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Mongolia’s capital metropolis is rising quickly, and the inflow of nomadic households to the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar is straining its already fragile infrastructure.
The dearth of medical assets mixed with astronomical ranges of air pollution and meals insecurity pose a risk to all residents, however younger kids and pregnant girls particularly.
Since 1990, the variety of folks dwelling in city areas in Mongolia has elevated from 58 % to almost 70 %. This quantity continues to develop every year as nomadic herders relocate to ger areas – just lately settled areas within the hills and mountains surrounding Ulaanbaatar.
These areas lack important assets like plumbing, electrical energy, and entry to scrub water and wholesome meals. Many residents select to dwell in ger areas as a result of their proximity to the town holds the promise of instructional and profession alternatives.
“It’s necessary to notice that the ger space isn’t a ‘slum’ – it’s an important a part of the town,” mentioned Daria Azbayar, a social innovation lead for GerHub, a nonprofit that works carefully with residents of Songinokhairkhan, the quickest rising ger district in Ulaanbaatar. “Ulaanbaatar was a nomadic metropolis – it moved round – so our unique type of the town was ger areas.”
GerHub’s most seen contribution to Songinokhairkhan is the Ger Innovation Hub – a group middle that seeks to bridge the infrastructural gaps that native residents face.
Designed to duplicate the normal construction of a ger, the Ger Innovation Hub’s structure makes use of trendy supplies and is engineered to maximise vitality effectivity by trapping warmth inside the partitions.
Roughly half of Ulaanbaatar residents dwell in conventional gers – buildings product of natural supplies like wooden and thick cloth. The Innovation Hub borrows structural components of the ger design however substitutes material for polycarbonate sheets that may develop and contract in excessive temperatures with out breaking.
The sheets additionally allow pure gentle to enter the area, minimizing the necessity for electrical energy.
Rural City Framework, Hong Kong College’s structure design analysis middle, designed the middle to offer the encompassing residents an area to collect and set up, and a chance to kind a extra everlasting sense of group.
Integrating the group into GerHub’s Innovation Hub wasn’t a simple course of. “There’s no phrase for ‘group’ within the Mongolian language,” mentioned Azbayar. She mentioned residents have been initially reluctant to take part in occasions hosted by the middle when it opened up in March 2022.
“In ger areas, folks are usually very separated from one another. You could have your personal plots with fences round them,” mentioned Azbayar. “Once we opened up the area, we may hear crickets.”
In keeping with Azbayar, whereas residents of the ger district face challenges, in addition they have new alternatives and a rising sense of unity – optimistic outlooks that GerHub seeks to facilitate by way of programming that gives schooling and group constructing actions.
Designed to function a everlasting element of a group that primarily lives in cell housing, the Ger Innovation Hub supplies important assets to a group that lacks electrical energy, sanitation, plumbing, colleges and play areas for kids. Photograph by Katie Schulder-Battis, 2023.
Air Air pollution
Sambuu Urtnasan, who continuously visits the Ger Innovation Hub, has lived in Ulaanbaatar’s Songinokhairkhan District for greater than 25 years, and initially moved there in search of job alternatives.
“One of many largest challenges is the winter season,” mentioned Urtnasan. “It’s arduous to stroll within the streets particularly as a result of steep topography in my neighborhood. However the topography is a bonus in terms of the horrible air air pollution – you will have extra airflow.”
Throughout the freezing winter months, Ulaanbaatar is usually ranked probably the most polluted cities on the planet, and this air pollution is especially concentrated in ger districts the place residents burn coal to remain heat.
In keeping with UNICEF, almost 90 % of vitality consumed in Mongolia is used for heating functions, and coal is the first vitality supply. Air pollution soars on the coldest days, with data of particulate matter in Ulaanbaatar reaching as much as 133 instances the World Well being Group (WHO) tips’ imply for air pollution.
The excessive ranges of air pollution end in unfavorable well being outcomes, together with greater charges of toddler mortality and dysfunctional births in addition to extreme respiratory ailments, which disproportionately have an effect on kids.
