Global Warming Crisis News for people who care.

16/5/2011 Guardian It is a supreme irony in a country once known as the land without fences.Stretching north from the capital, Ulan Bator, an endless succession of dilapidated boundary markers criss-cross away into the distance.

They demarcate a vast shantytown that sprawls for miles and is now estimated to
be home to a quarter of the entire population of Mongolia.

More than 700,000 people have crowded into the area in the past two decades.
Many are ex-herders and their families whose livelihoods have been destroyed by
bitter winters that can last more than half the year; many more are victims of
desertification caused by global warming and overgrazing; the United Nations
Development Programme estimates that up to 90% of the country is now fragile
dryland.

Yet with limited education, few transferable job skills and often no official
documents, most end up simply waiting, getting angry with the government and
reminiscing about nomadic lives past. Many take to alcohol.

“More and more people arrive every year and there are so few jobs available,”
said Davaasambuu after queueing for 30 minutes to collect his family’s daily
drinking water from one of 500 water stations that dot the slum. “Nothing has
changed in my neighbourhood since the last election [in May 2009]. There have
been no new jobs or improvements. One little bridge has been added in the last
four years, that’s it,” he said.

The basic infrastructure is not in place to support such a large population,
which expands by tens of thousands of people a year. Many of them still live in
a ger – the traditional round felt tent they arrived with from the countryside
and which gives the districts their name and also their sense of impermanence.

Davaasambuu’s is not an easy life. The area around his home is falling into
disrepair with rubbish piling high. Nightly fights between drunks are getting
worse. But at least he can take comfort in the fact that he now has a job with
which to support his family, unlike many of his neighbours.

“Not everyone in the ger district is dirt poor – some are doing OK – but it is a
hard life,” said Troy Tvrdik, whose educational and vocational training NGO,
Flourishing Future, is based in the district. “Even when it is minus 40, you
still have to go out to get water.”

A World Bank report published last year highlighted the plight of ger district
residents, most of whom have limited access to electricity and no running water,
sewage or central heating.

The report found that during the long winter, when temperatures plummet into the
minuses for up to eight months, poorer residents are forced to spend upwards of
40% of their income on wood or coal for heating, which adds to their financial
burden as well as to the heavy clouds of pollution that hangs over the city.
Roads are simple, unpaved mud paths and streets have no signs, streetlights or
even names but are merely the gaps naturally placed between two rows of tents or
shacks set up by newly arrived migrants without any input from the government.

“The quality of the infrastructure is a major problem,” said Mesky Brhane, a
senior urban specialist with the World Bank, who helped produce last year’s
report. “[People] are clearly frustrated by the lack of infrastructural
improvements by the government.

Protesters, many from the ger districts, have repeatedly descended on the
parliament over the past few years, including a large protest last April,
demanding a better distribution of the country’s mining wealth.

Despite the money pouring into the country from the mining of natural resources
– Mongolia has a population of just 2.7 million yet has the world’s largest
mining exploration project and, in Tavan Tolgoi, the world’s second largest coal
deposit – little of that money makes its way to the residents of the shantytown.

Even in the more central ger areas, where many residents have lived for over a
decade and built more permanent wooden or brick houses, running water and
central heating are unavailable and the streets remain dark, mud roads with open
sewage streams and rubbish piled high.

Another big concern is the level of unemployment. While tens of thousands of
rural migrants flood the city every year looking for work, setting up their
tents at the point where last year’s migrants stopped, unemployment remains a
critical issue, especially in the ger districts where the unemployment rate can
be as high as 62%, compared with 21% in the more developed areas of the capital.

The Mongolian government has officially declared 2011 “employment support year”
in an effort to create 70,000 new jobs, but so far few signs of improvement have
been visible.

“One of the biggest problems is that there is very little economic activity
within the ger districts due to inadequate infrastructure – everyone has to
leave the area to work,” said Brhane.

“One new project the World Bank is working on is looking at ways to generate
local economic development so people can live and work there. It would make a
tremendous difference to people’s lives,” she said.

“We have 12 people in our family and only two have work,” said Dashkhord, 50.
She and her family moved from the countryside five years ago after one harsh
winter took away their entire herd of 100 animals. They arrived with next to
nothing and simply pitched their tent on the outskirts of the sprawling
shantytown.

“The first year was really difficult. It took me over a year to find my first
job – cleaning at a hotel. I spent the first few months simply collecting
plastic bottles to sell,” she said.

Today Dashkhord earns £60 a month as a cleaner at a supermarket, a far cry from
her pastoral background, while her eldest daughter looks after children for a
wealthier family.

“My other daughter is also looking for a job helping look after kids but it is
hard since there are so few jobs and they are so far away – also, all the job
ads now say you must be over 1.7 metres [5ft 6in], beautiful and well educated,”
she said. “For me, I wish we stayed in the village, but for my daughter and
grandkids it is better here,” said Baasankhuu, 63, who moved to a ger district
three years ago and whose £40 a month pension is barely enough for her and her
family to live on.

“My grandchildren can get a better education in Ulan Bator and maybe have a
chance at a real job and future.”
Go to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/15/shantytown-home-quarter-of-mongolians