Uniquely situated between the Siberian Taiga, Central Asian Steppe and Gobi dessert, Mongolia?s iconic landscapes support incredible biodiversity and a distinctive culture strongly tied to the land. Traditionally, as a pastoral centric nomadic herding society dependent upon fragile grasslands, Mongolian herders migrated their herds to allow for revegetation of recently grazed areas to maintain ecosystem function and sustain future generations. These age-old practices serve as simple but effective approaches to environmental conservation, which, is deeply embedded, in Mongolian national identity. Contemporary environmental management however faces new and complex challenges with the rapid expansion of the mining sector and adapting to the adverse effects of climate change.

Resource rich developing nations such as Mongolia face a number of difficult issues to overcome the ?natural resource paradox? and to identify environmental priorities in the wake of rapid economic development. Global commodity markets can swing creating uncertainty in revenue streams and unstable, corrupt or limited capacity of government institutions can fail to implement effective environmental management strategies leading to land degradation, water pollution and scarcity, biodiversity loss, increased vulnerability of rural populations, conflict, and particularly in the context of Mongolia, the loss of cultural heritage which is inextricably linked with ecosystem health.

Policy in Mongolia has faced a number of challenges since emerging from behind the iron curtain, adjusting to a market economy and adopting democracy as a parliamentary republic in 1990. Environmental management is not as the name would suggest, managing the environment but taking action to manage the adverse impacts on human societies on natural systems and this constitutes a difficult task even for stable democracies of developed nations. Environmental policy and management approaches in Mongolia have been shaped by policy shifts and proximate geopolitical influences of Russia and China, as well as resource demands of the global market place. Although at times viewed as politically unstable, in the context of environmental policy Mongolia has seen a devolution of environmental responsibility from central powers to local aimag (province) and soum (village) administrations, indicating a trend towards more decentralized approaches, supporting environmental mainstreaming.

Surveying the political landscape in the context of mining, the Mongolian government focused to a large degree on encouraging foreign investments and enabling trade, particularly in the 1990s. The National Environmental Action Plan of 1995 implemented 14 Environmental laws significant in the communicating the message of environmental values but, alas, were weakly enforced and lagged behind the rapidly expanding mining sector leading to widespread environmental degradation from the formal and informal mining sectors. In following years, a number of additional laws were passed aimed at more strict enforcement, increased administrative and civic liability, and development of a more conducive legal, economic and institutional environment for the sustainable use of natural resources.