Mongolia is losing its nomadic culture — and its lung health. When Mongolia established its modern incarnation in 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union, over half of its population lived as nomads who derived their primary income from herding. These nomads lived in tents with canvas walls and buckled down for the occasional harsh winter. It was one of the least densely populated countries in the world, with just 1.2 million people living in urban areas, and Ulaanbaatar, the nation’s capital, had a population of just 606,000. That’s all changed, except for the yurts. Desertification as a result of climate change has driven Mongolia’s herders to abandon their nomadic lifestyle and set up their gers — the squat, one-room tents originally made to be dismantled and moved to enable a nomadic lifestyle — permanently on the outskirts of Mongolia’s cities. The resulting districts have had disastrous consequences for the country’s air quality, mainly due to the fact that gers are heated by individual coal-burning stoves. |