Attachments
Highlights
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Weather extremes between November 2023 and March 2024 resulted in massive livestock deaths, especially in eastern and central parts of the country.
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Livelihoods of most herders have been affected, warranting the urgent need for humanitarian assistance to prevent a severe deterioration of their food security situation.
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Domestic prices of basic food staples have reached very high levels, constraining access to food for most vulnerable households.
Winter weather extremes, locally known as dzud, affected most of Mongolia between November 2023 and March 2024, leading to significant livestock losses and damaging the livelihoods of a large number of pastoral households. The dzud, characterized by freezing temperatures and snowfall amounts nearly twice the long‑term average, created an impenetrable ice cover over crop residues and pastureland that severely hindered livestock access to essential grazing resources. Consequently, most herders depleted their hay and fodder stocks by February/March, two to three months earlier than usual. With limited feed supply, the livestock body conditions deteriorated to alarming low levels, leading to widespread deaths by starvation and cold. Official information, as of 24 April 2024, point to the death of about 7.2 million heads of livestock, with the highest losses occurred in Sukhbaatar, Dornogovi, Govisumber and Hentii provinces (locally known as aimags) located in the eastern and central parts of the country (Map 1). The death toll accounts for 11 percent of the national herd, well above the average mortality rate recorded during the same period in the previous five years and is the highest level since 2010 (Figure 1). Moreover, livestock mortality is expected to increase until late May with the progress of the pastoral lean season.
The unusual high number of livestock deaths in 2024 can be attributed to the combination of two types of dzud: the iron dzud, characterized by the