, where nearly a third of the population still lives as nomadic herders, a winter so cold that livestock either freeze to death or starve as snow and ice make grazing impossible is called a “dzud.” These extreme seasons used to come once a decade. With climate change destabilizing the landlocked Asian country’s weather pattern, the dzud has haunted Mongolia for six of the last 10 years.As of this week, at least 5.
On a recent trip to the countryside to deliver aid to stranded herders, Matilda Dimovska, the U.N. Development Program’s resident representative in Mongolia, said she saw newborn goats crying for food. But when the malnourished mother came in from the field, she could not produce enough milk to suckle all the kids.The U.N. has raised $13.7 million in relief aid, mostly from neighboring countries like Japan, South Korea and China. So far, $4 million has been delivered. The U.N.
Since herders’ homes are already mobile, nomads moving to the city typically find an open plot on the outskirts and hunker down. The permanent new homes don’t have running water or hookups to the electrical grid. Instead, the herders dig pit latrines that sometimes flood and spread raw sewage over densely populated urban neighborhoods and burn coal indoors.
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