I finally managed to find a copy of the English-Language newspaper in Mongolia, and immediately a few things struck me. One was how much was about economics—there was a “Money” section AND a “Market” section, plus the front page had an money/market focus. But a lot of the economic issues are related to the big thing in Mongolia these days: Mining.
Companies are rushing to develop infrastructure to tap the rich resources of the (till now) untouched Mongolian countryside. Though Mongolia’s not currently a huge player on the international market, that’s partially because it just doesn’t have the equipment and railroads (and regular roads) to uncover all its natural resources.
And valuable resources they are… though cashmere is my personal favorite, Mongolia also has mines upon mines of coal, copper, gold, and (my second favorite) uranium. One article I read was about the development of a new railway to Tavan Tolgol, “one of the largest coal deposits in the world.” But much of Mongolia’s earnings come from the Erdenet open-face copper mine, one of the ten largest copper mines in the world; it produces around 25 million tons of ore yearly, and because most of that goes to China, you’ve undoubtedly come into contact with some Erdenet copper (in your electronics) without even knowing it. On a more adventurous note, there are several Gold Rushes taking place in Mongolia right now, with people flocking to certain areas to illegally mine gold there. And unlike our Gold Rushes, there’s actually enough gold to provide most miners with substantial income. (They’re not getting rich, exactly, but they’re getting fed.) Though right now this mining is unregulated and dangerous, the government is working to extract the gold systematically and safely (though likely at the expense of the beautiful surroundings).And onto the uranium! As I discovered in an article about Mongolia’s attempts to shift to nuclear power, Mongolia has 63,000 tons of proven uranium reserves, and it is estimated to have up to 100,000 tons. Just the proven reserves account for 2% of the entire world’s reserves, so it could potentially have 3 or 4%.
So though Mongolia may seem remote now, bear in mind that its resources are already relevant to your life, and probably the relevance of Mongolia’s mines will be impossible to ignore in a few decades. Oh, and also the cashmere—try ignoring that.
With regard to the mining, particularly in light of the illegal activity at the gold mines, do you have a sense of who is regulating this industry? Lands rich in mineral deposits, especially those in great demand by the West, tend to be vulnerable to exploitation by certain powerful individuals or groups.
ReplyDeleteOkay. This answer is going to get complicated. Basically, the government is trying to regulate, but can't really keep up with how fast Mongolian mining is developing. The regulations have a few consequences, some good, some bad. I'll write more about illegal gold mining later, but for now, in "brief": Illegal independent miners tend to ignore health, safety, and environmental regulations, and as a result miners are injured and killed in accidents sort of frequently, and they are poisoning the water near mining sites with the chemicals they use to get the gold (cyanide and mercury, mostly). So that's bad. And govt regulations will be meant (in part) to stop that from happening. On the OTHER hand, it's mostly corporations putting pressure on the government to stop illegal mining, which means the government is putting pressure on police, which contributes to issues of police brutality. Supposedly if you are caught illegally mining, the police just about beat you half to death. So that's not helpful. And although illegal mining is hazardous, miners sell their gold directly to buyers, which has a very positive consequence: They get the money. It isn't very often that the people actually putting life and limb on the line to GET resources are the ones who receive the bulk of the money from it. And supposedly the illegal mining here is really lucrative; most miners DO make money, and they make a LOT of money, especially compared to the impoverished circumstances they were generally in that led them to mine in the first place. Gold mine ger-camps supposedly have a really high quality of life, apart from the mining and chemicals and death and all that. Once the government starts regulating (and likely pandering to corporations), probably the mining here will go the way everything always goes, with money floating to the top and the people putting in a lot of the effort not reaping the rewards. It would be nice to think that Mongolia could be one of the first countries to regulate and NOT exploit laborers, but this is beyond unlikely. Especially as Mongolian companies import foreign CEOs who are probably thinking of what CEOs generally think of: the bottom line.
ReplyDeleteOn the bright side, the Mongolian gov't did just, in an interesting move, forbid Phosphorus mining in one/some of the nation's substantial Phosphorus mines because of its ecological consequences. (Though I've apparently lost my newspaper with details on that.) But that's phosphorus; I don't think they'd do the same with uranium or the newly discovered oil deposits.