Dusty roads and disconnections: Perceptions of dust from unpaved mining roads in Mongolia’s South Gobi province

Geoforum 66 (2015) 94–105

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Dusty roads and disconnections: Perceptions of dust from unpaved mining roads in Mongolia’s South Gobi province Sara L. Jackson Metropolitan State University of Denver, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Campus Box 22, P.O. Box 173362, Denver, CO 80217-3362, United States

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 14 November 2014 Received in revised form 28 August 2015 Accepted 16 September 2015

Keywords: Dust Mining Roads Mongolia South Gobi province

a b s t r a c t South Gobi province is at the center of Mongolia’s mining boom, where companies began exporting minerals over dirt-track roads in the early 2000s. This paper examines recent controversies surrounding road dust near the Oyu Tolgoi copper–gold mine, the so-called coal road from Tavan Tolgoi mines, and the Chinese border. At the time of the research, local residents, particularly nomadic herders, were concerned that dust produced from unpaved mining roads was coating the pasture, causing illnesses among livestock, and endangering their livelihoods in the region. The presence of dust rendered mining an uncomfortably intimate experience as state and corporate actors negotiated responsibility for infrastructure development. The paper builds on the concept ‘‘technologies of distantiation” to reveal the complex ways that dust from unpaved roads creates distances and disconnections between people, livelihoods, and landscapes, representing an enclosure of the pasture. Methods for the paper include interviews, focus groups, and participant observation conducted in South Gobi province and Ulaanbaatar in 2010, 2011, and 2012 as well as follow-up research carried out in spring 2015. Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Before the mining boom, herders say the Gobi was clear and endless. Now, a fine dust coats the pasture near South Gobi province’s unpaved mining roads. As mining trucks speed across the pasture, fragile desert soils are ground to powder. Dust plumes rise behind trucks, momentarily blinding drivers and nearby herders, livestock, and wildlife. Everyone coughs—a symptom of ‘‘dust filled lungs” (uushig toosjikh). When livestock are slaughtered, their internal organs are discolored and plastic in texture. Herders throw these organs away and wonder what is happening to their own kidneys, livers, lungs, stomachs, and hearts. Dust encloses the pasture up to several kilometers from each unpaved road, forcing families to shrink herds as the amount of food livestock provide decreases with each discarded organ. As lines of dust cut across the pasture, unease circulates. Responsibility for paving the roads remains unsettled, and dust clouds the promises that mining brings development. —Fieldwork observations, 2011, 2012 But you know that [with] every development, before the development [there is] the dust. —Government Official, Ministry of Nature, Green Development, and Tourism, 2012

E-mail address: [email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.09.010 0016-7185/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Dust is a metaphor for the transition from the old to the new. —Paraphrased from a discussion with a former Rio Tinto Community Relations Representative, 2014.

1. Introduction Throughout Mongolia, patterns of interweaving unpaved roads are common. Unpaved roads fragment pasture and habitat, compact soil, increase water runoff, and remove surface soil, processes that scholars and herders argue harm Mongolia’s nomadic herding economy and wildlife (Sneath, 2003; Li et al., 2006; Damdinsuren et al., 2008; Keshkamat et al., 2012, 2013). A relatively large literature examines the sources and movements of Gobi dust (see Natsagdorj et al., 2003; Chung et al., 2005; Batjargal et al., 2006; Zhang et al., 2008; Lee and Sohn, 2011; Lee et al., 2012). The paragraph above illustrates how residents describe mining road dust in South Gobi province. Unpaved roads from multiple mines interlace across the desert as they race to the Chinese border. While recent efforts have paved some of these roads, during the height of construction from 2011 to 2012, unpaved roads raised serious concerns among local residents, particularly nomadic herders, who questioned their ability to remain in the area tending livestock as fine road dust infiltrated their daily lives.

S.L. Jackson / Geoforum 66 (2015) 94–105

Because of mining’s recent and rapid rise in Mongolia (see Jackson, 2015), potential consequences of dust from unregulated mining roads have yet to be addressed in the literature. While state and mining company officials at times argue dust is a sign of development, no one denies the profound impacts of dust on people and animals living in mine-affected areas. As unpaved roads penetrate and permeate Mongolia to facilitate mining development, trucks pulverize earth into dust that penetrates and permeates the lives of South Gobi residents. During fieldwork from 2011 to 2012, the Oyu Tolgoi copper–gold mine and Tavan Tolgoi coal deposits were at the heart of road dust controversies. The Landsat images below show increased road development near Oyu Tolgoi (see Figs. 1 and 2). Pedersen and Bunkenborg (2012) have explored how unpaved roads in eastern Mongolia act as ‘‘technologies of distantiation,” disconnecting local residents from Chinese oil company employees. Technologies of distantiation speak to broader questions of how people’s relationships to place are changing in Mongolia due to the growth of extractive industries. For example, how does the materiality of unpaved roads influence local residents’ perceptions of and relationships to place as industries expand? Building on Pedersen and Bunkenborg (2012), I argue that dust from unpaved mining roads also creates disconnections. Specifically, road dust brings local residents into intimate contact with processes driving Mongolia’s mining industries, distancing them from livelihoods and landscapes. As mining development expands, dust becomes political, emerging as a focus of anxieties about environmental and economic changes. Dust in South Gobi thus presents a compelling lens to examine tensions over mining development. To demonstrate how dust changes relationships to place, I elaborate on how the materiality of roads and particularly dust become technologies of distantiation with the power to transform how people relate to and understand place. Next, I discuss the state of road building in Mongolia, including why unpaved roads have proliferated in Mongolia’s mining corridors and how responsibility for paving mining roads in South Gobi remains contested. Then, I examine the local effects of road dust, including how dust shapes memories of the past, daily tasks, and health to illustrate how local residents describe dust as something that has transformed their relationships to place, often distancing them from their livelihoods. The material for my arguments is drawn from ten months of dissertation fieldwork in Mongolia conducted between 2010 and 2012, ongoing communications with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and company staff, and one month of follow-up research conducted in 2015. I focused on infrastructure development of the Oyu Tolgoi mine located in Khanbogd soum in South Gobi.1 While not initially on my research agenda, dust emerged consistently in discussions with participants, particularly following open-ended questions about memories of landscapes before mining and how mining has affected (nuluuluh) their livelihoods. The research timing is significant because it largely took place while infrastructure was under construction. From 2011 to 2013, eightyfour semi-structured interviews were conducted with key informants and thirty interviews were carried out in 2015. I made several short trips totaling one month to Khanbogd, and shorter visits to Dalanzadgad (South Gobi’s capital), soums surrounding Khanbogd in South Gobi (Bayanovoo, Manlai, Tsogttsetsii), and Khatanbulag in East Gobi. In South Gobi, I interviewed herders, soum center residents, local government officials, and mining company workers. In Ulaanbaatar, I interviewed company staff, consultants, government officials, former residents, and NGO leaders. I led four focus groups with residents in Khanbogd and other soums and one with young professionals in Ulaanbaatar. In addition, I conducted participant

1

A soum is an administrative district within an aimag (province).

95

Fig. 1. A Landsat image from 2000 of the Oyu Tolgoi site. The lines shown are from ephemeral streams. Data available from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Fig. 2. A Landsat image of the Oyu Tolgoi site from 2013. The lines illustrate increased truck traffic between soum centers, mines, and the border. Data available from the U.S. Geological Survey.

observation with NGOs active in the region, who advocate for regulation of mining to ensure nomadic herders’ rights to pasture resources. While in Ulaanbaatar, I also attended mining-related events and collected documents.

