Mongolia is located in Central Asia in between Russia and China. Only 1% of the arable land in Mongolia is cultivated with crops. The agriculture sector therefore remains heavily focused on nomadic animal husbandry with 75% of the land allocated to pasture, and cropping only employing 3% of the population.

Dundgobi aimag (province) is located in the middle part of the Gobi Desert and is a vast dryland steppe with sparsely grown but highly nutritious grass such as wild leek and saxaul. The Oldokhiin Devjikh pastoralist community in Khuld soum (town) of Dundgobi has 64 pastoral household members. The community has collaborated with several scientists and is actively involved in some projects implemented by Mercy Corps since 2005 for planting trees such as elm and seabuckthorn, bushes and vegetables. The community is a good example of surviving under challenging climate conditions. In this part of the Gobi Desert, their initiatives involve building relationships between herding livestock in a traditional way and planting trees to cope with sand movement and land degradation and putting efforts into spring water conservation. This community is a member of Mongolian Alliance of Nomadic Indigenous Peoples (MANIP), which is a national network coordinated by pastoralist leaders supported by FAO`s Pastoralist Knowledge Hub programme.