Saving the planet: Battle for the land of Khan

A self-taught yak herdsman from Mongolia who forced the closure of polluting mines on the Onggi river is today awarded the world's biggest environmental prize. Clifford Coonan reports
Published: 23 April 2007
The Mongolian yak herder Tsetsegee Munkhbayar loves the Onggi river, which provides his people with water and fish. It broke his heart to watch mining companies transform the waterway of his homeland in the steppes into a poisoned mess as they poured toxic slurry from the mines straight into the river.

Mr Munkhbayar, 40, decided that if he did not act to save his beloved Onggi river nobody would and so he decided to do something about it. Almost singlehandedly, and at considerable personal risk, he took on the mining companies, and it worked. This was the very first time that anyone had stood up for environmental rights in Mongolia, a country which is still opening up after decades of communist rule by the Soviet Union.

Four out of 10 Mongolians are nomadic herdsman and the big debate in the country these days is whether mining is the way of the future or if livestock-rearing, the traditional way the Mongols sustained themselves, is the way forward.

Nearly half of the population of Mongolia depends on livestock to survive and large sections of the population still live in a ger, a traditional felt circular tent that has been the dwelling of choice in Mongolia for more than 1,000 years.

This is a country where traditional shoes point upwards - the story goes that this is so that they do not harm the land. Mongolia is the land of Genghis Khan, the great 13th-century leader whose marauding forces came close to Vienna and who is still a source of great pride in Mongolia to this day.

Tradition is all very well, but the influx of foreign cash for mines around the country is increasingly important to Mongolia's economic well-being.

In 2001 he began to organise a group of volunteers to do something about it, eventually ending up with a group of 2,000 activists. The Onggi River Movement organised multi-province, roundtable discussions and launched high-profile radio and television campaigns to build public awareness about the river's plight.

"If we have a river, we have life. Without the river, there is no life there," he said in a recent interview.

Mr Munkhbayar comes from Uyanga Som in the central province of Uvurkhangai, 250 miles from the capital, Ulan Bator, where he now lives and runs his environmental group.

More than 100,000 people rely on the Onggi river for fresh, clean water, while at least one million cattle also need the waterway. In 1995, the "Red" lake that the Onggi river supplies went dry, and scientists believe that was because gold miners were diverting water away from the sourcs of the Onggi river.

Mr Munkhbayar successfully pressured 35 of 37 mining operations working in the Onggi river basin to stop, permanently, ruining the river with their mining and exploration activities.

His group took the companies to court, and three gold mines harming the river and Red Lake were involved. The case also did a lot to increase environmental awareness in Mongolia, and had a trickle-down effect on other environmental stories.

Relying on mining for future growth is a potential disaster, Mr Munkhbayar says.

Last year he inspired the creation of the Mongolia Nature Protection Coalition - a collective of 11 separate river movements in Mongolia actively fighting destructive mining, forestry, tourism and agriculture activities.

This is a serious achievement in Mongolia as the mining industry is an enormously powerful lobby and there is precious little by way of a democratic tradition in Ulan Bator, or anywhere else in Mongolia.

Most of the money coming into the country from abroad is tied in with mining and nearly two-thirds of all exports are related to natural resources.

And it is all the more challenging because Mongolia is a poor country, and some 40 per cent of the country's 2.7 million people live below the poverty line. The country is home to the world's last and largest example of an intact temperate grassland ecosystem. Only one per cent of Mongolia is considered arable land, while about 34 per cent of the population depend directly on livestock production; most of the people are traditional nomadic herders, while another 26 per cent of the population is indirectly dependent on livestock - the country has 33 million domestic animals and is known as a "land of livestock". The country is rich in minerals such as oil, coal and gas, while traditional Chinese medicine practitioners in China are keen buyers of wildlife from Mongolia.

The most economically important animal is the Siberian marmot, which is hunted for its meat and its fur, while the Mongolian gazelle, grey wolf and the red and the corsac foxes are also crucial to the country's economy.

The demands of the mining industry are putting the miners and the herders on a collision course. Even though mining is hugely important to the economy, it has played havoc with the environment in Mongolia, with the grasslands of the central Asian nation dotted with slagheaps.

