Traditional livelihoods under a changing climate: herder perceptions of climate change and its consequences in South Gobi, Mongolia

Climate change is affecting virtually all environments in the world today. The Central Asian mountains, where livestock herding is the main source of livelihood, are among the environments predicted to be most affected. In this paper, we use meteorological records and herder perceptions to improve the understanding of climate change and examine how different climate change scenarios will affect herder livelihoods in the Tost-Tosonbumba Nature Reserve of southern Mongolia. Herders with generation-long herding experience perceived that there had been changes in all eight meteorological variables examined in this study between 1995 and 2015, including winter temperature, summer temperature, summer precipitation, frequency of intense rain, frequency of drizzle rain, wind speed, number of windy days, and snow cover. Herder perceptions and meteorological data showed the same patterns for 3 of the 8 variables at α = 0.05 and for 5 of the 8 variables at α = 0.10. Herders also predicted that all 9 climate change scenarios presented would have negative impacts on their practices and livelihoods. Our work suggests that herder perceptions of climate change can provide important information on changes in the climate and insights on factors that put their livelihoods at risk.