The latest national assessment · 2015
Mongolia is running out of living land.
Four national desertification assessments over three decades. The latest — completed in 2015 — is the most sobering yet, and it redraws the picture the earlier studies left behind.
of Mongolia's total territory shows signs of desertification and land degradation — measured nationwide in the latest national assessment (2015).
Source · Mongolia National Desertification Assessment, 2015 (N. Mandakh, 2017); NCCD / UNCCD LDN Country Report
Three decades of measurement
How we know — four assessments, one trajectory
After a first baseline in 1990, Mongolia assessed its land four times, each with more rigorous methods — most recently in 2015. Read together, they show degradation entrenching rather than receding.
What the numbers actually show
The number held still. The desert didn't.
Beneath the headline figure, the national assessment breaks the harm down — and the detail is grimmer than any single number.
What is driving it
Four forces pulling the same direction
Across Mongolia's fragile steppe and Gobi, climate change and human pressure now combine to deepen the damage.
A hotter, thirstier land
Mean temperature has risen roughly 2.25 °C since the 1940s — well above the global average. Aridity is increasing at 49 of 69 monitoring stations.
Too many animals, too little grass
About 67 million livestock (2021) — roughly 26% over the land's sustainable carrying capacity. Nearly 90% of pastures are now at risk of degradation.
Mining & unplanned tracks
With an economy heavily tied to mining, extraction sites, roads and off-track driving scar thin steppe soils that take decades to recover.
Wind strips the surface
Loss of forest and ground cover leaves soil exposed — more than 60% of the territory is affected by wind erosion.
Why it can't wait
Degraded land is already reshaping lives
The 2024 dzud — a harsh winter intensified by a degrading, drying landscape — killed millions of animals and the livelihoods tied to them.
As pasture fails, families migrate from the countryside to Ulaanbaatar — concentrating pressure on land, water and services alike.
The response — and where AgroBay fits
Mongolia is fighting back. So are we.
The country has put desertification at the centre of national and global policy — and practical soil technology is part of the toolkit.
- 2026Mongolia hosts UNCCD COP17 in Ulaanbaatar — the world's summit on desertification.
- 40M+Trees planted under the national “Billion Trees” programme (launched 2021).
- ~1%of GDP committed annually to combating climate change and desertification.
One practical tool on exactly this land
Super-absorbent hydrogel cuts irrigation by up to 50% and lifts tree-seedling survival toward 99% — restoring moisture to the arid, degrading soils these assessments track.