UNEP
backs Mongolia's efforts to safeguard vast, unique environments
Pasture, forests and wildlife under threat in Genghis Khan homeland
Ban
gkok,
Ulaanbaatar, 22 August, 2003 - The United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) and the Mongolian Ministry of Nature and Environment today signed a framework
agreement to support sustainable development and environmental protection in
the fabled North-East Asian country.
Home to warlord Genghis Khan, whose 13th century empire stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Pacific Ocean, Mongolia's territory remains the world's 17th largest.
The land-locked nation's 2.4 million people are spread over an area similar to that of Alaska, or nearly three times the size of France (one of the lowest population densities in the world of 1.5 people per sq km).
Mongolia's unique and varied environments - including super-arid desert, moist taiga forest, rolling steppe grasslands and glaciated alpine peaks - provide refuge to some of the last populations of endangered snow leopard, Argali sheep, wild ass, saiga, bacterian camel and Gobi bear.
A recent State of the Environment report prepared by UNEP
shows that despite Government efforts to formulate laws and policies to effectively
manage natural resources, recent transitions to a market economy from centralized
policies of rapid urbanization and industrialization, has accelerated risks
to the environment.
Population growth of 1.8 percent a year (one of the highest in Asia), urbanization
(now 57 percent from a traditional nomadic lifestyle) and increasing consumption
are adding pressure to natural resources.
The UNEP assessment shows 70 percent of pasturelands - used for livestock grazing and still the main livelihood for Mongolians - are in a degraded state particularly around towns and cities, bringing erosion to thin soils and loss in plant diversity. Wheat yields are half that of the 1980s, due to declining soil fertility.
Sand cover has increased 8.7 percent over the past four decades with more than 40 percent of Mongolian territory now in arid desert. The growing frequency and intensity of dust and sand storms, which affect China, the Korean peninsula and Japan, has led UNEP and other international agencies to initiate a multi-million dollar regional project to research and address the problem.
Mongolia's forests, which cover 10 percent of its territory, have suffered from a decade of fragmented institutional responsibility, poor management and illegal cutting. Declining forest cover and quality is causing flash floods, lowered groundwater, desertification and species loss.
Air quality is also a significant problem in urban areas, particularly for the nearly one million residents of capital city Ulaanbaatar, during winter. Pollution from thermal power plants, hundreds of heating boilers, 75,000 open fires in Gers (traditional Mongolian tents) and wood homes, and a 50,000 strong vehicle fleet, is leading to more and more cases of acute respiratory disease.
The UNEP assessment recognises that while environmental resources provide an important base for expanded economic opportunity through mining, forestry, farming and tourism, integrated national sustainable development policies and planning are desperately needed.
The framework agreement promises assistance by UNEP in the areas of environmental assessment and monitoring, the preparation of National Sustainable Development Strategies, programmes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and use of ozone depleting substances, law and policy making, fund mobilization and international environmental negotiations.
The agreement was signed this Friday at the Ministry of Nature and Environment in Ulaanbaatar by Mr Ulambayar Barsbold, Minister for Nature and Environment and UNEP Regional Director Mr Surendra Shrestha.
Mr Shrestha said the agreement was part of UNEP's commitment to building capacity for integrated and effective environmental management at national level in Asia and the Pacific.
Minister Barsbold welcomed the partnership saying it fitted
the Government's current policies and programmes for sustainable development
of the country.
Implementation of the agreement will be reviewed on an annual basis.
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For more information please contact: Tim Higham, Regional Information Officer, UNEP, Bangkok, phone +66 2 2882127, email higham@un.org.
UNEP's 2002 Mongolia State of the Environment report is available from http://www.rrcap.unep.org/reports/soe/mongoliasoe.cfm
UNEP ROAP News release 2003/08