| inbluevt | Date: Friday, 2013/07/19, 9:40 PM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
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A major diversion project threatens to choke Mongolia's Orkhon River, the longest in the country. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS
ELENGE PROVINCE, Mongolia, Jul 19 2013 (IPS) - Tsetseghkorol, a Mongolian herder, stares out nostalgically at the Orkhon River, the longest in the country.“
In 1992, the river used to be wide, deep and clean,” she says. “Now it is very polluted and small.”Sitting with her neighbour Dashdavaa in a ‘ger’, a traditional Mongolian yurt used by herders across this vast Central Asian country, Tsetseghkorol tells IPS she has lived alongside the 1,124-km-long Orkhon for 40 years, raising five children and a herd of livestock with little more than the natural bounty of the river basin.
Dashdavaa, also a herder, is in her 60s, with nine grown children. She moved closer to a tributary of the Orkhon River in 1992 after the collapse of socialism in Mongolia, when she lost her job as a
kindergarten teacher.
Like many Mongolians at the time, she returned to her pastoralist roots to support her large family, and now views this river as a critical lifeline.
Though shrinking from climate change, the Selenge river basin, comprised in part by the Orkhon River, is still lush compared to the 72 percent of the country facing desertification.Covering 343,000 square km, the basin provides a livelihood to 55 percent of Mongolia’s population of 2.9 million people.
As idyllic as this valley seems, a threat lurks not too far away: the potential destruction of this ancient way of life by the proposed Orkhon River Diversion Project.
Corrected version
 Thousands of herders rely on rivers to water their livestock herds. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS
Message edited by inbluevt - Sunday, 2013/07/21, 2:18 PM |
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