1.1. Roads and dust Numerous scholars argue that roads are designed to increase connectivity between the state and outlying populations, while integrating peripheral regions into the national economy (see

96

S.L. Jackson / Geoforum 66 (2015) 94–105

Waters, 1998, 2006; Thenevot, 2002; Williamson, 2003; Nyíri and Breidenbach, 2008; Kezer, 2009; Dalakoglou, 2010, 2012; Knox and Harvey, 2011). However, Pedersen and Bunkenborg (2012) recently challenged this idea that roads bring a sense of connection between people and places. They contend that ‘‘roads and other infrastructural artefacts do not only connect things; they also keep them apart” (Pedersen and Bunkenborg, 2012: 558). Roads built to move minerals, supplies, and labor between China and Mongolia maintain social distance between Chinese oil company employees and local residents in eastern Mongolia, while at the same time ‘‘curb the quantity and the quality of interactions taking place between Mongolians and Chinese” (Pedersen and Bunkenborg, 2012: 558). This distance, they suggest, suits the interests of both Mongolian and Chinese leaders. In addition to keeping people apart through social distance, scholars argue that the materiality of roads themselves can create disconnections (Thomas, 2002; Wilson, 2004; Harvey, 2005; Harvey and Knox, 2008, 2012; Campbell, 2012). This scholarship demonstrates how unpaved roads distance people from the promises of the state and development, detrimentally transforming spaces of daily life as travel is made rough and difficult over bumpy and muddy roads. Thus as Virilio (1977/2006: 30) asks ‘‘Can asphalt be a political territory?” we must consider how the mud, dirt, and dust from unpaved roads are political in the ways that they disconnect people not only from the promises of development, but also change how people relate to place. Pedersen and Bunkenborg (2012: 558) see extractive industry roads as ‘‘carefully crafted social tools that ensure that people can remain minimally connected over time.” But in South Gobi where roads are unpaved, these ‘‘social tools” also produce dust. The dust creates distances between people, their livelihoods, and sense of place, while revealing the effects of unplanned infrastructure, crudely crafted to ensure profits through speedy extraction. In essence, what road dust creates is an unintentional form of enclosure. While geographers and political ecologists argue that new forms of enclosure proliferate in the global economy (see Harvey, 2003; Peluso and Lund, 2011), dust remains an under examined consequence of development within the broader context of land privatization that socializes environmental costs. There are serious implications for people whose livelihoods and ‘‘environmental imaginaries” (Watts and Peet, 1996/2004) of place are eroded by dust. Not only do roads frame how people understand transformations of place (Thenevot, 2002), but dust itself erects new boundaries, delimiting how space is used and how people imagine their futures. A large literature examines the origins and global reach of Gobi dust (see Natsagdorj et al., 2003; Chung et al., 2005; Zhang et al., 2008; Judger et al., 2011; Lee and Sohn, 2011; Lee et al., 2012), demonstrating how widespread issues related to dust pre-date mining in the region. Scholars often characterize land use policies in China and overgrazing in Mongolia as key sources of Gobi dust storms (see Batjargal et al., 2006; Zhang et al., 2008; Lee and Sohn, 2011; see also Humphrey and Sneath, 1999; Liu et al., 2013). However, numerous scholars are critical of arguments that attribute dust storms and desertification solely to anthropogenic sources (see Sternberg et al., 2009; Marin, 2010; Addison et al., 2012; Sternberg, 2010, 2012). For example, Sternberg et al. (2015), have recently argued that the Gobi’s borders and drought conditions are variable and that the desert is not necessarily undergoing a linear process of expansion and drying out as previously thought. Furthermore, they contend that climate change will likely bring increasing variability to the region. Nonetheless, impacts of road dust remain under examined. According to Oyu Tolgoi’s Environmental Social Impact Assessment (ESIA), their unpaved roads produce particles that are between 1 and 100 l, similar to the range of particle sizes found in dust storms

(see Goudie and Middleton, 2006).2 However, as Goudie and Middleton (2006) suggest, dust storms closer to source regions (such as the Gobi) tend to have larger particle sizes and that the farther away from the source, the smaller the size of the particles. Yet the small particles of road dust are what residents identify as the problem. Thus, while the Gobi dust literature provides historical and environmental context for the region’s dustiness, the analyses take place at too broad a scale to consider local perceptions. While it is beyond the methods of this paper to examine the physical properties and impacts of road dust, we can understand the meanings dust carries and how it defines and transforms place and livelihoods. For example, scholars differentiate dirt and dust through indoor and outdoor spaces by drawing on Douglas’s (1966: 2) contention that ‘‘dirt is essentially disorder” to argue that purging dust from indoor spaces symbolizes ideals of cleanliness and visibility (see Amato, 2000; Fine and Hallett, 2003; Kennedy, 2005). However, outdoor spaces require different distinctions. Outside, Amato (2000) argues, dirt represents fertility and dust represents sterility. Dirt in its kinship to earth and soil suggests rootedness in place. However, dust is essentially placeless, easily transported by the wind. In both indoor and outdoor spaces, sweeping redistributes dust, making it something that can never be fully controlled or contained (see Amato, 2000; Fine and Hallett, 2003; Dunham, 2004; Tanner, 2006). While dirt carries an affectation of naturalness, Kennedy (2005) argues dust is an undesirable effect of modern technology and aesthetics. In South Gobi, definitions of dust as freely moving in the air and dirt as rooted in the earth are interlinked with perceptions of pasture health and economic survival. For example, a herder-led NGO involved in protests against environmental degradation is called Gobi Gazar, translated as ‘‘Gobi Soil” in English.3 Thus the NGO name reflects the aim of the herders—a regional claim and responsibility to protect soil from mining. Dust also marks boundaries in time and space (Holmes, 2001; Broecker, 2002; Dunham, 2004), including cultural changes that coincide with economic development. For example, Amato (2000) suggests that the Industrial Revolution’s dusts represented development. ‘‘It increasingly became the soot, ash, and smoke that early industrialists declared signs of progress, rather than the soil and pollen of ages past” (Amato, 2000: 89–90). Building on Amato, Fine and Hallett (2003) argue that dust not only marks social boundaries but also creates social distances. They contend that women’s roles became defined by dust in modern homes, that dust defined social classes in industrial cities, and that cleanliness became a national symbol for ‘‘American” and dirtiness a symbol of ‘‘undesirable” others (see also Dunham, 2004). In South Gobi, dust rising behind herds of livestock and wildlife, soot from stoves, fluff from sheared sheep and camels, and snuff are natural dusts. These dusts symbolize livelihoods in the desert associated with nomadic herding, whereas fine dust from roads symbolizes development and enclosure. The size of dust particles also produces anxiety as it invades intimate spaces. Kennedy (2005: 2–3) suggests that dust threatens to contaminate domestic spaces as a ‘‘paradoxical ‘invasion’ from within” while unknown qualities of dust render it threatening (Amato, 2000). However, as Worster (1979/2004) contends, the threat of the Dust Bowl was in its power to overwhelm not only the environment and domestic duties, but also to penetrate bodies. Dust pneumonia and suffocated livestock were symptoms of this

2 Oyu Tolgoi (2012: 3) states, ‘‘Particles less than 10 lg/m3 (PM10) in diameter can pose human health risks. For instance, when inhaled, particles between 2.5 and 10 lg/ m3 in diameter are deposited in the trachea and bronchial sections of the lung, while particles with diameters less than 2.5 lg/m3 lodge in the alveolar region of the human lung.” 1 lg/m3 equal 1 lm. 3 Gazar can also be translated as place, land, or earth.

S.L. Jackson / Geoforum 66 (2015) 94–105

97

invasion, not unlike the silicosis that plagues miners (see Hart, 1998; Kinnear, 2001; Penrose, 2011). Thus dust generates feelings of disconnection and distance from healthy bodies and landscapes, as dust is perceived to negatively affect the physical condition of people and livestock. Dust resists fixity, exposes and subverts order (Dunham, 2004), and becomes political through its production along unpaved roads and through its power to transform place. The dust literature conceptualizes how mining trucks pulverize soil into something abstract and invasive as it penetrates daily spaces of memory, activity, and health, creating boundaries between spaces and temporalities of herding and mining. Thus exploring road dust as a particular kind of dust focuses our attention on a miniscule and often taken-for-granted consequence of global forces that transforms the environment and relationships to place. Furthermore, dust turns our attention to how politics of extractive industries are played out through road building in ways that are not as carefully crafted as Pedersen and Bunkenborg (2012) have suggested. Fig. 3. Interweaving unpaved roads in central Mongolia. Photo taken in 2009 by the author.

2. The politics of Mongolia’s unpaved roads The politics of unpaved roads in Mongolia demonstrate both how road dust is a common occurrence and how road dust is produced through complex political economic relationships between the state, international organizations, and mining companies. Throughout Mongolia, unpaved roads are common and road dust is normal, which is clearly illustrated in a popular MongolianEnglish dictionary. A sentence demonstrating the meaning of dust (toos) includes ‘‘the car raised clouds of dust as it went down the dirt road” (mashin shoroon zamaar oronguutaa toos manargav) (Altangerel, 2002: 231). The link between ‘‘to raise clouds of dust” (toos manargakh) with ‘‘going down a dirt road” (shoroon zamaar) demonstrates the mundane quality of road dust. Yet road dust can also be understood through recent road building that parallels the political economic transformations Mongolia has undergone to enter the global economy (see Figs. 3 and 4). After Mongolia’s departure from the Soviet sphere in 1990, road building expanded. Road construction companies were privatized, and from 1992 to 2009, the total length of paved roads increased from 1250 km to 2830 km (ADB, 2011). Since 2005, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank (WB) have supported the Mongolian government’s efforts to build ‘‘a formal system of paved roads across the country as a means of social and economic connectivity” (Keshkamat et al., 2013: 435). The state, supported by international institutions, seeks to increase national mobility and connectivity to deepen the expansion of the market economy and increase mobility throughout Mongolia. However, paving roads has been slow and expensive. After almost 20 years of increased road building, by 2009, only 5.4% of Mongolia’s roads were paved. Nonetheless, road paving has greatly increased throughout the country over the last five years as more paved roads radiate from Ulaanbaatar, connecting the provincial centers as well as many soum centers. Despite the rapid increase in mineral exports since the early 2000s, during my fieldwork from 2011 to 2012, the only paved road was the Energy Resources road (paved in 2011), which at the time charged high tolls. Thus, for over a decade, hundreds of mineral-laden trucks drove across the Gobi each day on unpaved and often unimproved roads. Until recently, mining roads remained largely incidental to the state’s road-paving plans. The Mongolian national transportation development strategy calls for 11,000 km of roads to be paved by 2021 to connect the provincial centers to each other, Ulaanbaatar, and to the Russian and Chinese borders (Bayarkhuul, 2011). The project entails a 400% increase in the length of Mongolia’s paved national highway system, at an estimated cost of US$1.9 billion

Fig. 4. An eroded paved road in central Mongolia. Photo taken in 2009 by the author.

(ADB, 2011). The most recent critique from the ADB (2011) argues that this plan is overly ambitious due to the state’s neglect of deteriorating roads. Many of the nation’s paved roads are in need of repair, as only 20% of needed road repairs are being made due to limited budgets (less than 0.2% of GDP) and human resources (ADB, 2011). According to the government, the roads for mineral exports must be paved and maintained by mining companies, as coal-exporting trucks are not permitted on the national highway system (Bayarkhuul, 2011). However, the state does allow copper exports on national highways, and Oyu Tolgoi’s export road (paved in 2014), is an extension of the national highway system. The state has made some progress towards its goals, paving almost 3000 km of roads in 2012, over 1800 km in 2013, and over 800 km in 2014. In 2014, Mongolia spent over 40 billion tugriks4 on road repairs (Ministry of Roads and Transportation, 2014). Furthermore, Energy Resources has greatly reduced its tolls and Oyu Tolgoi has paved its road to the border and planning to pave the road connecting Khanbogd soum center to the mine. These investments have paid off in South Gobi. In 2015, local residents and NGO leaders expressed satisfaction that some efforts had been made to reduce 4

In mid-2014, 1 USD was worth about 1800 MNT (tugrik).

98

S.L. Jackson / Geoforum 66 (2015) 94–105

dust through the newly paved roads and tolls (interviews and personal communications). International financial institutions are also involved in the development of the transportation network. Mongolia’s lack of paved roads and the potential for economic development and national integration through transportation infrastructure to export minerals are the subject of several ADB and WB reports (ADB, 2011; WB, 1999, 2009). Although railroads are recommended for the largest coal mines, WB (1999), ADB (2011) argue that smaller mines will continue to rely on roads because their shipments are too small and short-lived to justify a railroad. Therefore, ADB (2011: vi) argues that ‘‘Mongolia’s road sector can be an engine of [prosperity and poverty reduction], depending on how fast it can adjust to a new context that requires it to perform more, better, and faster.” Road building is framed as a national integration and development project. However, not only does the road network itself need to be extended, but also the quality and materiality of the roads need to be improved to transport minerals to foreign markets and ‘‘to connect the country in a way that fosters broad-based economic growth” (ADB, 2011: vi). Here, paved roads are discursively linked to the potential development of the nation’s economy and the integration of peripheral areas into the market economy. Simultaneously, the report argues that lacking the capacity to achieve its goals, the state cannot develop the nation and solve the challenges that road dust poses to people living in mine-affected areas. To increase the mobility of Mongolia’s mineral resources, ADB (2011) makes several recommendations to change government institutions and focus on improvements in heavy traffic areas, particularly South Gobi’s mining corridors. The report assumes external actors are willing to risk investing in mining-related transportation infrastructure. Although the strategy proposes government oversight of road construction by private companies, ADB argues that major mines, such as Oyu Tolgoi and Tavan Tolgoi, can generate sufficient revenues and traffic for the private sector to finance the construction and maintenance of access roads and rail links . . . . The role of the government is central to coordinating development, granting and monitoring road concessions, or constructing the roads and recovering the costs from the main users. [ADB, 2011: 6] Here, a coordinating role is proposed for the government. However, the focus on South Gobi’s road infrastructure marks a strong departure from the WB’s 1999 report, which recommended a southwest railroad from Tavan Tolgoi to Sainshand, but placed highest priority on national integration and economic growth through road development in western Mongolia. Thus international institutions’ suggestions reflect broader changes in infrastructure construction since the late 1990s. ADB’s focus on building state capacity is also striking, considering the institution’s role in radical restructuring in the government sector to pave the way for free-market reforms. Moreover, Sneath (2003) argues international institutions often describe Mongolia’s lack of paved roads after its first decade of capitalism as a policy failure. However, he contends that these institutions funded consultants, conferences, and workshops to generate knowledge products that fueled debates instead of financing much more costly infrastructure projects. The lack of institutional self-reflection is evident in more recent reports. For example, the 2011 ADB report does not comment on its role in decreasing government capacity in the 1990s. Yet ADB’s recommendations to increase national budgets to improve and coordinate road building imply a role for the state in alleviating transportation issues—including dust. Nonetheless, despite international financial institutions’ recommendations and the National Road Authority strategy, responsibility for road

building remained contested during Oyu Tolgoi’s construction phase. 2.1. Mining road construction coordination While efforts to pave roads follow the pattern of increasing connections between people, places, and the state, contestations over paving mining roads in South Gobi show how unpaved roads and road dust create disconnections. Notwithstanding calls to pave more roads to facilitate national unity and economic growth, South Gobi province has witnessed an increase in the number of unpaved mining roads since Oyu Tolgoi’s construction phase. At the heart of debates about paving mining roads is a tension between state and corporate actors over responsibility for addressing the negative consequences of mining. Bunker and Ciccantell (2005) argue that developing countries are often coerced into investing in transportation infrastructure to lure mining industries. In such situations, exporting countries assume the costs of infrastructure development, weakening states’ bargaining positions, decreasing rents from extraction, and increasing foreign debts while decreasing corporate costs. However, the Mongolian state has taken a different approach. According to the government, each mining company is responsible for building its own transportation infrastructure (Bayarkhuul, 2011). In eastern Mongolia, government officials told Pedersen and Bunkenborg (2012) that they wanted the Chinese oil company to pave its own roads. Similarly, in South Gobi, a retired Khanbogd soum official said that because Rio Tinto will make billions of dollars from Oyu Tolgoi, the company should be willing to pave more roads to reduce the amount of dust that local residents must tolerate (interview 2012). Although all stakeholders agree that companies and the state should coordinate to reduce the number of unpaved mining roads, many environmental and political challenges have impeded the development of permanent transportation infrastructure. For example, on Oyu Tolgoi’s less frequented roads that will remain unpaved, water is sprayed to reduce dust. However, as an environmental consultant suggested, is using limited water resources for dust suppression the best use of resources (interview 2011)? According to Oyu Tolgoi’s environmental staff, this question poses a great challenge for the company. Although there is little space to go into detail about water-related issues, Oyu Tolgoi’s water usage is extremely controversial. When discussing construction of the road for the Gunii Hooloi aquifer pipeline and pumping stations, a staff member remarked that dust is largely temporary. We do try to manage it at least in key areas where you might have local residents with water dust suppression. The main effective solution is to actually put proper gravel down. But even then there’s still a certain amount of dust that comes off a gravel road. So we continue to try and manage that in the key areas where people live nearby. The remoter areas, we just can’t use that much water. And dust might travel 100 meters away from the road, but then it settles back down. If. . .nothing is impacted in that zone, you just try to manage it with good grading and speed control. Still there’s some dust. And during the construction period, there’s quite a lot of vehicles. It’s the peak usage period. But during operations, there will be maybe two vehicles a day. [interview 2011] Here, dust is presented as a temporary issue. Furthermore, according to Oyu Tolgoi staff and consultants as well as several government officials, dust from Oyu Tolgoi should not be the focus of concern as much as the region’s most heavily traveled unpaved road, the coal road.

S.L. Jackson / Geoforum 66 (2015) 94–105

The so-called coal road is major source of complaint. It is an unpaved road that runs from the Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi coal mine in Tsogttsetsii soum to the Chinese border crossing at Gushuun Sukhait (colloquially known as Tsagaan Had). Every day, hundreds of coal-bearing trucks race down unpaved roads to the Chinese border (see images below). When old tracks become too bumpy, drivers create new roads, generating the interlacing patterns found throughout the Mongolian countryside, but at a much greater scale. To address dust and safety concerns, the Australian-run and Mongolian-owned Energy Resources’ coal mine, also operating from Tavan Tolgoi, completed a paved toll-road to the border in late 2011. The toll in 2012 was approximately 200,000 tugriks (US $150) per one-way trip for trucks and 20,000 tugriks (US $15) per one-way trip for passenger cars. Because the tolls were so high, only Energy Resources’ trucks drove on the road, only alleviating some of the traffic burden on the unpaved roads. However, when Khanbogd soum’s former governor became head of South Gobi’s environment department, he negotiated with Energy Resources to reduce the toll and now many more trucks and passenger vehicles use the road. Nonetheless, some residents, NGOs, and mining company staff and consults contend that many mining trucks continue to drive on the unpaved coal road (see Figs. 5–8). While Bunker and Ciccantell (2005) argue that someone must build infrastructure to move minerals, the physical characteristics of South Gobi decrease incentives to pave roads. Because the terrain is relatively flat and lacks dense vegetation, drivers can create new tracks. Thus mining transportation in South Gobi mirrors the all-terrain vehicle tracks that Virilio (1977/2006: 78) argues escape ‘‘the old linear trajectories of the road or railway,” creating new geometries of speed (of mining) with potentially devastating consequences—dust. Although Oyu Tolgoi has graded roads with gravel and in select locations sprays roads with water, residents argue that these improved roads still release dust. In 2012, Oyu Tolgoi stated in ESIA documents that its road to the border would be paved before exports began (Oyu Tolgoi, 2012). However, when exports began in July 2013, the road remained unpaved. NGOs submitted a letter of complaint to the Mongolian government and to Oyu Tolgoi that the export road must be paved to reduce social and environmental impacts from the heavy trucks and traffic.5 The road was finally paved in 2014. Recently, a staff member suggested that in retrospect the company should have paved the roads before construction (interview 2015). Nonetheless, many staff members, consultants, and government officials argue that the dust is generally wrongly attributed to Oyu Tolgoi, because it is an easy target as Mongolia’s most famous mine. Although local herder groups and truck drivers blockaded the coal road in protest for several days in September 2012, they failed to induce the government and companies to pave the roads at that time. Critics argue that companies and government are slow to react to the immediate implications of unpaved roads—namely dust. Their slow reaction times are juxtaposed against the speed with which mining development took place from 2010 to 2012. Thus, political tensions and economic decisions that leave roads unpaved suggest that dust is not only a sign of development, but also a sign of negative political and environmental effects of mining that disconnect local residents from place and livelihoods.

3. Dusty effects During my fieldwork in South Gobi from 2011 to 2012, most of the roads that connected mines to soum centers, to Ulaanbaatar, and to the Chinese border remained unpaved. Residents living in 5 See http://en.minewatch.mn/2013/07/submission-of-a-demand-by-the-undersigned-ngos/.

99

the soum centers, namely herders and Oyu Tolgoi contract workers, frequently discussed how dust infiltrated their gers6 and their bodies, while threatening livestock health. Men and women, elderly and young, discussed similar concerns about the effects of dust, which functioned as constant reminders mining development. Before coal and copper mining began, the local economy focused on nomadic herding of camel, sheep, and goats, and ephemeral rivers fed local springs and seasonal ponds. Nomadic herders typically migrate four times a year, but because of the roads, dust, and limited water resources, many have reduced their migrations to only twice a year and greatly reduced the distances they travel. When I asked about the influence of mining on their livelihoods and what their lives were like before mining, local residents frequently discussed their memories of the pasture, how daily routines have changed, and their health concerns (see Figs. 9 and 10). 3.1. Dustless memories Dust creates boundaries not only between present and future visions of livelihoods and landscapes, but also with the past. Residents’ memories of a less dusty life before mining illustrate how dust disrupts a sense of belonging to place. Lunstrum (2010: 132, author’s emphasis) argues that memories in spaces of daily routine can be ‘‘a fertile political reservoir for place-maintaining.” Road dust provokes both a sense of loss and nostalgia for life before political and economic changes brought mining to South Gobi. Recalling landscapes, which had a different kind of dustiness, allowed residents to articulate how feelings of dislocation have accompanied intensified mining development. When I asked people living in areas affected by road dust about memories before mining expanded, they often described the look of the landscape. A former herder (who now works for Oyu Tolgoi) and a herder he was visiting camped near Oyu Tolgoi discussed the limitless appearance of the Gobi before the roads. Worker: You could say there was boundless desert wherever you looked, and camels were grazing. You could say it was a beautiful place. Right now . . . I remember it. Now, wherever you look, you see vehicles bringing a lot of dust. Herder: Yes, that is right. We had water, lakes, plants, and neighbors, and the steppe was full of animals grazing. Now, it is full of dust. Animals are forced to share a small area of pasture since the pasture is bounded, and it is impossible to cross the rest of the pasture due to drilled holes everywhere. [interview 2012] Before the mining roads and un-reclaimed exploration holes, the Gobi is remember as a place without limit, and people could herd many more animals. This is not to say that there was no dust in the past, but that mining-related vehicles are perceived to produce a new kind of dustiness. Furthermore, due to roads and dust, the competition for herding space has increased—something about which herders and Oyu Tolgoi agree. Furthermore, nature is now framed, or in this case sliced, by roads. Contrary to socialist-era visions that created new material and symbolic spaces for herding (see Bruun, 2006), local residents contend that mining infrastructure materially reduces spaces for livestock. Along with contemporary perceptions of decreasing water resources, dust forces herders to decrease their herd sizes. The mining roads and the dust they produce erect boundaries around the pasture, and herders try to avoid areas now cut by roads. Remembered nostalgically as boundless, mines and roads from mines to the border and Ulaanbaatar now define the pasture. Dust thus represents an enclosure of the pasture, redrawing and delimiting spaces for herding. 6

Traditional felt tents also known as yurts.

100

S.L. Jackson / Geoforum 66 (2015) 94–105

Fig. 5. The coal road between Tsogttsetsii and Khanbogd, fall 2011. Photo by the author.

Fig. 6. A toll station between Tsogttsetsii and Bayanovoo on Energy Resources’ road while under construction, fall 2011. Photo by the author. Fig. 8. Landsat photo from February 21, 2015 showing the unpaved coal road running west of Oyu Tolgoi to the Chinese border.

Fig. 7. Driving towards the Chinese border on Oyu Tolgoi’s unpaved road, spring 2012. The road is now paved. Photo by the author.

Participants also attribute dwindling wildlife populations to dust. A herder camped between Oyu Tolgoi and the coal road described how he remembers the landscape. There were wild animals like zeer (gazelle), khulan (wild ass) and argali (wild sheep) running and raising dust in this area. There were no vehicles driving around creating this much noise and dust. Now, these wild animals are gone. The pasture was fine and it was not covered with dust. It was really nice. [interview 2012]

Here, the contrast between natural dust from animals and mechanical dust from vehicles demonstrates the changing qualities of dust. The different means of producing dust create qualitatively different dusts that shape how place is imagined. While a staff member recently described the unused and relatively undisturbed areas of the Oyu Tolgoi license as a kind of biodiversity conservation area for gazelle and wild ass (interview 2015), during construction, decreases in wildlife were attributed to new dustiness and noises, influencing memories. Many herders argue that mining and herding are incompatible, and scholars have identified a discourse that herding activities maintain Mongolia’s natural landscapes (Fernandez-Gimenez, 2000; Upton, 2010). In urban Mongolia, Marin (2008) argues that herders are simultaneously viewed with disdain for their coarse lifestyle and respected as the bearers of the national culture. At a 2012 World Environment Day forum in Ulaanbaatar, a Mongolian scholar described herders as the nation’s ‘‘cultural immune system” who must be protected. Furthermore, programs such as The Nature Conservancy grassland conservation program rely on traditional herding methods7 to maintain the grasslands in eastern Mongolia (interview 2012). Descriptions, such as the one above, evoke bucolic images of the past with more ecologically diverse landscapes. Yet, Gobi dust is endemic and produced locally by natural and human-made processes. Nonetheless, the contrast between

7 The definition of ‘‘traditional” lifestyles is often debated among Mongolian academics, civil society, and the state. Commercial livestock herding is sometimes considered not traditional. The state defines traditional herding as four migrations per year (interviews 2012). See Sneath, 2003, 2010; Humphrey and Sneath, 1999.

S.L. Jackson / Geoforum 66 (2015) 94–105

101

maintaining cleanliness inside gers. Before heading out to round up her livestock with her young child, a herder camped near Khanbogd soum center described how road dust changed her daily routine. The pasture around here is destroyed due to vehicles running back and forth. Drivers drive anywhere, but the roads destroy all the plants . . . . The wind blows here in South Gobi from the northwest. There is a road over there, and its dust comes here. Now, they go right outside the ger. This road was not here before. Now, the road is right in front of the ger door. In the morning I dust my home and in the evening it becomes dusty again. [interview 2012]

Fig. 9. Khanbogd soum center on a clear day. Photo by the author, fall 2011.

Fig. 10. Tracks and footprints on a dirt road in Khanbogd soum center. Photo by the author from fall 2011.

images of the past and the present also demonstrate how road dust is a temporal as well as geographic boundary between institutions and infrastructure that support nomadic herding and those that support mining. The dust signifies changing visions of land use that are perceived to materially exclude nomadic herders as unpaved mining roads proliferate. Dust thus marks boundaries of change as dust from livestock and wildlife evokes fertile landscapes while dust from vehicles suggests the increasing sterility of the pasture as mining dominates local life.

3.2. Dusting Dust also transforms relationships to spaces of daily life, providing a means for people to identify changes in the landscape and place. For example, dust infiltrates indoor spaces, transforming types of work and redefining gender and class relations. Despite the prevalence of dust in South Gobi before the mining boom, local residents consider fine road dust ‘‘out of place” (Fine and Hallett, 2003: 3, cf. Douglas, 1966), affecting women’s duties that include

Located downwind from the major mining roads,8 the herder connects the increase in mining traffic with destruction of vegetation and increased housework. As was the case for women living in Kansas during the Dust Bowl, she has ‘‘to address the problems associated with the dirt” (Weller, 1995: 215) inside and outside the home. Furthermore, there is no way to ‘‘seal out” the dust (see Worster, 1979/2003). Hence, dust becomes not only a noun, but also a verb (see Cook et al., 2011; Fine and Hallett, 2003) integrated into daily routines. Road dust, as something miniscule and uncontrollable inside her home, becomes a metaphor for changes mining brings to place including new challenges brought to those living in the region. Dust plays a similar role in transforming spaces of work in urban contexts. When I asked an urban professional who is a former Khanbogd resident about dust, she described memories of a less dusty past and that growing up in South Gobi she did not have to dust. It annoys her that she has to dust her office and home in Ulaanbaatar every day and she sees dusting as a new activity in her life. Her sister runs a shop in Khanbogd, where at the time of the interview unpaved roads were thick with dust.9 She told me how her sister jokes that dust is another mining commodity. My younger sister runs a small convenience store in South Gobi. She has to clean the dust every morning, otherwise it would be too dusty to sell her products. There is a funny story about that. Some important Oyu Tolgoi officials came to her store to buy some things. They noticed the products were covered with lots of dust. When they complained about the dust on a product, she said, ‘‘Well, gold and copper are not the only things we have here in the Gobi, we have some dust too.” [interview 2012] This story reveals two important details about dust. The first is that her sister’s workload increased because of the dust. She must dust every day, but even that is not enough to please some customers. Second, dust is another product of mining development. Here, I refer to product in two senses of the word—as something created and something to sell. She reminded the company officials that mining does more than just produce copper and gold. This dual production of dust mirrors Amato’s (2000) analysis of dust’s explanatory power that reveals how the Industrial Revolution transformed spaces. While dust was swept into ‘‘the gutters and margins of urban experience,” it also ‘‘revealed what society made and consumed” (Amato, 2000: 90). Dust represents the leavings, or as Latour (2005) would call them, the tracings of mineral extraction that not only demonstrate negative impacts of mining, but also serve as daily reminders of how the effects of mines outlast their operations, often leaving local economies with little more than dust that renders land infertile. While state and 8 The herder was camped east of Oyu Tolgoi and near the road to Oyu Tolgoi. Bonilla and Neeti (2013) found that areas located southeast of South Gobi’s major mining areas experience the highest incidence of dust. 9 Some of the roads in the soum center have since been paved.

