Mongolia's rangelands are increasingly threatened by desertification driven by climate change and the expansion of livestock herds creating a classic tragedy-of-the-commons scenario. This trend is degrading ecosystems, reducing biodiversity, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and undermining the long-term resilience of herder livelihoods.

The Green Herder Loan (GHL), developed by the Mongolia Nature Legacy Foundation under the Eternal Mongolia Project Finance for Permanence (PFP) initiative jointly implemented with the Government of Mongolia and TNC, offers an innovative financing mechanism to help reverse these trends by:

- incentivizing smaller, more productive, and better-managed herds;
- improving fibre quality, animal health, and herder incomes;
- linking access to finance with sustainable grazing practices, animal welfare, and responsible production standards; and
- enabling a transition from high-volume commodity production to high-value, nature-positive value chains.

As the host of UNCCD COP17, Mongolia provides a unique opportunity to convene governments, development finance institutions, conservation organizations, financial institutions, brands, processors, and investors to accelerate partnerships that deliver measurable benefits for people, nature, and the economy.

The objective of this session is to present the Project Finance for Permanence (PFP) model and the Green Herder Loan as a scalable example of how innovative finance can address land degradation while strengthening rural livelihoods and biodiversity conservation. The session will also serve as a platform to discuss a collaborative actions to scale such models through:

- establishing preferential offtake agreements and long-term market partnerships for sustainably produced livestock products;
- mobilizing blended finance from multilateral development banks, climate and nature funds, philanthropic organizations, and private investors to scale the model;
- developing enabling policy and regulatory frameworks that support sustainable livestock production and value chains;
- strengthening digital traceability, monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV), and impact measurement systems to enhance transparency, accountability, and market confidence;
- linking sustainable rangeland management outcomes to emerging carbon and nature markets, enabling herder communities to access additional revenue streams through high-integrity environmental credits; and
- aligning finance, markets, conservation measures, community-based rangeland management, and ecosystem restoration to create a scalable, replicable model for sustainable land stewardship in Mongolia and beyond.

By bringing together finance, policy, markets, and conservation, the session aims to catalyse partnerships that can transform the livestock sector into a nature-positive and climate-resilient supply chain model.