by HANOI, Vietnam (AP) – An extreme weather phenomenon known as the dzud has killed more than 7.1 million animals in Mongolia this year, more than a tenth of the country’s total livestock holdings, disrupting livelihoods and herding. danger.
The dzuds are a combination of perennial droughts and heavy snow winters and are becoming more severe and frequent due to climate change. They are mostly associated with Mongolia but are also found in other parts of Central Asia.
Many deaths occur, especially among malnourished female animals and their young, during the spring, breeding season.
Pastoralism is central to Mongolia’s economy and culture — contributing 80% of its agricultural production and 11% of its GDP.
In Mongolian, the word dzud means disaster. Dzuds occur when very heavy snow causes impassable layers of snow and ice to cover the vast grasslands of Mongolia, so the animals cannot graze and starve to death. Drought at other times of the year means that there is not enough forage to fatten up the animals for the winter.
Dzuds occur once every ten years or so but are becoming more severe and frequent due to climate change. This year’s dzud is the sixth in the last ten years and the worst yet. It followed dzud last year and a dry summer. The snowfall was the heaviest since 1975.
The toll on Mongolia’s herds has risen sharply, with 2.1 million head of cattle, sheep and goats dead in February, rising to 7.1 million in May, according to state media.
Thousands of families have lost more than 70% of their entire herds. And the total death toll may increase to 14.9 million animals, or nearly 24% of Mongolia’s entire herd, Deputy Prime Minister S. Amarsaikhan said, according to state media.
Nomadic pastoralism is so vital to Mongolia’s 3.3 million resource-rich people that its constitution refers to the country’s 65 million camels, jackals, cattle, sheep, goats and horses as the country’s “national wealth”.
Livestock and their products are Mongolia’s second largest export after mining, according to the Asian Development Bank.
“The loss of livestock dealt an irreversible blow to economic stability and intensified the already dire circumstances people were in,” said Olga Dzhumaeva, head of the East Asia delegation at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, or IFRC. in an interview with. The Associated Press.
High costs of fuel, food and fodder made the situation much worse for herders like Gantomor, a 38-year-old herder in the mountainous Arkhangai province. Like many Mongolians, he goes by one name.
Dzud’s warnings prompted Gantomor to sell his entire flock of about 400 sheep. He just held his yoke and horses tighter, hoping he could take them to pastures that wouldn’t be disturbed as badly, said his sister-in-law, Gantuya Batdelger, 33, a graduate school student.
Even after spending more than $2,000 to transport the remaining 200-odd kilometers (124 miles) to what he thought would be safer, he did not escape the dzud. Seventy ewes died and 40 horses left the herd, leaving less than 100. “By selling the sheep, (the family) wanted to save some money. But they threw it all away,” Batdelger said.
Batdelger’s brother-in-law was better off. A friend died of all but 15 of her 250 yokes.
The Mongolian countryside was filled with hundreds of carcasses, piled up in the melting snow, she said.
Another major challenge is disposing of the carcasses quickly to ensure they do not spread disease. By early May, 5.6 million, or nearly 80%, of the dead animals had been buried.
Warmer temperatures can bring forest fires or dust storms. Heavy runoff from melting snow increases the risk of flash flooding, especially in urban areas. Many pregnant stock, weakened from the winter, lose their offspring, sometimes because they cannot feed them properly, said Matilda Dimovska, the resident representative of the UNDP in Mongolia.
“It’s really devastating to see how (the animals) cry for food,” she said.
The dzud is a great example of the interconnectedness of climate change and poverty and the economy, she said. Herders who lose their herds often migrate to cities such as the capital, Ulaanbaatar, but find few work opportunities.
“They get into a cycle of poverty,” she said.
Due to the increasingly common nature of dzuds, there is a need for Mongolia to develop better early warning systems for natural disasters, said Mungunkhishig Batbaatar, country director of the nonprofit People in Need.
Technology is best combined with a community-level approach: “Countries with limited early warning coverage are estimated to have eight times higher disaster mortality than countries with substantial and comprehensive coverage,” he said.
Meanwhile, the international aid Dzhumaeva said was not enough. The IFRC appeal launched in mid-March has not even reached 20% of its goal of 5.5 million Swiss Francs ($6 million). Pressured budgets are a factor in urgent responses to crises such as Ukraine or Gaza, she said, “But this leaves little room to address the devastating effects of dzud in Mongolia.”
Mongolia needs help but must also adapt to the dzuds with strategies such as better weather forecasting and measures to stop overgrazing. Herders need to diversify their income to help mitigate the impact of livestock losses.
Khandaa Byamba, 37, a camel herder who lives in Dundgobi Province in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert said in an online interview that she has learned from her ancestors as well as the hard experience of repeated dzuds.
Seeing the early signs of yet another dzud, she let her camels wander, relying on their own instincts to find pasture. The family earlier decided to only herd camels to cope with climate change, drought and deteriorating grasslands that are turning into desert. Khandaa Byamba’s husband followed the animals for the first 100 kilometers (62 miles) and she stayed behind with some younger animals.
As the snow piled up, other families reported the loss of scores of animals. But after the winter, most of his camels returned. They only lost three adult camels and 10 younger ones in their herd of more than 200.
“This year has been the hardest,” she said.
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