4 VOICES FROM THE EARTH

For the fourth year running, SouthwestResearch and Information Center (SRIC)coordinated an international exchange

focused on resource management. The2008 exchange program included activitiesin the U.S Southwest and in the BuryatRepublic and Mongolia focused onresource management issues in and around

mining company representatives and regu-latory agency staff. Presentations includedan overview of resource conservationstrategies, options for development ofmineral revenue-based permanent funds in Buryatia, and the environmental impactof mines in Mongolia.

The 2008 Exchange began in Augustin Buryatia with activities organ-ized by Sendema Shirapova andLena Chernibrovkina, who hadcoordinated previous exchanges,staff at the Buryat Center forPublic Environmental Expertizaprogram of BRO-Baikal.Mongolian participants in theBuryat portion of the exchangeincluded Narangerel Rinchin,PhD, director of the Center forCitizenship Education inMongolia and B. Nyamchuu,

of Lake Baikal through the meadows andmountains of Tunka National Park andbeyond the pavement into sparsely settledOkinsky Rayon (County) where we metAlexei. Okinsky Rayon is named for theOka River, which drains the EasternSayan Mountain Range. While inOkinsky, the group visited the Khushirgold mine overlooking the Oka River.

In addition to his teaching, Alexei isvice-president of the Soyot Associationrepresenting the Soyot ethnic group,indigenous descendants of reindeer-herdingpeople who have lived in the mountains of western Buryatia for generations.Little-known outside Okinsky Rayon, theSoyot people are seeking to increase theirrecognition in Russia as a distinct indige-nous community. Alexei led the exchangegroup to several Soyot cultural areas

including prayer and ritualsites and a plateau used forannual gatherings of Soyotand Buryat people and theirrelatives from nearby regions.These sites overlook a water-fall that drops into the OkaRiver from the base of themountain containing theKushir Gold deposit.

From the prayer shelterat the waterfall, participantscould see the mine and accessroads, mountains and hills

into the mountain. The exchange delega-tion’s visit to the mine was the first timelocal or regional civil society representa-tives had seen the current operation upclose. The mine camp, including housing,water treatment, machine shops, and labo-ratory facilities, is located in a transitionzone between trees and grasses. The mineaccess road zig-zags up through a larchand birch forest to the mine site locatedabove treeline.

Mine development is currentlyfocused on blasting an adit — a horizontaltunnel — into the mountain to assess theextent of gold ore and to allow bulk sam-pling for metallurgical tests needed todesign the gold recovery facility. Whileblasting the adit and sampling the ore, themine company is conducting surfaceexploration by trenching and boreholedrilling across its lease area to identifyadditional gold deposits.

Community concerns regarding thegold mining project include uncertaintyabout its effects on local livestock-basedcommunities, impacts and benefits theregion can expect from the operation, siting of gold process and waste disposalfacilities, and whether gold mining willdeter ecotourism centered on the spectac-ular environment and prominent culturalresources in Okinsky. Transportation isalso an issue, since the only route toKushir for trucks carrying cyanide and

other hazardous materi-als is through OkinskyRayon along a ruggedand unpaved road thatpasses through Orlik andother local communities.

Our return tourfrom Orlik to Ulan-Udeincluded a stop at LakeBaikal for a picnic. Wegot our feet wet, maderitual offerings, andbasked in the vastness

and beauty of what is considered a“sacred sea” by Buryats, Mongolians, and many Russians.

At Ulan-Ude, Paul Robinson made a presentation at a seminar hosted byBRO-Baikal at the Buryat GeologicalInstitute to discuss opportunities for natureprotection through conservation of mineraldeposits and mechanisms for permanentfunds to be created from mineral incomes.These issues are of major importance toBuryatia and the focus of debate in the

Exchange Program Strengthens Relationships

between Mongolia, Russia, and the United States

It is becoming a common site to see solar panels providingpower to traditional homes called “ger” in Mongolia.