102

S.L. Jackson / Geoforum 66 (2015) 94–105

mining interests promote Mongolia’s mineral wealth, local residents experience dust as a by-product of development. Living with dust marks a socioeconomic boundary between those living in proximity to mining roads and those who live elsewhere and profit directly from the exploitation of minerals. Furthermore, examples of dusting demonstrate how indoor dust marks gendered boundaries and creates social distances, distinguishing life before and after the expansion of unpaved mining roads. 3.3. Dust in lungs The most controversial effects of road dust in South Gobi are on the health of people and livestock. Difficulty breathing near roads and discolored livestock organs were signs of health problems that local residents attributed to dust from unpaved roads. While the visible presence of dust reminded people of the mining boom, the invisible effects were described as far more intrusive and detrimental to their livelihoods. A young herder from Khanbogd described his problems breathing when he stayed with a family located near one of the busier roads. Because of the dust, there is air pollution, and the grass is ruined. Grass is supposed to be green, but along the road, it looks gray. I spent a night at one of those ails (families) along the road while I was herding my livestock. I could not sleep there because I was coughing really hard from the dust. My nostrils were full of dust. [focus group 2011] He describes a transformed landscape and difficulty breathing and sleeping because of dust, reflecting a larger pattern of dust-related respiratory issues. For example, Worster (1979/2003) describes how storms during the Dust Bowl caused silicosis—a disease generally associated with miners working in unventilated mining shafts (see Hart, 1998; Kinnear, 2001; Penrose, 2011). And local residents are concerned that fine dust from the roads harms their respiratory systems. While scholars such as Tserenchimed (see Fig. 11) are now focusing more attention on the effects of dust on livestock health (personal communication, 2015; see also Tsetsegmaa, 2004), little has been published on potential long-term health effects of road dust on populations living in South Gobi. Claims that road dust causes illnesses in humans and livestock remain largely unsubstantiated by public health institutions. The Mongolian National Veterinary Center published a brief report on preliminary research results of an analysis of livestock ‘‘dust-filled lung” illnesses (uushig toosjikh) from major mining areas in South Gobi. However, the report focuses more attention on coal dust than road dust (see Orgil et al., 2011)10. Dust is also perceived to affect food resources. For example, an Oyu Tolgoi service worker told me that livestock near mining roads cannot fatten up enough for the winter (interview 2011). Many herders said that they travel much farther to reach clearer pasture, which depletes livestock’s fat reserves. At the same time, herders argue that available pasture overall is shrinking because of road dust. The most frequent concern about the dust was the changes observed in the internal organs of livestock. An elderly herder described the situation. It is too dusty here. Animals are eating plants that are covered with dust. For example, their lungs are sick, and the dust is affecting the other internal organs as well. When we butcher our animals to eat, we can see that their lungs are not healthy.

10 For research on health effects of Gobi dust outside Mongolia, see Bennett et al., 2006.

It is obvious that they eat and drink dust—as do people. We breathe the same air, so our lungs are not healthy, either. This spring, our eyes hurt. People’s and animals’ eyes hurt. People’s and animals’ lungs hurt too. Of course, they hurt since they eat dusty grass that was ground down by trucks. It affects us greatly. [interview 2012] Her description of the illness affecting livestock, particularly during Mongolia’s windiest season (spring), is similar to the results of the preliminary study by Orgil et al. (2011) that cites coal mining road dust as a cause of illness. Local residents reported other effects on internal organs including black spots, unusual colors, a plastic-like texture, and lungs filled with liquid. Temporary blindness also occurs when fine dust particles cling to moist eyelashes. These perceptions of dust affecting livestock and human health are widespread among local residents. With limited scientific investigation, the cause of livestock illnesses remains debatable. In interviews with a wildlife expert from an international conservation organization and a Khanbogd official with the Ministry of Agriculture, both suggested caution when making causal links between health problems and dust. The wildlife expert argued that the black lung in livestock is a ‘‘scare factor” and that ‘‘These are ever present in people’s minds, and it becomes attributed to things that may have other causes” (interview 2012). Similar to Australia’s experience with mining-related dust diseases in the early 20th century, the dust from South Gobi’s mining roads has a status as a hazard ‘‘in the absence of medical or scientific consensus regarding the nature and exact causes of dust-related illnesses” (Kinnear, 2001: 66). Although the wildlife expert does not deny that livestock have health problems, she argued that not enough research has been conducted to establish the causes of internal organ discolorations. Thus, as with experiences in Australia and the United States, the social and political context may push the Mongolian government and medical community to legitimate the claims of local residents that mining-related dust causes health problems. The soum official with the Ministry of Agriculture expanded on why the understudied effects of dust contribute to a sense of distrust of mining. There’s nothing scientific, but herders have identified some symptoms . . . . It has nothing to do with Oyu Tolgoi . . . . It is Tavan Tolgoi and Tsagaan Khad.11 The dust is from those coal mining areas. Herders have a hypothesis that the dust is causing livestock diseases . . . . It will stop when the dirt roads become paved roads. [interview 2012] The official reflects Keshkamat et al.’s (2012) contention that paved roads will improve pasture health and herders’ livelihoods. Although the official defends Oyu Tolgoi, despite their many unpaved roads at the time, he blames the coal mines. Nonetheless, beyond the symbolism of the road, the dust itself becomes an explanation for the problems faced by herders. Few efforts to study mining’s impacts are reflected in Oyu Tolgoi’s Environmental Social Impact Assessments.12 While Oyu Tolgoi (2012) describes dust particle size and effects on human health, the reports do not mention livestock health.13 Their studies of dust are also limited to areas 11 Coal companies, such as South Gobi Sands and Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi, stockpile coal at the Chinese border crossing. 12 Mongolian and foreign academics who study climate change and vegetation argue that it is too early to tell how mining will affect desertification and particular species of plants, including dust from roads, tailings, and open pits (personal communications, 2012). For research on health and safety of mine workers in Mongolia, see Lkhasuren (2012). 13 The potential impacts of road dust are more significant on livestock and wildlife than people because animals breathe in settled fine dust particles while foraging.

