Why Was the UN Secretary General Planting Trees in Mongolia? – The Diplomat

The planting of timber may very well be imbued with numerous completely different metaphorical values, however when U.N. Secretary Normal Antonio Guterres paid Mongolia a go to to plant timber, this isn’t only a metaphor for luring Mongolia additional into U.N. actions. It was actually about planting timber.

Guterres’ arrival marked the fifth go to of a U.N. secretary normal to Mongolia and the primary since Ban Ki-moon got here in 2009.

A spotlight of Mongolia’s contributions to U.N. exercise has been peacekeeping operations; Mongolia organized a convention targeted on feminine peacekeepers in June. Not surprisingly, Guterres emphasised this facet of Mongolian engagement in a go to to a monument devoted to peacekeepers in Ulaanbaatar.

Whereas Mongolia is represented in lots of U.N. our bodies, it lately appears to have quietly dropped a bid to be elected to the U.N. Safety Council to assist Japan’s candidacy. However, Guterres praised Mongolia’s engagement with the U.N. and talked about Mongolia’s many different contributions to non-proliferation by means of its declaration of nuclear-free standing and its engaged multilateralism extra usually. He praised the nation as “an emblem of peace in a troubled world.”

But the primary focus of Guterres’ journey was his engagement in a tree-planting ceremony. So why did Guterres fly all the way in which to Ulaanbaatar to plant timber?

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After attending COP26 in 2021, Mongolian President Khurelsukh Ukhnaa introduced that he was embarking on a marketing campaign for 1 billion timber to be planted in Mongolia. This was portrayed as a response to or try at mitigation in opposition to the local weather emergency, however additionally it is very a lot as a beautification challenge for the nation.

The geographic location of Mongolia, with excessive elevations and an excessive continental local weather, makes it a harsh setting for timber to develop. Forests lined over 10 % of the territory by means of the Nineteen Eighties, however have dwindled to eight % since then resulting from altering local weather and lively exploitation. The overwhelming majority of forests are situated within the north-central components of Mongolia, within the transition zone between the southern fringe of the nice Siberian boreal forest (the taiga) and Central Asian steppe, making it delicate and weak to modifications. There’s a reported correlation between forested land cowl and permafrost, whereby degradation of latter is including extra stress to forest resilience, the flexibility of forests to face up to disturbance and keep fundamental perform. As well as, different elements similar to wildfires, drought, insect infestation, livestock, and logging are including extra strain.

The announcement of the One Billion Timber challenge was a shock, which was mirrored in mass media and social media reactions. Though the challenge matches the necessity for restoration to cease desertification (which is reworking 80 % of Mongolia’s territory) and is according to international initiatives to plant timber with a view to mitigate impact of worldwide warming, it raised combined reactions recalling outcomes of earlier comparable initiatives. The plan is sort of formidable however possible and never distinctive; for years Mongolian governments endeavored to plant timber twice a 12 months. One other huge ongoing motion is the so-called Inexperienced Belt Nationwide Program, a joint Mongolian and South Korean initiative that intends to plant timber in three levels from 2005 to 2035 to face up to desertification. Underneath this program, a 3,700-kilometer inexperienced strip is deliberate to attach the east and west of the nation. Nonetheless, the end result of the primary stage (2005-2015) was introduced to have planted solely 12 % of the proposed variety of timber. However, the Inexperienced Belt initiative continues to be ongoing, and an official assembly was held in December 2021 to coordinate this program with the One Billion Tree challenge.

To this point, tree planting initiative is performed with an enthusiasm that’s considerably paying homage to communist subbotniks of the previous. Aimags (provinces), cities, and even smaller administrative items are reporting on 1000’s of planted timber, and plenty of extra are reporting plans to plant hundreds of thousands within the years to return. All informed, 1 % of Mongolia’s GDP shall be redirected to fund the challenge. Enterprise entities and banks are actively donating to the challenge and even the diplomatic corps was concerned in occasions. The highest 21 mining firms working in Mongolia confirmed their willingness to plant 608.5 million timber. By March of 2022 1,000 arborists have been educated to look after the timber after planting.

The tree that Guterres planted along with Khurelsukh exterior of Ulaanbaatar hardly provides to the variety of timber, nevertheless it added nice symbolic worth.

Clearly, Guterres’ go to has come at a difficult time for the Mongolian authorities. This was aptly signaled by the earlier customer to Ulaanbaatar: Chinese language Overseas Minister Wang Yi, who was there on August 8, the day earlier than Guterres landed. Solely month earlier than that, Russian Overseas Minister Sergey Lavrov had stopped by.

Mongolia has at all times felt squeezed between its two overbearing neighbors however much more so now, when the Putin regime is clearly currying favor with the Xi regime, a improvement that hardly ever spells excellent news for Mongolian international coverage. On the similar time, some parts of Mongolian civil society are upset with the dearth of a transparent condemnation of Russian aggression in opposition to Ukraine.

It’s on this context that Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai selected to emphasise a hydropower challenge in western Mongolia that presumably was additionally the topic of discussions with Wang, however that’s, together with different hydropower initiatives, opposed by Russia on considerably flimsy environmental grounds.

The symbolic significance of official international visits has at all times been extremely appreciated in Mongolia. Guterres’ go to was thus broadly reported in Mongolian media, although a lot of the capital is away on trip at the moment in the summertime. Whether or not these sort of gestures truly assuage the fears of North American and European governments about Mongolia’s precarious place and its resultant wavering on dedication to democracy stays unclear. Relations with the U.N. stay a impartial floor that Mongolia has lengthy emphasised in its international coverage and the very optimistic tone of Guterres’ go to general was considerably of a reward for the present authorities.