Exchange participants (l to r) Nyamchuu B., Lena Chernibrovkina, Paul Robinson, Sendema Shirapova,Narangerel Rinchin, and our driver (name unknown) stand before the White Swan totem, a powerfulcultural symbol for many of the indigenous communities in the Buryat Republic of Russia and Mongolia.

Exchange participants standing on the tailingsdistibution pipeline at the Chevron molybdenumcomplex learn about tailings management.

Large bucket dredges are used to extract gold placer ore at goldmines in the floodplain of the Tuul River in Mongolia.

research coordinator for the Ardyn ElchMovement, a civil society organization inthe Yeroo River region of north-centralMongolia affected by placer gold miningsince the early 1900s. The U.S. participantin the group was Paul Robinson, researchdirector at SRIC and exchange coordinator.In addition to Sendema and Lena, Russianparticipants in the Buryat delegationincluded Alexei Papaev, PhD, a geographyteacher in Orlik in western Buryatia, SergeiShapkaev, director of BRO-Baikal, andVladimir Belogolovo, coordinator of theBRO-Baikal ROLL (Repeat of LessonsLearned) project.

Packed into a minivan, the exchangegroup traveled from Ulan-Ude to Orlik in the Eastern Sayan Mountains west ofLake Baikal. This 12-hour drive took thegroup along the Selenga River — thesource of 60% of the water entering LakeBaikal. We then followed the south shore

the Lake Baikal watershed in CentralAsia. The program was developed using a grant from the Trust for MutualUnderstanding in New York City inresponse to recommendations fromSRIC’s lead partners, the Buryat RegionalOrganization on Baikal (BRO-Baikal)based in Ulan-Ude, Buryatia Republic,Russia, and the Center for CitizenshipEducation (CCE), based in Ulaan Baatar,Mongolia. The goals of the internationalexchange are to reduce the environmentaland social impacts of mining by:

1) increasing dialogue among regulators,nongovernmental organizations(NGOs), and mining companies,

2) enhancing Russian and MongolianNGO capacities through training andyouth involvement, and

3) sponsoring public seminars to heightenpublic, media, and scientific interest inthis goal.

The logistic challenges of organizingprograms for participants shuttling betweenthree countries were daunting. This itineraryincluded a one-week trip to the BuryatRepublic of Russia, a two-week tourthrough central and northern Mongolia,and a ten-day excursion to New Mexico,Nevada, and California. The program successfully expanded and deepened linksbetween Mongolian and Buryat organiza-tions as well as between organizations inthose countries and their U.S. colleagues.Country representatives were able to visitmines and to establish dialogues with

that feature in the myths and legends of theSoyot and Buryat people, and the plateauwhere a gold processing and waste disposalfacility are likely to be built if the mineproceeds. The plateau around the waterfallprovides rich, green pasture for the cattleand horses of local livestock herders.

Though the Kushir gold deposit wasidentified decades ago during the Sovietera, recent permits allow expanded minedevelopment, including a tunnel to sampleore that delves more than 1200 meters

5Summer 2009

republic’s Khural (parliament). Participantsin the seminar included senior staff of theEnvironmental Monitoring Agency of theMinistry of Natural Resources, which isthe main environmental protection agencyin Russia, and technical advisors to theKhural. Participants in the seminar plan tocontinue to explore resource conservationoptions in the future.

After visiting Buryatia, the exchangeprogram shifted to Mongolia as SRIC’sPaul Robinson and Galina Anosova,founder of the Buryat Center for PublicEnvironmental Expertiza, traveled by trainto Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia’s capital city.Since Narangerel Rinchin from the Centerfor Citizenship Education (CCE) inMongolia was also asked to help coordi-nate a Mongolian community and miningtour initiated by Golden Gate Friends ofMongolia (GGFOM), she invited theexchange group to join the GGFOM tour.As with the other portions of the 2008exchange, activities in Mongolia focused

• Tuul River — the largest placer goldmining district in Mongolia,

• Orkhon River — home to the culturallegacy of Mongolian and Turkic leadersfor more than 1,000 years, and

• Yeroo River — where a re-mining ofcentury-old placer gold mines hasbeen joined by a large Chinese-owned-and-operated iron ore mine.

