LocationsMongolia: Sustainable Cashmere
As many developing countries, Mongolia faces the challenge of balancing economic growth with environmental concerns. It is acknowledged that approximately 70% of its pastureland has been degraded and ¼ of the country has turned to desert. In combination with climate change-induced extreme weather patterns, traditional herders are consequently forced to leave for cities like UlaanBaatar, where they reluctantly abandon their traditional ways of living and are promised no guarantee of employment in the city.
Furthermore, economic contraction took place in 2014, further exacerbating poverty in Mongolia. Between 2014 and 2016, the number of Mongolians living in poverty leapt from one in five, to one in three.
In order to find ways to bolster the national economy and strengthen the cashmere industry, UNDP Green Commodities Programme has been supporting UNDP Mongolia since 2018 to implement a pilot project to test the viability of a value chain business model for sustainably produced cashmere. This project follows UNDP GCP's proven Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration for Systemic Change pathway towards commodity sustainability. The Mongolia Sustainable Cashmere Platform (MSCP) will work with a range of stakeholders to produce a National Action Plan for sustainable cashmere.
In June 2019, GCP hosted a successful conference on 'Multi-stakeholder Collaboration for Systemic Change' in Ulaanbaatar to establish a structured national dialogue that will advance Mongolia's positioning as a global leader in sustainable cashmere production. Convening around 100 participants representing not only the government, development partners, and industry associations but also supply chain actors and herder representatives, the conference provided ample opportunity for the said changemakers to provide valuable feedback to the Mongolian government in enacting its Sustainable Cashmere project.
In May 2020, the first Steering Committee meeting of the Mongolia Sustainable Cashmere Platform was held at the UN House in Ulaanbaatar. Chaired by the UNDP Mongolia Resident Representative, Elaine Conkievich, the meeting was attended by 7 out of the 8 members forming the new Steering Committee.
The Steering Committee is designed to bring together stakeholders at the highest decision-making levels in the sector to tackle strategic organizational issues and challenges: market access, pockets of success, and a question of definition: what is sustainable cashmere? The involvement of the whole system is vital:
"The expertise in multi-stakeholder collaboration and the strong systems thinking approach that UNDP Green Commodities Programme brings to the table is a valuable tool to confront the ‘seemingly unresolvable’ problem at hand", says Shinee Volooj, Mongolian Sustainable Cashmere Platform Manager.
3 technical working groups are operational as part of the Platform’s planned activities: one on consensus on sustainability, one on COVID-19 recovery and one international market sector advisory group. The proceedings of technical working group meetings will be publicly available once the Platform website is released.
In August 2020, the platform’s website was launched: http://sustainablecashmereplatform.com/. The formal launch of the platform is expected to happen later in 2020. Around 150-200 people are expected to take part in the Plenary meeting – a very difficult scenario today with the current security measures in place around the world due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. Stay tuned for more updated soon.
Read about the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic in the cashmere sector, and learn more about UNDP's Collaborative Value Chain projects in the UNDP Mongolia website.
For further information:
Nicolas Petit, UNDP's GCP Senior Commodities Advisor:
Myagmarjav Serjkhuu, Mongolian Sustainable Cashmere Platform Manager: