31 percent of total project expenditure will be disbursed to implement the PRM component.

Objective: To continue strengthening the capacity of rural families, especially livestock herder households, to manage environmental, financial, social and other forms of risk that can adversely affect their livelihoods.

The sub–components:

1. Risk forecasting, preparedness and response planning

Objective: To develop and institutionalize a risk early warning system that delivers accurate weather and forage predictions throughout Mongolia, and to strengthen local capacity to prepare and plan for actions to be taken in response to these risk forecasts

• Development of Livestock Early Warning System (LEWS)
• Risk mitigation and response planning
• Construction and rehabilitation of aimag and inter-aimag hay and fodder storage in 13 new aimags

2. Pasture-land tenure, management and use

Objective: To support and institutionalize the preparation, financing and implementation of annual pasture-land management plans at soum level.

• Development of soum level pasture mapping and pastureland management planning in the 13 new aimags
• Support the implementation of soum pastureland management plans through the provision of PRM funs

3. Demonstrating good practice in pastoral livelihood improvement

Objective: To demonstrate good practice in pastoral livelihood improvement in all additional demonstration areas through the facilitation of:

o    Information sharing;
o    Market linkages;
o    Service delivery; and
o    Documenting and disseminating lessons learned

• Improve the information dissemination on pastureland and risk management, marketing and credit, local governance, extension services and emergency response and among others to the local communities
• Establishment of pastureland demonstration soum in each aimag
• Assist rural communities to develop innovative, risk averting and income diversifying business activities, through the provision of competitive starter grants to test alternative strategies and averting risks and improving household livelihoods
• Competitive starter grants will be provided for applied and adaptive research into feed production, processing and distribution

4. Strenghtening the institutionalizing Pastoral Risk Management

Objective: To support the nationwide development of a multi-level institutional framework for Pastoral Risk Management

• Support the National Coordinating Council on Pastureland Management (NCCPM) to promote the development and implementation of policies, legislation, regulations and standards for PRM
• Provide operational and technical support top the pastureland management division of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to facilitate the implementation of national policies
• Integrate the findings from the Project implementation and the PRm demonstration areas into the institutional framework of PRM

List of ineligible activities for financing by the PRM fund

• Non-pastoral activities
• Environmentally damaging activities (to be verified by soum and aimag environment inspectors)
• Private sector activities
• Restocking
• Activities which restrict pastoral mobility
• Activities which restrict access to resources (especially water or pasture)
• The purchase of firearms, ammunition and poison
• Activities related to the control of infectious diseases (these are covered by the state budget)
• The rehabilitation or digging of new engineered wells (these are covered by the state budget)
• Activities that don’t meet national standards or comply with national legislation.
• Activities which exclude poor, marginal or minority ethnic groups.

List of eligible activities under the PRM fund

• Water resource management (shallow wells, water distribution systems, rainwater and runoff capture, watershed management, small dams etc.)
• Pasture-land protection and rehabilitation (including reseeding and rehabilitating abandoned cropland)
• Improving hay production for soum emergency reserve
• Technical assistance and studies (e.g. hydro-engineer, seed selection, advice on implementation of land law, livestock breed improvement)
• Public infrastructure related to herding such as vaccination parks, emergency shelters, storage facilities etc.
• Public awareness tools (e.g. developing and printing information on pasture possession rights)
• Environmental activities (land rehabilitation, soil and water conservation, tree planting etc.)
• Other activities not mentioned on the negative list.