- In 2017, nomadic herders in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert secured an agreement obliging one of the world’s largest copper-gold mines, Oyu Tolgoi, to make good on a list of 60 commitments, including compensation and improved access to land and water.
- Today, compliance researchers and herders say two-thirds of these commitments are complete and or in progress, but complain of slow progress with the remainder, including the all-important issue of access to clean water.
- Communities have also expressed concern over seepage of mining waste into the groundwater, and say the company, a subsidiary of multinational mining giant Rio Tinto, should be held accountable.
- The nomadic herding way of life is on the decline the area due to lack of progress on achieving these other commitments, herders tell Mongabay.
In 2004, nomadic herders in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert faced a daunting prospect. One of the world’s largest copper-gold mines, Oyu Tolgoi, was settling in, and herder communities were being forced to resettle without consultation. For many of them, everything fell apart that year when they faced the prospect of losing access to water and lush pasturelands.
But they turned to an accountability group for help, filed two complaints against Oyu Tolgoi — and, in a rare success story, reached a deal with the mining company in 2017. Herders, local government officials and company representatives met, formed a three-party council to resolve disputes, and reached an agreement on 60 separate commitments.
“It was the least we could do. The water wells and springs that the herders and animals survived on were drying right in front of our eyes after the mining operated,” says Battsengel Lkhamdoorov, one of the herders who lost his occupation and initiated the complaint. “We were not consulted before the mining operation and impacts, so we had to speak up.”
But years later, experts say important commitments remain unmet. A report by the three-party council, Accountability Counsel (an NGO that advocates for communities affected by internationally funded projects) and the NGO Oyu Tolgoi Watch found that two-thirds of the commitments were either complete or in progress as of June 2020. Four years on, little has changed, they tell Mongabay. Some of the most significant commitments — on ensuring herders’ access to water, pasture and markets — are making no progress.
Mongabay reached out to Oyu Tolgoi’s office for comments but didn’t receive a response by the time this article was published.
The mine, jointly owned by the government of Mongolia and Turquoise Hill Resources, a subsidiary of mining giant Rio Tinto, has made progress on some of its goals. The deal included monitoring impacts, remediating the mine’s disruption of the Undai River and sacred Bor Ovoo spring, and improved access to water and pasture resources for the herders to help them continue their traditional livestock herding.
“It was significant for the herder community to raise their concern and hold the mining company accountable given the environmental damages caused by the mining over the years,” says Julio Castor Achmadi, communities associate for Asia at Accountability Counsel.
But with important commitments still incomplete, there’s been a sharp decline in livestock ownership. Previously, each herding household had around 50-100 head of livestock. Today, Achmadi says, many have abandoned herding and moved off of their lands. Out of the 250 households in the district, or soum, of Khanbogd whom the company compensated, less than half continue this ancestral livelihood today.
For the few remaining herders in Khanbogd, like Erdenebayar (who asks not to share his full name), herding has gotten tougher; he recently sold his sheep, camels and goats, he says.
“All I have now are a few horses and cows. We have to migrate hundreds and thousands of kilometers in search of pasturelands for livestock grazing,” Erdenebayar tells Mongabay. “Other herder communities already graze their animal in these pastures, so we now have overgrazing issues.”
And it’s not just livestock that have lost access to grazing because of the mine, Achmadi says. He cites protected wildlife species like the onager or Asian wild ass (Equus hemionus), goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa) and houbara bustard (Chlamydotis undulata) as also having lost habitat and access to water.
“There is one specific commitment to monitor the wildlife in the area which also has been delayed,” Achmadi says.
Water woes
Herders were initially hopeful after the agreement led to the fulfillment of many commitments. This included $1.2 million in compensation for lost livelihoods; training and scholarship programs for herders’ children; student scholarships; and a project to plant 10,000 trees. But the delays in implementing improved access to water and market, establishing a slaughter line, and traditional livelihood restoration have raised questions.
“Most of these individual commitments are completed by 80-100% on paper but there is no real benefit for the herders,” says former herder Lkhamdoorov, who today heads the subdistrict, or bagh, of Khairkhan, in southern Khanbogd. “They have constructed deep-drilled wells but there is not enough water. The remedied actions have become a mechanism to shut our mouths.”
