Baigalmaa Zoljargal (ELP 2024) | Environmental and Social Managemenet Officer, German Financial Cooperation with Mongolia Biodiversity and Adapatation to Climate Change Project, Mongolia
In my opinion, our names carry deep meaning and stories. Understanding our namesakes can influence the direction of our life. My name is Baigalmaa, which is a combination of the words “Nature and Mother”. One month after I was born, the obstetrician came to my house to do a check-up. When she asked my parents for my name, they replied that they hadn't given me a name yet. The kind-hearted doctor suggested the name Baigalmaa, which in my language is a combination of the words “Nature” and “Mother”. This name and its meaning has shown me a way to shape my future work and life.
In Mongolia, where I grew up, it is common for younger generations to choose the same profession as their parents and family members, instead of defining their own goals. I was one of them! After graduating from high school, I followed my mother and grandfather's footsteps and majored in accounting at the University of Finance and Economics, Mongolia. I then studied to become a member of the Association of Chartered and Certified Accountants (ACCA).
I had a busy lifestyle and career, often spending more than 10 hours a day working on the computer. Then, three years ago, I gave birth to my daughter, Borte. Until that point, I did not think much about the air our children would breathe, what they would eat, and the environment they would live in the future.
Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia, has the fifth highest level of air pollution in the world. (National Geographic. “Kids suffer most in one of Earth's most polluted cities”)
When I take my child outside for fresh air, the main thing that I notice is that more than half of our country’s land is desertified and degraded. In fact, 76 percent of the entire territory of Mongolia has been affected by desertification and land degradation, while 56 percent of it is related to natural phenomena and 44 percent is related to human activities. (Montsame. “76.8 percent of Mongolian land suffers from desertification”). Learning this, I realized that we have to protect our natural areas and national parks. I decided I needed to make a change to become a dedicated environmentalist for our future generations.
As a new parent and with this new perspective, I decided to follow my intuition and join the environmental field. I applied to and began working on a “Biodiversity and Adaptation to Climate Change” project co-implemented by the Mongolian Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) and KfW Development Bank of Germany, which was a cooperation between the governments of Germany and Mongolia.
The objective of the project is to improve the efficiency and sustainable management of key areas (buffer zones, eco-corridors) of the protected area network of Mongolia, as well as to contribute to the development of new sources of sustainable livelihoods. The project stakeholders are the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, Protected Area Administrations, local authorities, and citizens.
As part of that project, a recent large effort I managed was a needs assessment of the protected area administrations involved in the project, which provides basic resources and research equipment. The first stage involved comparing the number of employees of protected area administrations approved by the Ministry of Environment and Tourism with the number of people actually working in protected area administrations, and they were classified by age, gender, and work responsibilities. Then I assessed the types, quantities, distribution, and purpose of the main equipment to be supplied, and conducted market price research. The direct result was that we were able to provide critical equipment to 700 employees of the 16 provincial protected area administrations involved in the project. This also enabled bigger changes: The environment and working conditions of protected area administrations, officials, employees, and conservationists of the Environment and Tourism Departments of the provinces involved in the project have improved. There is also greater implementation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Overall, there has been progress in the protection of the environment, biodiversity, and ecosystems, and it has had a positive impact on the development of sustainable management of natural resources in Mongolia. I hope that my contributions will reach our future generations.
Recently, I found out that the kind-hearted woman who gave me my name had a son, and he also followed the conservationist path. We are now working together in the great work of nature conservation, alongside others looking after Mother Nature.
[The blog post image was published on Wikimedia Commons. Original image by Yumjirdulamo. The copyright holder has published this consent under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.]