Self-taught Yak Herdsman Takes on Mongolian Mining Company

A self-taught yak herdsman from Mongolia forced the closure of polluting mines on the Onggi river was just barely awarded the world's biggest environmental prize.

Tsetsegee Munkhbayar loves the Onggi river, which provides his people with water and fish. He watched as mining companies transformed the waterway of his homeland in the steppes into a poisoned mess as they poured toxic slurry from the mines straight into the river.

Munkhbayar realized that if he did not act to save the Onggi river, nobody would. Almost single-handedly, and at considerable personal risk, he took on the mining companies, and won. This was the very first time that anyone had stood up for environmental rights in Mongolia, a country which is still opening up after decades of communist rule by the Soviet Union.

Four out of 10 Mongolians are nomadic herdsman and the big debate in the country these days is whether mining is the way of the future or if livestock-rearing, the traditional way the Mongols sustained themselves, is the way forward.

Nearly half of the population of Mongolia depends on livestock to survive and large sections of the population still live in a ger, a traditional felt circular tent that has been the dwelling of choice in Mongolia for more than 1,000 years.

This is a country where traditional shoes point upwards - the story goes that this is so that they do not harm the land. More than 100,000 people rely on the Onggi river for fresh, clean water, while at least one million cattle also need the waterway. In 1995, the "Red" lake that the Onggi river supplies went dry, and scientists believe that was because gold miners were diverting water away from the sourcs of the Onggi river. Miners were also using chemicals such as cyanide to leach out the gold, which poisons the water. The source of the Onggi has been damaged, possibly for good. "If we have a river, we have life. Without the river, there is no life there," Munkhbayar said in a recent interview.

Mr Munkhbayar successfully pressured 35 of 37 mining operations working in the Onggi river basin to stop, permanently, ruining the river with their mining and exploration activities.

This is a serious achievement in Mongolia as the mining industry is an enormously powerful lobby and there is precious little by way of a democratic tradition in Ulan Bator, or anywhere else in Mongolia.
The country is home to the world's last and largest example of an intact temperate grassland ecosystem.

Munkhbayar was recently awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, the world's biggest accolade for grassroots environmental activists. The award is given to outstanding individuals who work to fight pressing environmental challenges, and was created to allow these people to continue their work.