By Michelle Borok
As economies develop, industries boom, and populations grow, countries inevitably must tackle the question of the environmental impact of change. Concern about the environment began at the start the first efforts of civilization to capitalize on natural resources. Water and soil conservation made sense to the world’s first agriculturalists, as they make sense now to entrepreneurs invested in the green food movement. We reap what we sow, and if we don’t sow thoughtfully, we will reap nothing at all.
As often as herders and their growing herds of goats in the Gobi are blamed for the country’s desertification, responsible herders understand the benefits of “living green”. They know that when less people occupy a shared space, resources can be more easily managed, and if many must share, they should learn to responsibly manage the resources that are limited. Preservation of clean water, trees, and fertile grasslands is as crucial to their livelihood as the price of wool and meat that they earn from their herds.
Responsible management of resources is also understood by governments and businesses with their eye on long-term sustainability. Mongolia understands this, at least on the surface, as official talks in the highest levels of government have included green policies overseeing investment, development and economic growth. President Elbegdorj’s “Champion of the Earth” award from the UN Environmental Program is evidence of the global recognition of Mongolia’s public efforts to do development right.
Last week’s National Renewable Energy Forum is more evidence of a strong desire to create alternatives in Mongolia. The need for alternatives arises when nations realize their choices are limited. A nation in debt, dependent on imports tough to purchase with weak currency, and desperate to sell its commodities to neighbors unwilling to purchase them, realizes that there need to be new routes explored along the road to economic independence and sustainability. Perhaps ones lightly tread and conscious of carbon footprints. More developments like the Salkhit Wind Farm might be just what’s needed to truly make a dent in the nation’s goals to cut carbon emissions and improve air quality.
My first published writing about Mongolia, a lighthearted travel piece, shared magazine pages with an article by environmental activist, Onodelgerekh Ganzorigi, founder of Mongol Environmental Conservation, now known as the Mongol Ecology Center (MEC).
From the MEC’s website, “Once having broken through them, Chinggis Khaan did not allow dams, irrigation systems and embankments to be rebuilt. He saw that irrigation was used to transport water into grasslands that did not have enough rainfall to sustain farming. With the irrigated water, the farmers could produce bountiful crops, but they destroyed good pastureland and drove the animals to graze in ever more marginal lands. As a herder, he always valued animals over crops, and wherever he went his army destroyed the irrigation systems that threatened the pastureland.”
Obviously, a lot has changed since the reign of Chinggis, but Mongolia now has a leader who promised river diversion projects in the north to win presidential election votes in the south.
Mongolian environmental concerns rarely make international headlines. It takes “neo-Nazis” in tank tops and suspenders surveying active mines to gain the interest of the West. The “news” that local nationalist groups had decided to go green got more media attention than local environmental movements and ordinary citizens who organize hunger strikes, protests at the capital, and organize press conferences to have their concerns heard.
Nomad Green is a citizen led media project trying to raise public awareness about environmental issues facing the country. They look past the annual tree-planting events attended by the president, and keep a crowd-sourced watch on government agencies, businesses and private citizens. They do what they can to improve the environmental literacy of their fellow Mongolians, but they are volunteers dependent on the vigilance of other volunteers.
The biggest challenge facing all groups working for green policy change in Mongolia is the environmental education of Mongolian voters. It will take more than a few novelty publicity stunts picking up trash along the Tuul with teenagers to change the way that the average Mongolian thinks about the long-term cost of the driving forces behind the nation’s economic growth. It will take politicians who are dedicated to green policy and not just the idea of it to gain the favor of foreign agencies.
A government believed to be corrupt is going to have a hard time telling “Ninja Miners” in Khuvsgul that they have to stop what they’re doing or face prosecution. Foreign exploration and resource extraction companies that refuse to speak to non-investment journalists about their current projects in the country are going to have a hard time winning the support of locals who aren’t getting rich from doing business with them – locals who vote.
This past week’s Discover Mongolia Investors Forum included a discussion of “Mongolian Perspectives on Oil Shale”. Which Mongolians? The Mongolians working with foreign investors to bring untried and experimental extraction techniques to a country with a fragile system for environmental recovery? The Mongolians who are being displaced from their land by the companies promising Parliament energy independence? What about the perspectives of Mongolians who know very little about oil shale, but could be persuaded to consider it an alternative?
Perspective comes from observation, education and the exchange of ideas. When only a precious few have access to those things, you are left with a passive people who will simply have to live with the consequences of their elected decision makers. You have a people who live a life not so different from one that was lived before democracy was established.