Between Herding and Hashtags

By Jargalan Bat-Orgil, Innovation and Partnerships Analyst at UNDP Mongolia

Mongolia’s youth bring a unique perspective to UNCCD COP17

Somewhere on Mongolia’s steppe, a teenage herder pulls out his phone from his pocket while checking on the livestock. As he watches the vast grassland stretch to the horizon behind him, he lowers his beanie against his cold, windburned cheeks and presses record.

His name is Batzorig, and he has been filming his nomadic life for years. His grandmother, the frozen steppe in winter, the ger with its patterned walls, the horses, and a newborn foal in spring are his usual subjects. Along the way, audiences across Korea, China, France, and beyond have started watching his videos to get a glimpse of his candid, unfiltered life.

Batzorig is not a climate negotiator. But in documenting his daily life, including the dzud winters and the land that changes season by season, he represents a generation of young Mongolians who are among the most credible witnesses to desertification.

Over 70 percent of Mongolia’s land is already degraded to some degree. The dzud, the brutal combination of summer drought and winter freeze that kills livestock by the millions, is becoming more frequent and severe. The steppe is shrinking, and rivers are disappearing.

This year, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) will hold its 17th Conference of the Parties, COP17, in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. As the host country, Mongolia has a strong stake in the conversations that will unfold there. So do its young people, who will live with the outcomes of the conference. Their voices matter now more than ever.

A Unique Voice for Climate Action

Batzorig’s story shows that there is a global appetite to understand how local communities live in Mongolia, not through policy briefs or satellite data, but through lived experience. A generation of young Mongolians is growing up fluent in both nomadic tradition and digital culture, between herding and hashtags. They are already telling their stories.

UNDP's role is to meet them where they are and create pathways for that energy to feed into the formal spaces where decisions are made.

Building the Road to COP17

Batzorig is among those who have travelled hours to reach Ulaanbaatar to take part in UNDP's COP17 Youth Model Conference, delivered in partnership with the National University of Mongolia and the Climate Promise 2 project. This two-day simulation allows Mongolian youth to step into the shoes of international climate negotiators. Students from universities, cadets in military uniform, and rural teenagers sit at the same tables with nameplates in front of them, debating land restoration targets and drought resilience frameworks.

The simulation is part of a broader effort. In the months leading up to COP17, UNDP Mongolia, with the support of the British Embassy in Ulaanbaatar and YECAP, with support from Sweden, is investing systematically in youth climate literacy and engagement.

More than 250 young Mongolians have completed UNDP’s Regional Climate Movers Workshop, a flagship programme equipping youth with the knowledge, language, and networks to engage in climate policy. Participants come from schools and universities across the country, ensuring the programme reaches well beyond the capital.

At the 2025 Local Conference of Youth (LCOY), young people discussed the country's climate targets across energy, water, agriculture, and climate finance, producing a Youth Position Paper that directly informed Mongolia's revised NDC 3.0. Their voices are part of a broader push that now extends directly into Mongolia's COP17 preparations.

Taken together, these efforts create multiple pathways into the process, so that local youth from all walks of life, including the university student in Ulaanbaatar, the herder who travels four hours to attend a workshop, and the young person raised between a ger and a smartphone, can find an entry point that fits their life.

The most powerful delegations bring more than negotiating positions. They bring stories. And Mongolia has both. As COP17 opens in Ulaanbaatar, ensuring that youth voices are part of that narrative is not just good practice. It is the whole point.