National Biodiversity Programme.

National Biodiversity Programme is a national sectoral programme of Mongolia covering the period of 2015-2025. Its four main strategies include: increasing awareness and knowledge on Biodiversity conservation and sustainable use among both decision makers and the general public; developing and implementing science based policy on conservation and sustainable use of biological resources; sustainable use of biodiversity; and improving policies and legal environment for conservation and use of biological diversity and ecological services.
The Programme plans to cohere and improve cooperation among policy developers, decision makers and general public in implementing program on education for sustainable development. It aims to create a legal environment for the protection, sustainable use, and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from widely used and economically significant genetic resources, and to implement sustainable use, and protection from genetic erosion and depletion. The document is also planning to develop and implement a program on integrated conservation of rare and endangered species; carry out research on alien species spreading in Mongolia; and undertake measures to prevent the spread of invasive species. Further, the document envisages to expand and strengthen protected area network through integrating ecosystem representative areas into national and local land use management plans; improve management and capacity of protected areas in cooperation of all interested parties; and develop and implement conservation plan on ecosystems that are patch or vulnerable to climate change. Moreover, the document aims to increase forest cover to 9% by 2025 through the improvement of forest management, and thereby protect forest biodiversity; introduce management techniques for the sustainable use and conservation of natural resources, especially game animal resources, by mean of utilizing the creation of partnerships between government, local citizens, and private sector; to protect soil and water resources from chemical and nutrient pollution; create a legal environment enabling local community partnerships to be responsible for surrounding natural resources in an integrated way including pasture, wildlife and forests, implement hunting management in all game reserve area; to take into account grazing capacity and livestock population size, utilize legislative and economic leverages to reduce pasture degradation by up to 70% and increase quality of existing pastures.
Taking into account the value and importance of pasture, water resources, and forest ecosystem services, the Programme also plans to develop and implement a framework for sustainable use and conservation of natural resources in which social and economic benefits of these resources are appropriately protected.
Also, the Programme aims to modernize industrial farming techniques and activities to meet requirements for food safety and conservation of biodiversity in the environment’s agricultural ecosystem; and to create a legal environment where subsidies or financial assistance are prohibited for use in agriculture, mineral resource extraction, infrastructure, energy, light industry, food manufacturing, and service industry projects and actions deemed to be harmful to or potentially harmful to biological diversity in accordance with environmental strategy evaluations.
The document will be implemented by the joint efforts of governmental, international, and public organizations, together with citizens and the private sector. At the national level, the State Great Khural (the Parliament of Mongolia), line ministries of the government, sectoral ministries departments, especially those who are directly or indirectly related to agriculture, mining, energy, and light industry and their respective agencies; the Ministry of Education and Science and its agencies, who are at the forefront for changing civic understanding and convictions on important topic, are vitally important to successfully implement the Programme. At the local level, aimag, soum, and local citizens’ representative khurals, local governments, protected areas and river basin administrations are the most important stakeholders for action plan implementation and cooperative improvement. Report on the National Biodiversity Program implementation shall be submitted by the government entity responsible for affairs of environment once every three years to the Mongolian Government and every five years to the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity.