition and overlay horizontally by sliding the toggle left or right to gain a broader sense of historically vulnerable areas.
Data presented under Historical Climate Conditions are reanalysis products derived from ERA5-Land data. ERA5-Land is a global land-surface dataset at 9 km resolution, consistent with atmospheric data from the ERA5 reanalysis from 1950 onward. Climate reanalyses combine past observations with models to generate consistent time series of multiple climate variables. They provide a comprehensive description of the observed climate as it has evolved during recent decades, on 3D grids at sub-daily intervals.
This data has been collected, aggregated and processed by the Climate Resilience Cluster of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Earth Observation for Sustainable Development (EO4SD) initiative.
- Between 1999 and 2002, Mongolia was hit by a series of dzuds that resulted in the death of around 10 million of an estimated 44 million livestock population.
- In 2000, 450,000 people were affected by a drought in Mongolia and the northern region is expected to become more arid in the 21st century.
- The Gobi Desert, which comprises about 41% of Mongolia, experiences dust storms between 30-100 days on average per year, and the average number of days with dust storms, has increased from 18 to 57 days during 1960 to 2007.
- Diversifying livelihoods, identifying the most resilient breeds of livestock, strengthening of risk management of pastoral livestock and the insurance system, and strengthen the National Emergency Management Agency’s early warning and response capabilities.
- Increasing the population’s resilience to such events will stem from adaptation strategies targeted at diversifying livelihoods, increased development of early warning systems, planting of drought resistant crops, better pasture management practices, and the establishment of water efficient irrigation systems.
- Early warning systems and improved disaster response will reduce Mongolian’s susceptibility to storms.
- Improving flood prevention, protection, and forecasting systems; and planting and rearing climate resilient species will further enhance the population’s ability to cope with these natural disasters in the future.