By the close of April, Mongolia had endured yet another devastating winter. This year’s dzud — a deadly combination of extreme cold and heavy snow — has claimed the lives of over 7.1 million livestock, more than 10% of the country’s entire herd. Such staggering losses are only expected to increase, as the spring months bring the most severe toll due to malnourishment and exhaustion from the brutal winter.
While climate change has intensified dzud, turning it from an occasional hardship into a recurring catastrophe, there is a deeper story: Mongolia’s transition from a socialist economy to a neoliberal market system in the early 1990s disrupted the collective structure that once supported traditional herding, leaving herders and their animals more vulnerable than ever.
The Ecological Balance and Breakdown of Dzud
The dzud is not new to Mongolia; it’s an ancient part of its ecological landscape. However, with shifting climate patterns, the phenomenon has evolved from a cold winter with heavy snowfall into a crisis. Summers with scant rainfall leave pastures sparse, denying livestock the fat reserves they need to survive the winter. In the past, Mongolian herders could rely on a mobile lifestyle, moving their herds to richer pastures and collectively preparing for harsh winters. Today, that structure has been dismantled by privatization, leaving many herders trapped in one location, unable to prepare adequately for the oncoming disaster.
This year’s dzud, the deadliest since 2009-2010 when 10 million animals died, reveals how environmental stress combines with socio-economic strain. Scholars, NGOs, and government agencies anticipated this disaster, warning herders as early as last summer. Yet these warnings cannot counteract the vulnerabilities created by market-driven policies, which have deeply altered the fabric of Mongolian pastoral life.
From Collective Pasture to Neoliberal Experiment
Historically, Mongolia’s pastures were managed through a communal system that evolved from feudal structures to a highly mechanized socialist model. Under state socialism, herding was supported by collective infrastructure, technological advancements, and strategic planning, which made traditional herding economically viable and sustainable. The early 1990s, however, marked a radical shift as Mongolia transitioned to a free-market economy. Livestock was privatized, and state farms dissolved, leaving individual herders responsible for maintaining their herds without the resources they once relied on.
The rapid increase in livestock numbers, from 25 million before privatization to 70 million by 2023, is often cited as a neoliberal success story. In reality, this surge reflects an unsustainable accumulation due to the loss of state-supported processing industries. Where once Mongolia processed up to 45% of its annual livestock yield for export and local consumption, today’s market-driven approach lacks the structure to manage this output effectively, leading to overgrazing and degradation of pasturelands.
The Impact on Rural Society
The fallout from Mongolia’s neoliberal experiment extends beyond the pasturelands. The number of herders tripled from 135,000 in 1989 to 414,000 by the late 1990s as former collective employees turned to herding for survival. This atomization of Mongolia’s agricultural economy, described by economic historian Erik Reinert as a “primitivization,” turned each household into a small, isolated production unit, effectively abandoning the infrastructure that had once supported collective herding.
This shift has had far-reaching social consequences. For the first time in generations, education and healthcare access for rural children have declined, as economic instability forces families to prioritize survival. Each dzud brings an influx of displaced herders into Ulaanbaatar’s ger districts, where they live in informal housing without adequate heating or sanitation, outnumbering apartment dwellers by three to one.
The Rise of Debt and Dependency
Mongolian herders today are not just battling extreme winters but also debt. Roughly three-quarters of herding households are burdened with bank loans, often taken to purchase supplies that the previous collective system provided. With each successive dzud, the risk of default and financial ruin grows, making Mongolia’s herding community one of the most precarious and economically vulnerable groups in the country.
The irony is stark: while Mongolia markets itself as the “land of the nomads,” its herders are increasingly trapped by market forces. Dependency on commercial goods has only deepened this predicament, aligning with the image of Mongolian herders as self-sufficient nomads while ignoring the reality of their financial insecurity and the growing inequality in rural areas.
The “Tragedy of the Commons” Revisited
The global narrative around Mongolia’s pasturelands often invokes the “tragedy of the commons,” a concept popularized by ecologist Garrett Hardin in 1968. According to Hardin, unregulated communal resources lead to overexploitation and environmental collapse. This idea has been a foundational justification for neoliberal policies, used to argue for privatization and austerity by suggesting that public resources are inherently mismanaged.
In Mongolia, the concept of “niitiin umchiin emgenel,” or “tragedy of public property,” is frequently cited to explain pasture degradation. Yet, as economist Elinor Ostrom has shown, Hardin’s view overlooked effective communal management models practiced worldwide. Mongolia’s transition to a market economy has co-opted the “tragedy of the commons” to defend market rationalization, pushing herders toward self-interest at the expense of collective stewardship.
Enclosures and the Slow Death of Nomadism
Today, pastureland in Mongolia remains nominally public, but market forces have encroached upon this system. As Mongolia integrates further into global capitalism — a shift often dubbed “Minegolia” due to the dominance of mining interests — former pastures are being “enclosed” for commercial use, limiting herders’ access to land. Privatization advocates have long argued that Mongolia’s economic problems stem from incomplete privatization, claiming that only when land is privately owned can it be effectively managed.
Yet, even without formal privatization, a “proprietary regime” is emerging as herders are urged to stake claims over pasturelands before mining and tourism interests seize them. This shift echoes the enclosures of England’s commons in the 18th and 19th centuries, which drove small farmers off communal lands in favor of large-scale agricultural operations. In Mongolia, this trend endangers the very survival of nomadic herding, as herders face shrinking pastures and an uncertain future.
A Vanishing Way of Life
In 1999, anthropologists Caroline Humphrey and David Sneath raised the question: “Are we witnessing the end of nomadism?” At the time, Mongolia’s pastoral system, shaped by unique ecological and cultural practices, seemed resilient. However, a quarter-century later, the pressures of privatization, debt, and climate change have brought this question to the fore once again.
Today’s herding economy prioritizes cashmere goats for their market value, and the pastureland that supports them is under siege. The traditional, sustainable practices that once preserved Mongolia’s ecological balance are giving way to market demands, leading many to question if nomadism in its true form can survive under these conditions.
The herders’ plight serves as a cautionary tale of how a neoliberal economic model, imposed on a system rooted in communal practices, can lead to unsustainable outcomes. As Mongolia faces the dual threats of climate change and market encroachment, its herding community stands on the edge of an uncertain future, bearing the weight of a way of life that may soon vanish.