In keeping with a UNICEF examine, roughly 300 folks die yearly from pollution-related sicknesses in Mongolia, 80 % of whom are kids.
Khishigjargal Batjantsan, UNICEF Mongolia’s program officer for Local weather Change and Clear Air, says that one of many biggest obstacles in combatting air air pollution has been an absence of knowledge.
UNICEF has been main efforts to check air pollution in city facilities round Mongolia by way of using air high quality screens to gauge the degrees of particulate matter on a neighborhood stage.
“During the last 4 or 5 years we’ve centered primarily on knowledge era,” mentioned Batjantsan. “If we can not measure, we can not handle.”
So as to generate extra particular knowledge, UNICEF outfitted colleges in high-risk areas with primary, low-cost air screens. By working with the federal government, UNICEF additionally developed a forecasting mannequin to foretell ranges of air air pollution a number of days upfront.
UNICEF has produced knowledge that nationwide ministries and institutes use to information public coverage, and has labored with Bat-Erdene Bat-Ulzii, Mongolia’s minister of setting and tourism, to champion financial insurance policies that incentivize investing within the transition from coal to inexperienced vitality in households.
UNICEF’s Cooking, Heating and Insulations Merchandise (CHIP) package deal is designed to offer “inexperienced loans” – authorities backed loans which are accessible by way of industrial banks – to allow residents to exchange coal burning stoves with electrical heating and battery-powered options. The package deal additionally supplies insulation merchandise to cut back warmth loss in gers.
The package deal has been used to offer inexperienced vitality to over 2,000 households, decreasing coal use by roughly 4 tons of coal per yr for every family.
Candidates who meet credit score necessities for inexperienced loans are superior 20 % of the price of the CHIP package deal. However the package deal’s market worth – roughly $900 – continues to be too excessive for a lot of within the ger areas to afford.
“Air air pollution could be very seasonal, which additionally makes folks very reluctant to spend money on it,” mentioned Ariunzaya Davaa, UNICEF Mongolia’s communication specialist. “Individuals purchase these merchandise after which promote them again in the summertime as a result of they want the cash.”
And in accordance with Davaa, many households are merely unaware of the long-term well being results of air air pollution.
“That’s why we even have to extend consciousness of the well being impacts, and to enhance the well being companies,” Davaa mentioned.
GerHub launched an initiative in partnership with College of Pennsylvania’s Middle for Environmental Constructing and Design geared toward decreasing air pollution by creating tips for folks to weatherize their gers with insulation supplies to preserve warmth and vitality.
This system, referred to as “Dulaan Ger,” which interprets to “A Heat Ger,” additionally facilitates job alternatives for local people members to earn earnings by producing insulation supplies.
“The Mongolian authorities tries to implement all types of very huge scale anti-pollution initiatives,” mentioned Azbayar. “However we consider that small steps, like correctly insulating a ger, can assist cut back air air pollution.”
The Ger Innovation Hub additionally stands within the middle of the group to point out the group what sustainability appears like.
“We warmth the area with electrical heaters within the winter to point out our group members that an alternate heating system to coal exists,” mentioned Azbayar. “We have now shields on the roof in the summertime to replicate again the solar – in any other case it will get tremendous scorching in right here, which proves to us the constructing is doing its job.”
The Ger Innovation Hub was constructed between 2018 and 2020, utilizing an architectural design that borrows components of conventional cylindrical gers. Photograph by Katie Schulder-Battis, 2023.
The Meals Desert
Along with air pollution, well being issues in Mongolia are carefully related to meals insecurity and lack of entry to dietary meals.
In Ulaanbaatar, 68 % of households are meals insecure. These dwelling in ger districts face the biggest obstacles to meals safety, together with greater charges of unemployment, decrease earnings, lack of obtainable assets, and few strategies of transportation.
Meat, dairy merchandise, and animal fat are staples of a conventional weight loss program amongst nomadic herders, whose main types of sustenance come from animals together with sheep, yaks, horses, and cows. Conventional herders get an estimated one-third of their day by day energy from dairy merchandise alone.
