Fatema Z. Sumar, executive director of the Harvard Center for International Development (CID) and HKS adjunct lecturer in public policy, was awarded the Friendship Medal by H.E. Khurelsukh Ukhnaa, president of Mongolia, in a ceremony at the Mongolian Embassy in Washington, D.C., on September 7. The honor recognizes Sumar’s leadership of the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s $350 million Mongolia Water Compact, which helped avert a looming water crisis in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, and expanded water access for more than two million residents. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is an independent U.S. foreign aid agency that Congress created in 2004 to reduce global poverty. Before joining HKS, Sumar oversaw the agency’s compact operations. We spoke with her about what made the Mongolia compact unique, why water access is a critical development issue, and what it took to complete the project.

Q: What does it mean to you to be recognized by the Mongolian government for this work? 
Alongside my former MCC colleagues Jonathan Brooks and Kumar Ranganathan, I am deeply humbled to be recognized by the president of Mongolia and very proud of what both countries accomplished together. Mongolia has held a special place in my heart since I first visited in 2015 to help get the compact off the ground. Since then, I made many trips to the country (including in the dead of winter), built relationships across the Mongolian government and civil society, and saw firsthand how urgently Ulaanbaatar needed a long-term solution to its water challenges. For me, the Friendship Medal represents not only what we built, but also the ensuing trust and friendship between our countries and communities. 

This recognition is really about a much larger collective effort. More than a decade of work went into reaching this point, and so many people across Mongolia and the United States worked tirelessly to get it done. I want to especially acknowledge and congratulate the MCC Mongolia and the Millennium Challenge Account Mongolia teams on a job well done. 

Q: You served as vice president of compact operations at MCC, overseeing infrastructure and technical work. What makes the Mongolia Water Compact distinct? 
MCC’s mission is to reduce poverty through economic growth. What made the work in Mongolia truly distinct is how comprehensively it addressed water scarcity in the capital. Ulaanbaatar is home to nearly half of Mongolia’s population, so the compact took a comprehensive view, including consultations with those directly affected. The compact did not just build a new water plant. It created an integrated system that includes new groundwater wells, an advanced water purification plant, and Mongolia’s first wastewater recycling plant, alongside policy and institutional reform and workforce development.

The compact is also an example of what I like to call “development diplomacy” in practice. In addition to the technical analysis of the design of development investments, the compact required extensive diplomacy to bring all parties on board. During my time working on the compact, first from 2015 to 2018 as MCC’s deputy vice president and then again from 2021 to 2022 as MCC’s vice president, I spent considerable time with my team in both Washington, D.C., and Ulaanbaatar aligning policy priorities, timelines, and budgets, and working through numerous challenges. Complex investments like this succeed when technical and development expertise are paired with diplomacy, political support, trust, and a shared mission that can endure across changes in governments and leadership.

Q: This compact was designed to head off a water crisis as Ulaanbaatar’s population was rapidly growing. What was the compact trying to achieve?
Ulaanbaatar’s population had grown rapidly as people moved from rural areas to the capital. Many formerly nomadic families settled in the city’s sprawling ger districts, which are peri-urban communities where residents lacked reliable access to basic services, including piped water. Nearly half of Mongolia’s population and approximately three-quarters of its economic activity were concentrated in the capital, placing enormous pressure on its limited groundwater resources. When we were designing the compact, demand for water was projected to exceed supply as early as 2021.

This was not simply a water problem. It was a binding constraint on Mongolia’s economic growth and a serious threat to people’s quality of life, particularly for communities already facing limited access. The compact was designed to head off that crisis by creating a secure, sustainable water supply for residential, commercial, and industrial users. The goal was to meet the city’s needs for decades to come while creating a stronger foundation for jobs, investment, and economic growth.

Q: The compact ultimately expanded Ulaanbaatar’s water supply by nearly 80% and is expected to benefit more than 2.4 million people. What made that outcome possible?
It began with identifying the problem correctly. Using MCC’s evidence-based model, MCC and the Mongolian government conducted a joint constraints analysis to identify the binding constraints to private investment and economic growth. The analysis identified costly access to water and sanitation in productive sectors and poor communities as one of Mongolia’s greatest constraints to growth. That gave both countries a rigorous, shared understanding of the underlying problem and allowed us to design the compact around it rather than starting with a predetermined solution.

From there, the MCC and the Mongolian government jointly developed an integrated solution by expanding the city’s groundwater supply, purifying that water for municipal use, and recycling wastewater so that thermal power plants and other industrial users would no longer rely as heavily on scarce drinking water. 

Strong Mongolian ownership was also critical. The government of Mongolia contributed nearly $112 million and worked side by side with MCC throughout the compact. That commitment, combined with years of technical work, problem-solving, and trust, allowed an enormously complex program to be completed on time and on budget despite major external shocks, including the pandemic and supply chain disruptions stemming from the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran.

Q: Beyond the physical infrastructure—new groundwater wells, a purification plant, a wastewater recycling system—the compact included policy reform and workforce development. Why does that matter?
You can build a state-of-the-art plant, but if local institutions cannot operate it, finance it, regulate it, and maintain public confidence in it, the development impact will not last. Infrastructure is only sustainable when the people and institutions responsible for it have the capacity and resources to keep it working.

That is why the compact also invested in water-sector governance, utility management, financial sustainability, public awareness, and the professionals responsible for operating the new systems.

During construction, more than 8,200 jobs were created, 92% of them held by Mongolians, and 187 Mongolian engineers and technical staff received specialized training. We were not just building physical infrastructure. We were also building the human and institutional capacity needed to sustain it for decades.

Q: Are there lessons from your experience that HKS students can take away as they study how to make development projects succeed?
The first lesson (and my MPP1 students of the beta cohort in Policy Design and Delivery all know this by now) is to identify the issue correctly. Policymakers often rush toward a preferred solution before adequately defining and getting the problem right. If you get problem identification wrong, even a well-designed and well-funded intervention may solve the wrong problem and create a whole host of unintended consequences.

Second, good policy design is necessary but not sufficient. You need to understand who has the authority to act, who bears the costs, who benefits, whose voice is missing, and what incentives will keep people committed over time. That means getting out of the conference room, listening to people, consulting civil society, and building coalitions beyond the most obvious technical counterparts. Politics matters to the outcome of development. Diplomacy matters. And trust is everything.  

Finally, development takes time. Governments change, priorities shift, and problems inevitably emerge. Policymakers need technical knowledge, but they also need political savviness, humility, emotional intelligence, persistence, and the ability to build bridges across different cultures. The Mongolia compact succeeded because people in both countries stayed committed to a common purpose for more than a decade. 

As I tell my students, it is very easy for policymakers and politicians to destroy something. Building public goods that last and serve the public interest is much harder and requires extraordinary skill. That’s our collective goal here at HKS: to build for the future of humanity.

Published Date:2026-09-16