The World Bank complains that little has been done to address and to assess systematically the costs of possible environmental damage from mining in Mongolia.

Mining prospectors in Mongolia are known as ninjas, because of the green pans they wear on their backs that make them look like the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles".

The ninjas work in open-pit mines known as placer sites, areas where minerals can be extracted without needing to dig a tunnel or blast. They are seeking the scraps left behind by the big mining companies, who often operate inefficiently and leave a site with only 60 per cent or 70 per cent of its riches gathered, leaving the harder-to-get-at deposits behind. No one knows exactly how many of these opportunist ninja miners there are - there are certainly tens of thousands of them.

Many mining companies complain about the irresponsible placer operations, where the operators walk away without any efforts at reclamation work, and leave the site ready for the ninja scavengers to swoop, saying such companies are giving them all a bad name.

They also forage for gold in the river, using chemicals such as cyanide to leach out the gold, which poisons the water. The source of the Onggi has been damaged, possibly for good.

"The nomads are losing their pasture. They're squeezed by mining more and more," said Mr Munkhbayar told an interviewer recently from his office.

The country is rich in natural resources such as gold, platinum, uranium, copper, zinc, oil, and natural gas, but the grasslands' ecosystem is fragile. The herders need the rivers to water their animals, but they are being squeezed out by the miners. There are about 300 mines in Mongolia seeking to take advantage of the country's fabulous rich economy.

Mr Munkhbayar's efforts have just been recognised by the international green lobby and he was the only Asian recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize, the world's biggest accolade for grassroots environmental activists. The £62,000 annual award is given to outstanding individuals who work to fight pressing environmental challenges, and was created to allow these people to continue their important work. He was one of six people to win the award.

"Munkhbayar was chosen because of the huge impact he has had on the issue of responsible mining and water protection in Mongolia. Not only has he worked with governmental leaders in crafting appropriate legislation, but he has also made it a point to continue educating the public about their water resources and their democratic right to have a voice in protecting them," said Richard Goldman, the founder of the prize. "His award acknowledges his vision and personal risk."

Mongolia faces some serious environmental challenges because wildlife populations are decreasing dramatically, largely due to overexploitation.

For example, the range of the Mongolian gazelle is now only about 25 to 30 per cent of that observed in the 1950s, and the population is now thought to be in serious decline.

Rural communities in Mongolia are going through massive change as the country switches from being a centralised command economy to a market economy. Many state-owned factories in rural areas have been shuttered, with lots of jobs lost and many poor Mongolians have gone back to the land, stretching the already depleted resources in the countryside.

Doug Bereuter, the president of the Asia Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation, said: "The health of Asia's environment is fundamental to the health of all its citizens. As a grantee, Mr Munkhbayar epitomises our long-standing commitment to empowering people and organisations on the grassroots-level to creating a healthful, prosperous Asia. We congratulate and commend him on this significant award and his lasting work."

The other Goldman prize winners

Willie Corduff (Ireland, oil and mining)

Mr Corduff, a lifetime resident of Rossport, western Ireland, has led a fight since 1996 to protect the picturesque area from an approved Shell oil pipeline.

Sophia Rabliauskas (Canada, forests)

Sophia Rabliauskas, a leader of the Poplar River First Nation - 1,200 members of the Ojibway indigenous people - in Manitoba, has worked to secure protection of their two million acres of undisturbed forest (three times the size of Rhode Island). The land has been under threat from massive clear-cut logging.

Hammerskjoeld Simwinga (Zambia, sustainable development)

Mr Simwinga restored wildlife and transformed a poverty-stricken area in the North Luangwa Valley, where poaching in the 1980s destroyed the elephant population and left villagers living in extreme poverty.

Julio Cusurichi Palacios (Peru, forests)

The Shipibo indigenous leader, from the Peruvian Amazon, led an effort in 2002 that resulted in the creation of a territorial reserve for his isolated people spanning 3,000 square miles.

Orri Vigfússon (Iceland, endangered species)

Mr Vigfússon founded the Iceland-based North Atlantic Salmon Fund, which has dramatically improved salmon fish stocks in numerous countries.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/lifestyle/article2474402.ece