Battling Mongolia's Pollution Problem
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 10 July 2018
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Coal fires used to beat the bitter cold of Mongolian winters blanket capital city Ulaanbaatar with smog in the winter, the BBC's Roger Hearing finds, when he meets residents from the Ger District.
Typical sanitation is makeshift and in the form of latrines, says Choikhand Janchivlamdan, a sanitation expert at the Green Initiative. This can lead to the spread of disease. Lost livestock due to harsh winters and a desire for better education is leading people to the city, she says. As people move to the city from the countryside, the problem gets worse as no new sewage systems are built.
Tserenbat Namsrai, Mongolia's environment minister, plans to introduce smokeless fuel in a bid to combat pollution and introducing more electric heating.
Robert Ritz, a US professor who lives in the city, says PM2.5 particulates - that's atmospheric particulate matter that have a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres - kill thousands of people per year.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Roger Hearing in Ulambata, Mongolia. |
| 0:07.3 | Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:09.8 | Coming up, the huge slum area of the Mongolian capital |
| 0:12.7 | where sanitation is almost non-existent. |
| 0:15.5 | No drainage system, and also they are 2, 2.5 metres deep pit latrins. It's not very effective and also |
| 0:24.6 | is a key source of a problem of the public health. Also the smog that blankets the city through |
| 0:31.3 | the long winter days producing some of the world's worst urban pollution. It's estimated it kills |
| 0:36.1 | thousands of people every winter. It's estimated that kills thousands of people every winter. |
| 0:38.0 | It's estimated that in the Gair District, breathing in the pollution is equivalent to about smoking |
| 0:42.2 | two packs of cigarettes per day. |
| 0:44.5 | And I've been talking to the people who are trying to lessen the impact of the coal-burning |
| 0:47.8 | stoves that are the lifesavers of the city's poor, but whose pollution threatens life |
| 0:52.3 | across the whole capital. |
| 0:53.8 | That's all in business daily from the BBC. |
| 0:58.5 | Mongolia is the least densely populated country on earth, just under two people per square |
| 1:04.2 | kilometre. |
| 1:05.1 | But you wouldn't know it here. |
| 1:06.9 | This is Ulan Bata, the crowded and slightly run-down capital, and I'm in what's called the Gair district. |
| 1:13.6 | It's a swathe of the outskirts, full of ramshackle, mostly self-built shacks, |
| 1:18.6 | and the traditional circular Mongolian tents called Gairs, and that's what's given this area its name. |
| 1:24.6 | Now, if I were here any time apart from this short summer, |
| 1:29.0 | I wouldn't be able to see further than the end of this street. It will be covered in a thick |
... |
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