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28 January 2026

Mongolia Redesigns Development Planning to Break Policy Fragmentation and Build Climate Resilience

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Mongolia confronted a fundamental governance challenge: development policies operated in temporal and sectoral silos while the economy remained locked into carbon-intensive extraction. Long-term climate commitments, medium-term sectoral plans, and short-term budget allocations functioned as disconnected policies, reflecting structural incoherence rather than implementation failure.

PAGE-supported reform of the Five-Year Development Guidelines addressed this fragmentation by rebuilding the methodological architecture connecting aspiration to execution—yielding concrete results like integration of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) 3.0’s target to cut greenhouse gas emissions 30.3% by 2030, and Biodiversity priorities from National Biodiversity action plan. These include: 38 green outcomes and 60 performance indicators into the final 2026–2030 guidelines. These range from expanding access to safe drinking water for communities, tracked through indicators on population coverage, to reducing disaster-related losses, measured by declines in people killed, missing, or directly affected by climate-related hazards. Also, 76 SDG-aligned indicators now link national objectives with local implementation—turning sustainability commitments into actions that can be monitored, reported, and delivered.

From Fragmentation to Integration

Mongolia’s core challenge was not a lack of ambition but a break in the results chain linking goals, actions, and measurement. The National Audit Office’s performance audit found that the 2021–2025 Five-Year National Development Strategy—approved with 95 monitoring indicators—lacked coherence with its 243 measures: 108 had no indicators, baselines, or targets, violating legal requirements. In parallel, the NDC 2.0 Stock take report (2025) pinpointed systemic barriers to climate delivery—data gaps, limited stakeholder awareness, unclear roles, NDC-plan misalignment, and weak tracking (especially for adaptation)—urging robust methodologies with quantitative indicators and multi-stakeholder coordination.  

The revision of the Five-year Development Guidelines’ methodology, formalized in July 2025 through the Ministry of Economy and Development (MED), tackled Mongolia’s policy disconnect at its procedural foundation. Previously, NDCs, National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, and Long-Term Low Emission Development Strategy existed as parallel commitments with limited traction in budget processes or sectoral operations. The reformed guidelines create mandatory integration points, transforming these documents from aspirational frameworks into structural components of planning across central ministries and local authorities. 

This shift matters given Mongolia’s economic profile. Heavy reliance on coal and mineral extraction has generated fiscal resources but created acute vulnerability to climate risks and global carbon pricing. The planning reform supports diversification—reducing carbon-intensive dependence while sustaining growth—by making green objectives procedurally systematic, not optional. 

PAGE provided technical assistance across methodology revision, capacity building, and coordination to MED, sectoral ministries, local governments and government authorities, delivering these key results: 

  • Drafted the Environment and Green Economy chapter in the guidelines, embedding 76 SDG-aligned indicators to create measurable links from local actions to national/international targets. This built technical expertise in MED and sectoral teams for results-based planning. 
  • Trained ministries, local governments, and 36 budget authorities; held multi-stakeholder consultations incorporating 38 green outcomes and 60 performance indicators into the 2026–2030 guidelines and local plans. This ensured buy-in and alignment across national and local levels. 
  • Reinforced NDC 3.0’s 30.3% emissions cut by 2030 and biodiversity targets, linking medium-term policy to international commitments.

Operational Lessons from Institutional Reform

Mongolia’s experience offers five insights for other nations pursuing integrated planning: 

  • Results-based accountability: Shifting from activity reports to measurable outcomes tied to climate, biodiversity, and jobs exposes real performance gaps, driving progress over compliance. 
  • Cross-sectoral architecture: Green goals succeed when they are not siloed in environmental ministries. Distributing responsibility across ministries helps. 
  • Evidence-based legitimacy: Dialogue with different stakeholders built ownership, enhancing policy quality and reducing resistance to new routines. 
  • Monitoring as governance: Without clear indicators, assigned responsibilities at national, sectoral, and local levels, and consequences for non-performance, even well-designed policies dissipate. The new framework establishes measurement infrastructure that makes accountability possible. 
  • Financing mechanisms: Green integration creates budgetary demands; pairing it with strategies like green bonds or fossil fuel subsidy reforms prevents unfunded mandates. 

Mongolia has built coherent planning infrastructure. The real test—and opportunity—lies in execution, as these reforms propel a sustainable economic shift.

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