Boasting an area of 1.5 million square miles filled with just 3.3 million people, Mongolia is the world’s most sparsely populated country. It has experienced rapid industrial development and urbanization in the last three decades, including in its capital city of Ulaanbaatar, home to an estimated 40 per cent of its residents.
But this growth has not been matched by adequate chemicals and waste management strategies, creating serious threats to environmental and human health from the country’s cities to its sprawling countryside.
The Mongolian government estimates that its hazardous waste generation is 27,000 to 54,000 tons per year and that much of this waste is not disposed of properly. As a party to the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions, as well as the Minamata Convention, Mongolia is committed to getting on the right track.
Its recently launched project, supported by the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP’s) Chemicals and Waste Management Programme, marks a concrete step in fulfilling its obligations under these agreements and securing a sustainable future for its citizens.
The first aim of the three-year project is to review the current state of hazardous waste production and management, including what types of waste are being generated and how they are being treated and disposed of.
This will be documented in households, commercial units, institutions, industries, agricultural production, construction, and disposal and treatment facilities. As part of the review, gender-based analyses will also be conducted to better understand how gender affects susceptibility to hazardous impacts.
This initial project activity will help establish baseline information on the country’s hazardous waste and its effects on the population, which is key for making effective policy decisions surrounding waste management.
In 2013, the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), established an analytical laboratory. Amongst other things, the laboratory works on testing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in oils used to insulate electrical equipment. It also monitors efforts to mitigate PCB contamination for equipment used in Mongolia.
Through this project, Mongolia is now working to expand the capacity of the laboratory, by developing national standards and methods for sampling and analyzing hazardous wastes, such as hazardous pesticides in soil and water.
This institutional growth will be made possible by learning from the experiences and best practices of other countries and training national researchers to enhance their sampling and analytical capacities.
The project's second aim is to provide awareness-raising and training for stakeholders responsible for hazardous waste management, including those representing government and non-governmental organizations, industries, companies, academic institutes, and communities.
This will be achieved by organizing training workshops, practical fieldwork, online tools, and the dissemination of training materials and handouts. The main topics will include a review of the baseline information on hazardous waste management in the country; types, sources, disposal and treatment options for hazardous waste; international best practices; and legal requirements of international conventions the country has ratified.
After the training, these stakeholders will be empowered to disseminate knowledge on hazardous waste management to people in their specific areas of operation or responsibility.
As part of both UNEP’s and the Mongolian government’s commitment to ensuring gender equity in this project, gender considerations will be interwoven into all activities. The project team will collect data that helps paint a clearer picture of how hazardous waste might affect women and men in different ways.
As a special cross-cutting initiative, a participatory management approach on hazardous waste will be piloted in one community area. The project will strive for equal participation among women and men, with the long-term goal of reducing the disproportionate impacts women may experience as a result of hazardous waste mismanagement.
At the end of the project, Mongolia hopes the impacts of its efforts to protect communities and natural resources will be felt by people and wildlife across its expansive terrain.
For further information please contact the Special Programme Secretariat at unepchemicalsspecialprogramme@un.org
