15 September 2026

PAGE at UNCCD COP17: Better Data for Mongolia’s Rangelands & Global Lessons on Financing Nature

When the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17) opened in Ulaanbaatar this August, Mongolia used its turn as host to show what a decade of economic and environmental policy work can produce. The country has been part of the Partnership for Action on Green Economy (PAGE) since 2013, and COP17 put that collaboration on display: new tools to track the health of the country’s rangelands, and new ways to pay for restoring them.

On 26 August, Mongolia’s General Authority for Land Administration, Geodesy and Cartography (GALAGC) launched the Participatory Rangeland Monitoring System. Developed with technical support from PAGE, the system lets herders help track the condition of the pastures their livelihoods depend on. A week earlier, PAGE co-organized the High-Level Sustainable Finance Forum 2026 (HLSFF), where Mongolia introduced three new financing tools — a Blue Bond Financing Framework, the Mongolia Green Finance Corporation, and an SDG Finance Taxonomy 2.0 — and where PAGE, through UNDP, led a session on how governments can make existing public finance work harder for nature.

Better decisions for healthier rangelands

Rangelands cover roughly 80% of Mongolia and underpin its livestock economy. Yet overgrazing, climate change and degradation are steadily wearing them down. Mongolia expects the livestock sector to deliver around 30% of the total emissions reductions pledged under its Nationally Determined Contribution, which makes sustainable rangeland management central to meeting the country’s climate commitments. Achieving Mongolia’s NDC relies on data on whether degradation is happening and whether restoration efforts are working. However, current data reveals a knowledge gap.

The Participatory Rangeland Monitoring System fills that gap. It combines Mongolia’s national photo-monitoring data with satellite imagery, artificial intelligence analysis, and observations that herders submit from their own pastures through a mobile app called Belcheer, piloted in Zavkhan and Sukhbaatar provinces.

PAGE, through UNDP, supported the work on three fronts: helping the government fit the system into national land and climate policy, designing how verified rangeland data can open access to sustainable finance, and getting the platform running on the ground, including training herders and the bank loan officers who help register them to the app.

Source: Natural Resources Institute (NRI), University of Greenwich, 2026

"By combining their (herders') observations and field data with professional monitoring and satellite information, we can build a more accurate picture of rangeland conditions and make better-informed decisions," said Enkhmanlai Anand, GALAGC's Director General, at the launch.

With the app now tested at the local level, the next step is to strengthen the underlying methodology and institutional capacity, then roll the system out nationwide.

The launch was only part of the evening. The side event also brought government, banks and development partners into the same room to examine how verified rangeland data can attract investment into restoration and closed with a call for partnerships to scale that work up in Mongolia and in other countries facing similar pressures on their drylands. Exchanging knowledge and strengthening investment infrastructure is a crucial part of Mongolia’s capacity building efforts.

A week before the launch, PAGE co-organized the two-day High-Level Sustainable Finance Forum 2026 alongside the Office of the President of Mongolia, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, the Mongolian Sustainable Finance Association, the Mongolian Nature’s Legacy Foundation, the World Bank Group and Golomt Bank. Under the theme “Mobilizing Investment for Land, Water, and Nature in the Age of Climate Risk,” it brought senior government officials, financial institutions, investors, and civil society organizations together to explore innovative financing mechanisms, blended finance approaches, and public–private partnerships in Mongolia and globally. Mongolia used the Forum to launch an SDG Finance Taxonomy 2.0, a Blue Bond Financing Framework and the Mongolia Green Finance Corporation, while the Mongolian Nature’s Legacy Foundation signed agreements with Golomt Bank and Khan Bank to start a Sustainable Herder and Supply Chain Financing Pilot Programme.

PAGE, through UNDP, led the second-day session on public finance for environmental, conservation, and linked social priorities. Ms. Beate Trankmann, UNDP’s Deputy Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, opened with a keynote on the 2030 Agenda, and Mr. Tim Scott, Senior Policy Advisor at UNDP, presented case studies from around the world on behalf of PAGE. According to Mr. Scott, governments already influence environmental outcomes every day through how they spend, raise revenues, allocate budgets and help shape private investment, so the opportunity is not simply to mobilize more finance but to make existing public finance work harder. He set out four pathways — screening and greening public spending, increasing public revenue, improving budgeting and investment, and catalyzing private investment — with examples ranging from Thailand, where PAGE supported research on coastal sea walls that informed a reform expected to avoid around US$200 million in harmful spending, to Mongolia itself, where improved accounting and Natural Resource Use Fees increased environmental protection budgets by 217%.

He also pointed to the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action, which now connects finance ministries from 100 countries and whose flagship guide for finance ministries is being updated with PAGE support to bring nature, adaptation, and fiscal space into the core of budgeting. PAGE presented the same case at the 2026 High-Level Political Forum in New York in July, where it co-hosted a side event with the Coalition, and is turning the guide’s content into regional training through the PAGE-supported symposium on climate-sensitive macroeconomics at Makerere University in Uganda.

Mr. Scott also moderated the afternoon panel on innovative public finance solutions for nature, which had Mongolia’s Deputy Minister of Economy and Development and the State Secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change alongside representatives of the China National Sand Control and Desert Industry Society, Thingvellir National Park in Iceland, the World Bank Group and the Asian Development Bank. The discussion moved from the budget, legislative and institutional reforms needed in the country to international experience with instruments that can crowd in private and international capital at scale.

At UNCCD COP17, Mongolia strengthened both what it knows about its rangelands and how it can pay to restore them: two parts of the same effort. The Participatory Rangeland Monitoring System gives government, herders and lenders a clearer picture of the land’s condition, while the new taxonomy, blue bond framework, green finance corporation and herder financing pilot open routes for money to reach it. What COP17 showed is an exchange running in both directions: international experience brought to Mongolia’s finance forum, and Mongolia’s own public finance reforms held up as an example for other countries PAGE works with.

That exchange continues beyond Ulaanbaatar. In September, PAGE takes the same approach to the World Circular Economy Forum in Gandhinagar, India, with an Accelerator Session presenting three PAGE-supported studies on secondary materials markets, circular employment and the economy-wide effects of circularity. Connecting work across countries, regions and conventions is how the partnership is designed to operate: PAGE’s strategy sets out to create an enabling macroeconomic environment for the 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, delivered through capacity building, policy reform, financing policy action, and South-South and Triangular cooperation. By bringing together practical country experiences and global policy dialogue, PAGE also contributes to discussions on UN80 reforms and how international cooperation can evolve beyond the 2030 Agenda.

PAGE at UNCCD COP17: Better Data for Mongolia’s Rangelands & Global Lessons on Financing Nature

Better decisions for healthier rangelands

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