In Mongolia, vote by text

photo from here.

Well, it isn't binding, but yes, the Prime Minister in Mongolia had a "text referendum" about his plans to back mining operations in the country rather than introduce austerity measures to help the economy improve. Mongolia's economy, like many others, has suffered recently with lower commodity prices and China's slower economy.

So this is what happened: there are lots of mobile phones in Mongolia. It can be the easiest way to keep in contact when so much of the country is incredibly rural. So the government sent a text to every single mobile number in the country (more than 3 million of them), asking whether they thought the government should step up on austerity programs or invest in growing the mining sector. Only about 300,000 people responded, but they voted 56% to prop up mining rather than austerity.

The vote didn't decide the issue for the government, but the support here will justify what the government wants to do. Austerity is never popular, but investing in industry sure can be.

source: Quartz

You can't breathe in Ulaanbaatar in the winter . . .

Why? Because of the air pollution. Ulaanbaatar is both the coldest capital city in the world and the second most polluted city in the world. And they go hand in hand--the smog is always worse in the winter, because of coal and wood burning (and sometimes trash burning).

At least 1 in 10 deaths are caused by the air pollution, and residents of the ger settlements are exposed to up to double the pollution levels in the city center, and not always with the means to protect themselves from it.

Programs are in place to replace people's current stoves with cleaning burning ones, to build a subway, to build wind farms (the first one in Mongolia is now running outside of Ulaanbaatar). In short, to lower emissions. But those aren't the only solutions. The best solutions involve curbing the population growth of Ulaanbaatar. In my primate city post I mentioned how the existence of primate cities speaks to an imbalance in the infrastructure. If those imbalances are rectified, if rural areas are properly developed and people don't feel like they have to move to Ulaanbaatar to have a hope of survival, then that will also help control the air pollution.

This great article from The Guardian is what I used as my source for this post. I highly recommend it.

Thanks for reading along with me for the past semester! I may or may not write more, but this is the last post inspired by a topic from the latest textbook chapter. I appreciate your support!

"Nomad City"

Chapter 13 is about Urban Patterns, the distribution of people and services within a city. And I have been feeling pretty stymied, because Mongolia for me isn't about the cities, it's about the rural way of life and the wide open steppe.

But UlaanBaatar by itself contains almost half the country's population, and it is growing quickly as herders abandon their rural life for the possibilities of the city. So there are huge concerns about city life, and developing a plan to provide or increase basic services for all its residents.

As I was searching for information about how the models of urban structure fit Ulaanbaatar I came across a very cool project: Nomad City. This project is a collaboration between the University of Berlin and the University of Ulaanbaatar and the Goethe Institute in Mongolia. Essentially, it used a ger community on the periphery of the city to test ideas on how to incorporate the ger settlements surrounding Ulaanbaatar into the city and provide city services, including representation and acknowledgement as well as sewer and running water, in a meaningful way. The project began in September 2013 and is now in the documentation phase. And there is a handy YouTube video that talks about the project (it's only about 18 minutes long, but repeats).



The next blog post is going to be about conservation and preservation. When 60% of your residents live in gers and have makeshift heating, there is a LOT of air pollution in Ulaanbaatar.

Ulaanbaatar, Primate City

In developed countries settlements are arranged in a specific, measurable way, and the location of services can be explained by the Central Place Theory. Developing countries don't have the same distribution of settlements and services that developed countries do, and Mongolia is no different. What Mongolia does have is a primate city: the capital, Ulaanbaatar.

the Ulaanbaatar skyline, with ger shanty towns in the foreground

A primate city is one that has at least twice the population of the second largest city in the country. It is the cultural, political, and economic center of the country and people flock to it for the opportunities it presents.

Ulaanbaatar is the only city listed in the World Factbook as a major population center in Mongolia, and indeed, Erdenet, the next most populated city, has approximately 1/13th the number of people as Ulaanbaatar, according to Wikipedia.

Is a primate city bad for a country? After all, England has theirs (London) and so does France (Paris). A primate city isn't necessarily bad, but it is indicative of some kind of imbalance in the economy or a problem of infrastructure. The thing about primate cities is that because they are just so massive and so culturally and politically important, they suck up a lot of money and services and development that could be used to improve rural life and smaller cities (source). 

