Mongolian herders moved to the capital city but now intense pollution is forcing to reconsider
Officials at the city, provincial and national level are now working on a programme to encourage citizens to migrate from Ulan Bator to the provinces
More than a decade ago, Darii Garam, 76, moved to Ulan Bator with her children so they could go to school and find work beyond herding animals in the countryside. Now, the pollution, set to worsen in the approaching winter, is getting to her.
“Even just going outside for a second, opening your door, your home fills with smoke, your clothes, everything smells like it,” she says moving around her ger, a spacious and neatly kept traditional Mongolian yurt, to make tea.
Darii lives on the outskirts of Ulan Bator, an area known as the ger district or sometimes, affectionately, the “g district”, where rural migrants have collected over the last two decades. Here, gers and houses built out of wood and other scrap material creep up the hills that box in Ulan Bator.
Every winter, as many as 220,000 households burn coal to stay warm. When families cannot afford coal they sometimes burn tyres and other scraps.
The hospitals are packed every winter, as thousands of children fall sick. Visibility is so bad that two people can be walking hand in hand and not be able to see each other. Air pollution, or “smoke” as the residents call it, often reaches several times that of Beijing or Delhi.
“I wanted more for my children but the air is prohibitive,” Darii says. “I’ve never seen air pollution like this before … The food, pollution, everything, is really bad in Ulan Bator.”