Shombodon, D.

The Policy Alternatives for Livestock Development (PALD) project aims to facilitate the transition from a centrally planned to a market economy in the extensive livestock sector which dominates the Mongolian rural economy. This report outlines some of the participatory research methods which were used during the training of the Mongolian research team. The methods described include wealth ranking, participatory mapping, transects, ranking of grazing resources, and seasonal calendars showing production, climatic variations, incidence of disease and labour requirements.

Wealth ranking was one of the methods used in the early stages of a collaborative research and training project in Mongolia. It served two main purposes, direct and indirect. The direct purpose was to identify locally important criteria for distinguishing households according to wealth, status and power. It was also used to stratify the populations of the sample production brigades, as a first step towards understanding differences in the ways richer and poorer herding households managed their herds, gained access to key natural resources, and responded to risk.