At the moment the main income of local people is from livestock breeding and trade and this is the main reason of the fragility of communities living there.

Moreover the climate is really severe and mainly during the last years, the extreme cold and the ZUD (The absence of pasture due to the dry season and strong snowfall) caused the death of a lot of heads of livestock.

The project ‘Environmental conservation and sustainable development of local communities in the trans-boundary area of the Great Gobi ecosystem, between China and Mongolia’ aims at supporting rural communities of nomadic pastoralists living in the transboundary area of Dzungarian Gobi, between China and Mongolia, to improve their livelihood by strengthening international collaboration on sustainable development issues and integrating environmental component in the development process.

The main challenge is to integrate traditional mongolian lifestyle and nature conservation and at the same time to find new business opportunities for local people like handcraft productions and sustainable tourism.

The project is jointly managed by the following partners:

• Istituto Oikos, Italy
• Great Gobi Strictly Protected Area Zone B, Mongolia
• International Takhi Group (ITG), Mongolia
• University of Veterinary Medicine of Vienna, Austria
• Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China