Next time I'll be posting more about Ulaanbaatar, probably before Thanksgiving. We're in the home stretch now. Thanks for sticking around!

We know all about pastoral nomadism, but what about other industries in Mongolia?

A copper mine, from here

According to the World Factbook, the industry sector comprises about 32.6% of Mongolia's GDP. Mining is big business these days in Mongolia, and coal and copper are its biggest products. A lot of the mining development has occurred through foreign companies--primarily Chinese. Mongolia has stepped up oversight of foreign investing recently, though, so that may slow the growth of mining some. A main issue associated with mining is, somewhat predictably, lack of infrastructure. There aren't a lot of paved roads out on the Steppe, and companies are building their own.

In addition to mining, other industries include animal processing, and the cashmere industry. Cashmere is the wool from the Cashmere goat (and other goats) and produces a beautiful soft fabric that is very strong.

Cashemere goats, from here

Hunger, poverty, and climate change

But first, a bit of levity:



With more than 1/4 of the population of Mongolia living in poverty, food insecurity and hunger are huge threats, affecting rural areas more than urban areas--though there are more people in urban areas living in poverty than rural areas, thanks to the migration of the nomads to the urban areas. And while the poverty rate is dropping, it isn't dropping in line with the economic growth in the country.

A lot of food insecurity has to do with the climate. Harsher winter weather is herders to lose many animals, sometimes even entire herds. The herders who give up and move to the city are causing so much urban growth that it is creating a burden on social services. There are too many people in the cities to provide for, and the reduction of the population in the rural areas means that there are fewer services available to those populations as well. There is a lot of instability in the population (both human and animal), and that means that people are hungry.

For more information about hunger in Mongolia, the U.N. Development Project is doing a lot of great work in the country, and their website has been a great resource to me, including this report on the goal of eradicating extreme hunger and poverty.

Also, here is a blog post that brings up a very good point about fighting poverty and hunger: instead of (or in addition to) general hunger programs, we need to look at fighting the cause of poverty, and in the case of Mongolia, this means better preparing the country for the extreme winter weather and improving the emergency infrastructure.

I've been busy with work and other issues in my life, so now I'm a bit behind again on blog posting. Expect to see blog posts on Industry and Settlements/Services this weekend.

Developing Mongolia

How do you measure how much a country is developed? Luckily the United Nations does it for us, by compiling the Human Development Index, which tells us what countries are more developed and less developed by looking at three important factors: life expectancy, expected years of schooling, and standard of living, which is measured by dividing the gross national income by the population to get the average contribution to the economy per person.

The most developed country according to the HDI is Norway, with a score of .944 (1.0 is perfect). The least developed country is Niger, at .337. Mongolia's HDI is .698, which places it squarely in the middle of the pack as a medium developing country. In the table below you can see steady improvement since 1980 (the start of the HDI), with the brief exception of 1990-1995 (I wonder if the transition to democracy, even though it was peaceful, has anything to do with that decrease?). In the 30+ years since the start of the figure, Mongolia's life expectancy has increased more than 10 years, the expected years of schooling has increased more than 4 years and the GNI per person has almost doubled.

does not include 2013's numbers, source

And yet, Mongolia's improvements put it below the average for its region, particularly in standard of living (GNI).

Mongolia compared to similar countries and East Asia as a region, source

Based on all I've written about in this blog, I don't think that much of this comes as a surprise. It is a bit more of a surprise, maybe, how well Mongolia does when the HDI is adjusted for inequality, compared to other medium developing countries.  When adjusted for inequality, Mongolia's HDI falls 11.5% but the average for all medium HDI countries is 24.2% and the average fall for East Asia is 21.3% (the U.S. Inequality HDI falls more than 17%, FYI) (source).

The next chapter of the book is about food and agriculture (mmm, food, NOT), so that might be my next post, but I might also be inspired to talk about fair trade and world trade before then. It depends on how busy my week is. But either way, I will see you next time!