In Mongolia, there is a high rate of migration from rural to urban areas.
I am from a town in Bulgan province.
Our hospitals are inadequate and have little equipment, so our people have to go to bigger cities to get diagnosed and treated for serious illnesses.
Recently during Covid-19, there were not enough hospital rooms and only one doctor and one nurse who had to be in isolation with all their patients for seven days in a row.
There are no dentists, ophthalmologists, and visceral doctors in the isolated provinces, so people have to go to big cities to be diagnosed and treated for serious diseases.
Our local schools do not provide a good education because rural teachers lag behind their peers in cities.
Since there are not enough teachers, one will teach at least two different subjects.
Differences between the urban and rural quality of education are often reflected in foreign language levels.
These are just some of the factors pushing more and more families and young people to migrate to urban cities.
On a tree-planting mission with Raleigh Mongolia in January, I met 46-year-old Enkhbaatar Nyamdorj, a herder from Selenge soum, Bulgan aimag to get his take on why young people are moving away from the countryside.
In the last 30 years since the fall of the old regime in Mongolia, environmental and economic changes have brought many of such unfamiliar issues to his village.
He explained: "Recent natural changes, such as slow grass growth in spring, less rain in summer and late frosting in Autumn, are reducing pasture yields and the overgrazing is aggravating it further.
“In general, the climate is becoming unfamiliar to us, so we need investment for new skills and equipment.
“In the past, nomadic pastoralists only needed livestock and pastures, but now we need equipment for growing and harvesting fodder.”
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Mongolia transitioned from communist rule to a democratic capitalist state in the 1990s.
This had a knock-on effect as communities adjusted to a new regime.
“During the socialist era, the Selenge region was agricultural and my parents were converted from herders to farmers,” Enkhbaatar says.
“After the transition in the 1990’s all socialist structures were disassembled thus our villages economies crumbled in between traditional nomadic animal husbandry and post-soviet style farming.
“These changes have confused our lives, especially our children.
“Today, young people in our villages move to major cities in search of work, and less than 20 per cent of young people stay in their villages to maintain their traditional lifestyles.
“They do not imagine their future in the village. There is a shortage of working-age professionals in the village, for example, current doctors and veterinarians are all pensioners who have to continue working despite their retirements.
“Our community is now looking for ways to revitalise the village.”
One of those ways involves a tree planting programme with Raleigh Mongolia, a civil society organisation run by Mongolian young people in association with Raleigh International.
The programme supports the local Forest Community of Selenge-Buren soum of Bulgan province in establishing their own tree nursery, which not only addresses the issue of deforestation, but also creates sustainable green business for the local community.
Another herder involved in the forestry programme, Bat-Ulzii, says: “To support nature, our forest group has planted tree seedlings a lot since 2015, reaching up to 10,000 seedlings per year and planted in several hectares of land.
“The cycle begins with picking the tree seeds from the forest in the winter with care, nurturing them in nursery soil until they become seedlings and planting them in the areas where needed.
“Time and resources are required for this nature-based solution. Due to the financial hardships our forest group had to stop its tree planting operation in the last few years.
“However, with support from the Raleigh Mongolia initiative, we are happy to restart the tree planting and eager to contribute to the billion tree campaign by the President of Mongolia.”