The visits to mines along the TuulRiver and in the headwaters of the Orkhonwere hosted by the operating mine compa-nies in collaboration with local civil societyorganizations. Layton Croft, executive vicepresident for corporate affairs and socialresponsibility at Ivanhoe Mines, developerof the largest mineral deposit in Mongolia,made a presentation to the GGFOM groupin Ulaan Baatar and joined the group forthe Tuul River mine tour.

The Mongolian component of ourinternational excursion ended in Yeroo,where the group was received by the

Ardyn Elch Movement, host for a portion of the 2007 exchange(see Voices from the Earth,Winter 2007, Volume 8, No. 4).The stay in Yeroo included a finalseminar and visits to importantshrines and springs near a newlyopened iron ore mine that emergedas a significant local concern. The Ardyn Elch Movement raised

months after the end of the Mongolianportion. Activities included several minevisits, tours of renewable energy productionsites, and meetings with Navajo peopleaffected by mining in New Mexico.

Russian participants were: • Alexei Papaev from Orlik,

• Zhargalma Mukhanaeva — principal ofa school in the Buryat Republic, and

• Natalya Tumureeva, ecological engineering instructor at the Far East Siberian State TechnologicalUniversity in Ulan-Ude.

Mongolian participants were:• Narangerel Rinchin, director of

Center for Citizenship Education in Mongolia,

• Narmandakh Bold, director of theArdyn Elch Movement, a civil societyorganization in Yeroo, and

• Bat-Amgalan Sandag, Mongolianfederal environmental inspector ofmines in the Yeroo River watershed.

U.S. participants included:• Julie Franklin, eco-toxicologist at

the Biological Diversity Institute in Maine,

• Gary Cook — economist and directorof the Baikalwatch project of the EarthIsland Institute in California, and

• Paul Robinson of SRIC.

With an eye toward miningimpacts on the environment andculture, the exchange programvisited the inactive andreclaimed Pecos lead-zinc mineand mill complex and the activeQuesta molybdenum mine andmill complex (operated byChevron Mineral, parent com-pany of Molycorp, which builtthe complex) in northern NewMexico. The site visits allowedexchange participants to learnabout mine reclamation methodsnot yet in use in Russia orMongolia. The Pecos tour was

and featured test plots evaluating howvarying depths of soil cover (above wasterock) affect vegetation, seepage collectionsystems, and steep slope regrading.

To raise awareness of renewableenergy technology, the exchange programtoured the Aragonne Mesa wind farm of90 one-megawatt wind turbines atop amesa in eastern New Mexico and visitedthe Nevada Solar One facility, which gen-erates 80 megawatts of power from 400acres of parabolic solar panels south ofLas Vegas, Nevada. The desert of the U.S.Southwest looks so much like Mongoliaand the steppes of Russia that exchangeparticipants could easily envision thosecommercial-scale renewable energy projects being built in their homelands.

A highlight of the U.S. portion of theexchange tour was a visit to the home-stead of the Teddy Nez family. Teddy is a Navajo tribal member and colleague at SRIC who lives next to unreclaimed waste piles from a uranium mine nearChurchrock, New Mexico. Teddy pre-sented a workshop on his family’s experi-ence living next to an unreclaimed mine,and he outlined efforts begun in the lastthree years to clean up the problem fromthe mine, which closed more than 25years ago. Teddy also provided theMongolian and Buryat visitors with a finemutton stew and frybread meal that theinternational guests agreed was at least asgood as the mutton stew and fried doughthey were used to eating back home.