In 2019, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, a watchdog affiliated with the World Bank, which is helping finance the mine, formally left the three-party council. With just the herders, representatives from the government and the mining company left on board, progress declined. Lkhamdoorov, who represented the herders in the council for the first two years, says there was no longer space for herders in the decision-making process, and many of the commitments that saw initial progress are currently not being implemented.
Sukhgerel Dugersuren, director at Oyu Tolgoi Watch, says the government is unable to push the company to keep its promises.
“The two-thirds of commitment completion does not make sense when the herders look forward to the remaining one-third that ensures sustainable access to water and traditional livestock herding,” she says.
The commitments don’t specify the exact amount of wells needed, but a 2017 independent study recommends constructing more than 75 in Khanbogd; to date, 12 have been built. These wells are drilled down to a depth of 200 meters (660 feet) by the company, making them alien to the herders who are used to traditional shallow wells.
This lack of specificity in goals, including proposing unrealistic commitments, is among the challenges in fulfilling the agreement, according to the report.
Over the years, the water anxiety has also intensified as locals face water contamination issues with the leakage of the mining waste, or tailings, and the seepage of chemicals into the groundwater.
“The water outside of the mining licensed area is now said to have an increased [total dissolved solids] level,” Achmadi says. Herders we spoke with also say details of the types of chemicals and their concentrations in the water weren’t directly communicated with them.
Oyu Tolgoi identified the tailings leakage occurring in 2012, eventually acknowledged it in a 2022 report, and produced two quarterly reports on a remedy plan in 2024.
The company also diverted the Undai River and created an artificial spring inside its mining licensed area to replace the Bor Ovoo spring. Previously, the river was the only water source that didn’t freeze in winter, providing a life-sustaining service throughout Mongolia’s harsh winter months. Now, the artificial spring freezes in winter and the access to it is under the mine’s control.
The mining company issued a formal apology after a complaint by herders, but many say this is all the more reason why access to more wells is important.
“This takeover changed governance, relationships, access, quality and quantity of water for the rest of the traditional communities,” Dugersuren tells Mongabay. The loss of culture and ecology is incalculable, she adds.
Fewer herders
Seven years after the agreement and with the desert left even more parched, the herding community is facing the reality of an expanding mine. Oyu Tolgoi began underground mining operations in March 2023, transitioning from the open-pit mining it has practiced since 2011. The company says it plans to produce around 500,000 metric tons of copper per year from 2028, putting the mine on track to become the fourth-largest copper mine in the world by 2030.
Future prospects aren’t as bright for younger generations looking to carry on the Indigenous nomadic lifestyle and culture, Lkhamdoorov says. Local youths make do with the lowest-paying jobs, as truck drivers transporting coal, because few have the skills for a better-paying job. Yet some former herders say they haven’t lost hope and will keep raising their voices. In May this year, the Oyu Tolgoi mine workers, many of them former herders, held a weeklong protest over a sharp drop in their wages.
Dugersuren says it’s not only Oyu Tolgoi; other mines across Mongolia are also affecting the country’s nomadic pastoralists. Not recognized as Indigenous peoples, as they are Mongolian as everyone else, herders don’t hold specific rights to deny projects or to exercise their free, prior and informed consent. And since pastures are used publicly, herders also have no formal land titles. Dugersuren says the land-titling regulation applies to Mongolia’s sedentary citizens, not its nomadic ones, who have roamed the deserts for generations.
Today, Lkhamdoorov says the tradition of moving in a camel caravan is lost.
Twenty years since the Khanbogd herders lost their pasturelands, they remain mired in a conflict over access to water which has become all the more important in recent years. Herders point to decreasing rainfall, which previously fed the desert sand to grow grasses healthy and tall for their livestock.
“[The company] defended itself by saying, ‘It’s the Gobi Desert, there’s no water!’” Lkhamdoorov says. “But we knew it always had much water for its people.”
Banner image: Battsengel Lkhamdoorov stands next to one of the summer quarters built by Oyu Tolgoi. Image courtesy of Battsengel Lkhamdoorov.
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