However city ger settlements supply little area for animals to graze, so herders who migrate to the outskirts of cities are left with few choices.
Contemporary produce is usually prohibitively costly in Mongolia, as most vegetables and fruit are imported as a result of nation’s brief development season, excessive altitude, and excessive fluctuation in temperatures.
Mongolia ranks within the backside 10 % of nations in manufacturing of fruit, fish and seafood, and oil crops, and Mongolia has the smallest fraction of arable utilized for everlasting crops of any nation.
“Ger areas are additionally very susceptible to turning into meals deserts,” mentioned Azbayar. “We don’t get to eat recent produce through the chilly half of the yr and there aren’t numerous good high quality supermarkets within the ger areas, however they’ve the chance to develop and retailer issues.”
When residents of ger areas are unable to seek out wholesome meals, they’re compelled to resort to choices with poor dietary worth.
The impacts of consuming unhealthy meals will be seen within the disproportionate charges of kind II diabetes and heart problems – which alone accounts for 37 % of deaths in Mongolia. As of 2016, Mongolia had one of many highest charges of diet-preventable cardiovascular deaths on the earth.
The typical life expectancy in Mongolia is simply 70 years, in comparison with 78 years in neighboring China and 84 in Japan.
GerHub just lately started internet hosting a sequence of farming and gardening workshops to show group members tips on how to sow seeds and domesticate crops – information that they hope can be utilized to offer wholesome meals for residents sooner or later.
GerHub’s horticulture workshop options compost bins and rainwater assortment storage, and group contributors are given seeds and gardening tools.
“Though we have now a really brief development season, individuals who dwell within the ger space have a chunk of their very own land that they’ll are likely to,” mentioned Azbayar.
Since becoming a member of GerHub’s horticulture program, Sambuu Urtnasan has began utilizing his plot of land to develop tomatoes, cucumbers and different greens.
“I realized tips on how to germinate seeds, handle seedlings to develop totally different sorts of greens,” mentioned Urtnasan. “I additionally obtained the thought of utilizing scrap supplies to construct a DIY greenhouse. I met lots of my neighbors and interacted with many kids of the world, and it brings me a number of pleasure to see them be taught and develop.”
GerHub just lately launched a horticulture and gardening membership. Photograph by Katie Schulder-Battis, 2023.
Healthcare
Along with rising entry to meals, GerHub has additionally teamed up with different nonprofits to make medical assets extra available.
With the assistance of Public Lab Mongolia, an environmental justice nonprofit with a deal with open supply knowledge, GerHub launched an investigation into obstacles that prevented the distribution of medical assets throughout COVID-19. As a result of ger areas usually signify knowledge blindspots, the challenge sought to judge the components that prevented folks from accessing assets and pave the way in which for revolutionary options.
“We have now new settlers who dwell on prime of hills as a result of we have now land developability challenges,” mentioned Uurtsaikh Sangi, GerHub’s CEO. Though they dwell on the periphery of the nation’s capital metropolis, the challenge revealed that residents of the ger district have been positioned in areas that have been inaccessible for nurses who have been already burdened with heavy caseloads.
The challenge used taxis to ship medication across the ger district utilizing a no-contact system, relieving the pressure on medical professionals whereas gathering knowledge on the geography of the district.
Regardless of the various challenges that residents face, many have made the ger district a everlasting dwelling. As populations proceed to develop, group partnerships with nonprofits will turn out to be much more necessary.
Residents like Sambuu Urtnasan, who appreciates the impression that having a group gathering area has had on his life, stay optimistic.
“Everyone seems to be placing in numerous effort to create life for themselves,” Sambuu mentioned. “I met lots of my neighbors and interacted with many kids of the world, and it brings me a number of pleasure to see them be taught and develop.”
Accordion-style doorways will be opened and closed to keep up a cushty temperature within the Hub. Photograph by Katie Schulder-Battis, 2023.
The reporting of this story was made doable by a reporting fellowship from the Pulitzer Middle.
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