S.L. Jackson / Geoforum 66 (2015) 94–105

103

Fig. 11. Images show photomicrography of livestock lymph nodes with silicosis. A. is normal, B., C., and D. contain dust or glacial silicate materials. Images provided by and used with permission from S. Tserenchimed.

surrounding the mine lease and not along major roads of complaint, such as the road between the mine and the Khanbogd soum center. Oyu Tolgoi argues that these areas did not have high enough population densities to warrant study. Yet scholars have found that since decollectivization, herders now camp closer to roads and soum centers, where they have better access to services and markets (Fernandez-Gimenez, 1999; Sankey et al., 2012). An environmental consultant for Oyu Tolgoi suggested that people should not camp and allow their livestock to graze so close to roads. However, due to limited pasture and water resources, many herders find themselves camping not only closer to the roads but also nearer to each other as densities of human and livestock populations increase around available resources. Despite a lack of consensus on the effects of dust, decreasing pasture and unhealthy livestock shape how local residents imagine their futures and landscapes. At the end of interviews and focus groups, I asked residents what kind of future they would like for their children. Many herders responded that they would like their children to be herders, but that they probably will work for mining companies. The herder camped near Oyu Tolgoi who above described her memories of the landscape before mining, has several young children. When I asked her what she wanted for their future, she said, ‘‘I want them to be herders only if the animals survive. If the animals survive this dust, they will continue herding. If the situation stays as it is, it is difficult to say if there will be any surviving animals” (interview 2012). Because of the effects of road dust, she doubts there will be livestock to pass on to her children. They will have to find different kinds of work and lifestyles, illustrating a decrease in the number of choices available to mining-effected residents. Responses to ‘‘What would you like your children and grandchildren to do?” also suggest a movement away from nomadic herding towards mining, marking a boundary of economic and cultural change. Scholars report similar attitudes among herders in other regions of Mongolia (see Bruun, 2006; Marin, 2008). As an elderly herder visiting Manlai soum from East Gobi province told me, ‘‘Herding is just becoming too difficult” (interview 2011). The perceived effects of mining road dust on livestock demonstrate a sense that mining excludes local residents, especially

nomadic herders, from their livelihoods and landscapes. Roads cut the pasture creating new landscapes as dust delimits the space and possibility of pre-existing economic activities and relationships to the environment. These new boundaries drawn by mining roads also penetrate the bodies of people living in these areas, limiting their ability to produce food for their families and the regional economy while also potentially threatening their long-term health. Furthermore, from a health perspective, the boundary that dust marks becomes a part of the bodies of local residents, separating them physically as well as affectively from their perceptions of the Gobi as a healthy environment for their families and livestock.

4. Conclusion Dust storms and dustiness in many ways define the Gobi region, serving as dramatic reminders of the arid climate. Yet, dust generated along unpaved corridors serving mines has a different quality and has left a strong imprint on local residents. As dust continues to become associated with mining infrastructure development in Mongolia, how people living near unpaved roads are affected by Gobi dust needs more attention as well as research to differentiate between the many causes of dust (climate change, overgrazing, and mining). Furthermore, effects of mining development are only beginning to enter conversations about the origins, movement, measurement, and toxicity of Gobi dust (Bonilla and Neeti, 2013). Mining proponents contend dust is a metaphor for and process of change; however, unpaved roads disconnect local residents from their livelihoods, demonstrating how companies and the state extract mineral resources as quickly as possible without attention to the long-term consequences of haphazard infrastructure development. Ultimately, road dust severs local residents from their sense of place as it marks boundaries in time and space, redistributes work along gendered class lines, and ultimately threatens the health of people and livestock. Thus, the materiality of roads represents another interpretation of Pedersen and Bunkenborg’s (2012) technologies of distantiation. Road dust separates local residents from their sense of place and livelihoods that depend on pasture while also bringing them into

104

S.L. Jackson / Geoforum 66 (2015) 94–105

intimate contact with mining. As described above, dust transforms how people relate to the landscape, signaling changes in local economies and culture. Mining roads and dust continue to cut across the landscape, providing new transportation networks for mining, while delimiting healthy pasture. At the same time, newly paved roads demonstrate opportunities for the state and mining companies to improve relations with local residents by reducing road dust. Dust complicates broader disconnections and connections between people, place, and mining. Transportation infrastructure in South Gobi also illustrates how terrain facilitates disconnections. While Bunker and Ciccantell (2005) argue that transportation technology advancements are vital to the expansion of global markets further and further into the ‘‘frontier,” the quality of South Gobi’s terrain does not appear to demand heavy investment in transportation infrastructure to ensure that minerals reach markets at the Chinese border. Dust demonstrates how new technologies are not necessarily needed to promote new forms of enclosure. Thus, by-products of hastily implemented projects that are part of changing regimes can also delimit common spaces for herding. Finally, dust signals a sacrifice of individuals and miningaffected regions for the supposed health of the economy as local residents become disconnected from the livelihoods and landscapes that sustain them. Although Foucault (1978/1990) suggests that modern states gain power through control and management of the health of the population, road dust demonstrates the slow response of the Mongolian state, international financial institutions, and mining companies to improve roads. The state has rarely enforced regulations that require companies to pave roads, nor is there the political will to study the effects of road dust on local populations of people, livestock, and wildlife. With exceptions such as Energy Resources and Oyu Tolgoi’s newer roads, heavy trucks continue to drive on unpaved roads. While these roads remain unpaved, local residents and government officials contend that they bear the costs of development, with few means to alleviate the situation. Thus without more improvements, road dust will continue to separate people from place and their livelihoods with each fine plume of dust that coats the pasture. Acknowledgements Thank you to Harvey Neo and the Geoforum editorial staff, three anonymous reviewers, Elizabeth Lunstrum, and Rebecca Watters for their comments on various drafts. Participants in the University of Colorado—Boulder Geography Department Colloquium and the American Center for Mongolian Studies Speaker Series provided helpful feedback. Thank you to my research assistants T. Tuul, G. Bat-Erdene, and H. Undarmaa and to N. Bayarsaikhan, J. Sarantuya, G. Sukhgerel, and L. Battsengel for their ongoing research support. This work was supported by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, York University, a Field Research Fellowship from the American Center for Mongolian Studies and the Henry Luce Foundation, the US-Mongolia Field Research Fellowship Program (sponsored by the American Center for Mongolian Studies, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, and the US State Department Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau), and Metropolitan State University of Denver. Any errors are my own. References ADB, 2011. Mongolia Road Sector Development to 2016. Asian Development Bank, Mandaluyong City, Philippines. Addison, J., Friedel, M., Brown, C., Davies, J., Waldron, S., 2012. A critical review of degradation assumptions applied to Mongolia’s Gobi Desert. Rangeland J. 34 (2), 125–137.

