Sustainable Use of Scarce Water Resources in Mongolia

To conserve and sustainably manage the scarce water resources of Mongolia, it is imperative that permanent and robust measures are introduced to address these issues, these are the commitments of the collaborative project "Integrated Water Resources Management, Model Region Mongolia (MoMo)"

The objective of the project "Integrated Water Resources Management for Central Asia: Model Region Mongolia (MoMo)" is to implement an Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). To achieve this, the project has three core research areas: environmental monitoring, water technologies and river basin management.

Core area "environmental monitoring"

Mongolia is faced with numerous challenges: water is becoming increasingly scarce and rivers and groundwater are polluted from intensive industrialisation and increased mining activities throughout the nation. Moreover, data on the state of the environment are generally limited. In recent years, a team of German and Mongolian universities, research institutes and enterprises were able to collect and analyse essential environmental data for a model region in Mongolia. Now these data are being made available to Mongolian users and decision-makers via a web-based GIS as well as a long-term data management system established. Furthermore, extensive training programmes are being conducted in environmental monitoring.

Core area "Water technologies"

In Mongolia, it is not only urban settlements that are the focus of water consumption, but also the wastewater discharge into surface waters and out-dated infrastructures mainly from the 1960s certainly do not help. For example, the unofficial yurt settlements on the outskirts of cities that have seen an unprecedented rate of expansion over recent decades are usually not connected to central public utility services. Consequently, the project has introduced some pilot measures over recent years to reduce water losses from pipe leakages in the urban public utility services distribution network as well as a pilot project for the central, semi-central and decentralised treatment of wastewater. Such solutions are now to be implemented on a larger scale and it will be tested as to whether they can be transferred to other regions of Mongolia.
 

Core area "River Basin Management"

The Mongolian government has declared the Integrated Water Resources Management concept as a role model for managing the country's water resources and it is now planning to develop and implement management concepts for all larger river basins. The project is supporting this process: on the one hand through scientists who are keeping in close contact with the Mongolian Ministry for Environment, Green Development and Tourism, the National Water Committee as well as the respective river basin management authorities for the model region Kharaa and offering advice about concepts, and on the other hand by examining Mongolian "water governance", which is going through an extremely dynamic phase of development. The results will be used to draw conclusions on framework conditions in the field of water management in Mongolia and for comparable regions in Central Asia.

Read More Related Content On This Topic - Click Here

Attached link

Taxonomy

• Scarcity
• Water Resources
• Water Management