In three decades, about 917 areas or about 141153.3 hectares of land in Mongolia have been affected by random mining projects. Over the past 30 years, mining activities in the country have increased at an all-time high, destroying thousands of hectares of green land, depleting surface and groundwater resources, and increasing Mongolia’s external debt by 6.4 times (compared to 1990), and as a result, the country lost about 167678.1 hectares in 21 provinces of grazing land, which is an important part of the country’s green economy and food security. Experts believe that it is necessary to activate the United Nations concept of sustainable development 2030, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, Reduce Land Degradation, and international projects and programs for land reclamation.
Interview with (O. Munkhdulam – Scientist):
“As for these images, we aimed to show how much land had been damaged using the satellite images from the early nineties to the ones in 2019. Looking closely at the numbers reveals the total of 26000 square/hectare had been damaged compared to the number in 2019, showing 160.000 sq./hectare lands in 140 small towns in 21 prefectures around Mongolia. Comparing the numbers around these two different years show the number of towns with mining around them has tripled, the amount of land that had been ravaged by mining has increased 6.4 times.”
Interview with (Purevsuren. M – Laboratory assistant):
“In conclusion, the mining in the country might have helped economically somehow, but we need more responsible and sustainable mining practice as the damage had been made and debts had been increased but not the green mining. What we have now is lots of overturned land as a result of bad mining practices. We wanted to show it to change the future mining practice.”
Source- A24
