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Meet a changing Mongolia.
Rivers are dry. Pastureland is giving way to mines. And wintertime smog obscures the famed blue sky.
It’s a story of internal migration and economic transformation in an era of climate change.Mongolians are migrating away from rural areas, seeking work elsewhere. And one of the places they're going is Ömnögovi, a mineral-rich province in the South Gobi, home to the mega-mining projects Tavan Tolgoi (coal) and the Oyu Tolgoi (gold, copper and silver).
Last winter, a report by UNICEF Mongolia deemed the situation a "child health crisis." In the past decade, the incidence of respiratory illness across Ulaanbaatar has increased 2.7-fold per 10,000 people.