The international tour ended in SanFrancisco with an evaluation and a discus-sion of follow-up activities. Participantsacknowledged the educational value of theexchange, which illustrated U.S. miningand renewable energy technologies thatare still very rare in their home countries.Everyone expressed strong interest in thecontinuation of multinational exchangesbecause of their educational and commu-nication benefits, and it was suggestedthat future years emphasize youth involve-ment. The trinational exchanges haveenhanced communication across the

Mongolian-Russian bor-der in the Lake Baikalwatershed and haveheightened awareness of environmental issuesaround the world.

The cross-cultural program successfully fostered communicationamong civil society,industry, and regulatorsabout environmentalmanagement issues andit increased awarenessabout complex technicalissues affecting commu-nities and the environ-

ment, but its strongest legacy is the relationships established among the par-ticipants. The shared experiences andfriendships created during the exchangesbroaden understanding among people with separate traditions and languages(but common values) and provide strong foundations for future collaborationsregarding protection and conservation of nature and traditional cultures in a rapidly changing world.

Waves wash up on the shore of Lake Baikal, the Sacred Sea.

Women gather water from a stream downgradient fromthe Chinese-owned and operated iron ore mine in YerooSoum (County) in northern Mongolia.

Exchange participants tour the 64 megawatt 400-acre NevadaSolar One power plant south of Las Vegas, NV. (L to R): AlexeiPapaev, Nataly Tumureeva, Zhrgalma Mukhenaeva, NarangerelRinchin, Bat-Amgalan S., Paul Robinson, and Narmandakh B.

on the twin goals of increasing localawareness of the environmental and cultural impacts of mining while enhanc-ing dialogue among civil society groups,mining companies, and regulators.

Mongolian participants in this portionof the exchange, in addition to the CCEand the Ardyn Elch Movement, included:

• Tudevdorj J. of the Salkin SardinMovement in the southwestMongolian Aimag (province),

• Munkhbayar Ts. of the Onggi RiverMovement in Central Mongolia,

• Enkhtur D. of the Toson-Zaamar TuulRiver Movement in Tuv Aimag,

• Tserenkhand Ya. of the Angir NudenMunduuhei Movement in Uvs Aimagin northwest Mongolia;

• Bayaraa G. of the Khuder River Move-ment in Selenge Aimag near Yeroo

• Zagarzusem P. of the NatureProtection-Rural Development inUvurkhangai Aimag in centralMongolia

• Ono Ganzorig, GGFOM coordinator.

Exchange funds also supported par-ticipation of S. Sukhbat, a hydrologistfrom the Mongolian Water Authority inthe Ministry of Nature Protection andEnvironment involved in mine permitting.Sukhbat was particularly valuable to theexchange because of his knowledge ofMongolian water management laws andoperational aspects of many of the minesobserved during the tour.

The Mongolian portion of the tourvisited mine sites along tributaries of theSelenga River including:

issues about the lack of effective enforce-ment of legal requirements regardingreclamation, water resources protection,and income from mines operated for theexport of raw materials.

The reputation of Mongolians as warmand generous hosts was reinforced by thehospitality shown the exchange group andGGFOM participants in the communitiesvisited. The tour culminated in Yeroo witha fabulous spread of locally grown foodand entertainment by local youth groupssinging and playing the traditionalMongolian violin — the horsehead fiddle.

Before leaving Mongolia, Paul pre-sented a seminar for the Mongolian Centerfor Human Rights and Development(CHRD), a public interest environmentallaw center protecting the rights of com-munities affected by resource development.The seminar focused on current legalactions to address damage to water sup-plies and grazing land caused by mines on the Tuul and Onggi river.

The U.S. segment of the exchangeprogram convened in November, two

led by a technical staff person from theNew Mexico Environment Department,which regulated the reclamation effort andis responsible for post-reclamation moni-toring and maintenance activities. ThePecos complex gave insight into what asite looks like 10–15 years after comple-tion of reclamation and taught participantsabout water collection and treatment,slope stabilization, revegetation, andstream diversion technologies. The Questasite tour was conducted by Chevron staff