Altangerel, D., 2002. A Modern Mongolian-English Dictionary. Altangerel, Ulaanbaatar. Amato, J.A., 2000. Dust. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Batjargal, Z., Dulam, J., Chung, Y.S., 2006. Dust storms are an indication of an unhealthy environment in East Asia. Environ. Monit. Assess. 114 (1–3), 447– 460. Bayarkhuul, Ya., 2011. Road Industry in Mongolia and Outlook. Presentation by the Mongolian National Road Authority at Discover Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar. Bennett, C.M., McKendry, I.G., Kelly, S., Denike, K., Koch, T., 2006. Impact of the 1998 Gobi dust event on hospital admissions in the Lower Fraser Valley, British Columbia. Sci. Total Environ. 366 (2), 918–925. Bonilla, L., Neeti, N., 2013. Mapping and Assessing the Impacts of Mining on Dust Emissions and Livelihoods in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia. Presentation at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA. Broecker, W.W., 2002. Dust: climate’s Rosetta Stone. Proc. Am. Philos. Soc. 146 (1), 77–80. Bruun, O., 2006. Precious Steppes. Lexington Books, Lanham, MD. Bunker, S.G., Ciccantell, P.S., 2005. Globalization and the Race for Resources. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD. Campbell, J.M., 2012. Between the material and figural road: The incompleteness of colonial geographies in Amazonia. Mobilities 7 (4), 481–500. Chung, Y.S., Kim, H.S., Park, K.H., Dulam, J., Gao, T., 2005. Observations of DustStorms in China, Mongolia and Associated Dust Falls in Korea in Spring 2003. Water Air Soil Pollut. Focus 5 (3–6), 15–35. Cook, I. et al., 2011. Hartmut Bitomsky’s dust: a reaction more than a review. Sci. Cult. 20 (1), 115–119. Dalakoglou, D., 2010. The road: an ethnography of the Albanian-Greek cross-border motorway. Am. Ethnol. 37 (1), 132–149. Dalakoglou, D., 2012. ‘The road from capitalism to capitalism’: infrastructures of (post)socialism in Albania. Mobilities 7 (4), 571–586. Damdinsuren, B., Herrick, J.E., Pyke, D.A., Bestelmeyer, B.T., Havstad, K.M., 2008. Is rangeland health relevant in Mongolia? Soc. Rangeland Manage., 25–29 Douglas, M., 1966/2002. Purity and Danger. Routledge, New York, NY. Dunham, P., 2004. Dust. In: Harrison, S., Pile, S., Thrift, N. (Eds.), Patterned Ground. Reaktion Books, London, UK, pp. 98–100. Fernandez-Gimenez, M.E., 1999. Sustaining the steppes: a geographical history of pastoral land use in Mongolia. Geogr. Rev. 89 (3), 315–342. Fernandez-Gimenez, M.E., 2000. The role of Mongolian nomadic pastoralists’ ecological knowledge in rangeland management. Ecol. Appl. 10 (5), 1318–1326. Fine, G.A., Hallett, T., 2003. Dust: a study in sociological miniaturism. Sociol. Q. 44 (1), 1–15. Foucault, M., 1978/1990. The History of Sexuality. Vintage, New York, NY. Goudie, A., Middleton, N.J., 2006. Desert Dust in the Global System. Springer Science & Business Media. Hart, P.D., 1998. Chronic pulmonary disease in South Wales coal mines: an eyewitness account of the MRC Surveys (1937–1942). In: Tansey, E.M. (Ed.), The Society for the Social History of Medicine, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 459–468. Harvey, D., 2003. The New Imperialism. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Harvey, P., 2005. The materiality of state-effects: an ethnography of a road in the Peruvian Andes. In: Krohn-Hansen, C., Nustad, K.G. (Eds.), State Formation. Pluto Press, London, pp. 123–141. Harvey, P., Knox, H., 2008. ‘Otherwise Engaged’: culture, deviance and the quest for connectivity through road construction. J. Cult. Econ. 1 (1), 81–92. Harvey, P., Knox, H., 2012. The enchantments of infrastructure. Mobilities 7 (4), 521–536. Holmes, H., 2001. The Secret Life of Dust. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY. Humphrey, C., Sneath, D., 1999. The End of Nomadism? Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Jackson, S.L., 2015. Imagining the mineral nation: Contested nation-building in Mongolia. Nationalities Pap. 43 (3), 437–456. Judger, D., Shinoda, M., Sugimoto, N., Matsui, I., Nishikawa, M., Park, S.-U., Chun, Y., Park, M.-S., 2011. Spatial and temporal variations of dust concentrations in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. Global Planet. Change 78, 14–22. Kennedy, J., 2005. Dust and the avant garde. Comp. Literat. Cult. 7 (2), 1–10, . Keshkamat, S.S., Tsendbazar, N.E., Zuidgeest, M.H.P., Shiirev-Adiya, S., van der Veen, A., de Leeuw, J., 2012. The environmental impact of not having paved roads in arid regions: an example from Mongolia. Ambio 41 (2), 202–205. Keshkamat, S.S., Tsendbazar, N.E., Zuidgeest, M.H.P., Shiirev-Adiya, S., van der Veen, A., van Maarseveen, M.F.A.M., 2013. Understanding transportation-caused rangeland damage in Mongolia. J. Environ. Manage. 114 (15), 433–444. Kezer, Z., 2009. An imaginable community: the material culture of nation-building in early republican Turkey. Environ. Plan. D: Soc. Space 27, 508–530. Kinnear, P., 2001. The politics of coal dust: industrial campaigns for the regulation of dust disease in Australian coal mining, 1939–49. Labour Hist. 80, 65–82. Knox, H., Harvey, P., 2011. Anticipating harm: regulation and irregularity on a road construction project in the Peruvian Andes. Theory, Cult. Soc. 28 (6), 142–168. Latour, B., 2005. Reassembling the Social. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Lee, E.-H., Sohn, B.-J., 2011. Recent increasing trend in dust frequency over Mongolia and Inner Mongolia regions and its association with climate and surface condition change. Atmos. Environ. 45 (27), 4611–4616. Lee, Y.C., Wenig, M., Zhang, Z., Sugimoto, N., Larko, D., Diehl, T., 2012. Dust episodes in Hong Kong (South China) and their relationship with the Sharav and Mongolian cyclones and jet streams. Air Qual. Atmos. Health 5 (4), 413–424. Li, S.G., Tsujimura, M., Sugimoto, A., Davaa, G., Sugita, M., 2006. Natural recovery of steppe vegetation on vehicle tracks in central Mongolia. J. Biosci. 31 (1), 85–93.

S.L. Jackson / Geoforum 66 (2015) 94–105 Liu, Y.Y., Evans, J.P., McCabe, M.F., de Jeu, R.A.M., van Dijk, A.I.J.M., Dolman, A.J., Saizen, I., 2013. Changing climate and overgrazing are decimating Mongolian steppes. PLoS One 8 (2), 1–6. Lkhasuren, O., 2012. Occupational safety and the health of miners as challenge to policy-making in Mongolia? In: Dierkes, J. (Ed.), Change in Democratic Mongolia. Brill, Boston, MA, pp. 135–147. Lunstrum, E., 2010. Reconstructing history, ground claims to space: history, memory, and displacement in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park. S. Afr. Geogr. J. 92 (2), 129–143. Marin, A., 2008. Between cash cows and golden calves: adaptations of Mongolian pastoralism in the ‘age of the market’. Nomadic Peoples 12 (2), 75–101. Marin, A., 2010. Riders under storms: contributions of nomadic herders’ observations to analysing climate change in Mongolia. Global Environ. Change 20 (1), 162–176. Ministry of Roads and Transportation, 2014. Road and Transportation Sector Performance. (25.03.15). Natsagdorj, L., Jugder, D., Chung, Y.S., 2003. Analysis of dust storms observed in Mongolia during 1937–1999. Atmos. Environ. 37 (9), 1401–1411. Nyíri, P., Breidenbach, Joana., 2008. The Altai road: visions of development across the Russian–Chinese border. Dev. Change 39 (1), 123–145. Orgil, D., Tserenchimed, C., Tserenjav, J., Shinetsetseg, D., MunkhErdene, O., Munkhdchuluun, G., Bayaraa, J., Odbayar, P., Erdenebold, B., 2011. Environmental Review of Umnugobi Province and Negative Influence of Mining Industry to Livestock Health. National Veterinarian Hygiene Laboratory Center, Ulaanbaatar, pp. 90–93. Oyu Tolgoi, 2012. Environmental and Social Impact Assessment. (30.09.13). Pedersen, M.A., Bunkenborg, M., 2012. Roads that separate: sino-Mongolian relations in the inner Asian desert. Mobilities 7 (4), 555–569. Peluso, N.L., Lund, C., 2011. New frontiers of land control: introduction. J. Peasant Stud. 38 (4), 667–681. Penrose, B., 2011. The state and gold miners’ health in Victoria, 1870–1910. Labour Hist. 101, 35–52. Sankey, T.T., Sankey, J., Weber, K., Montagne, C., 2012. Changes in pastoral land use and their effects on rangeland vegetation indices. In: Dierkes, J. (Ed.), Change in Democratic Mongolia. Brill, Boston, MA, pp. 151–163. Sneath, D., 2003. Land use, the environment and development in post-socialist Mongolia. Oxford Dev. Stud. 31 (4), 441–459. Sneath, D., 2010. Political mobilization and the construction of collective identity in Mongolia. Central Asian Surv. 29 (3), 251–267. Sternberg, T., 2010. Unravelling Mongolia’s extreme winter disaster of 2010. Nomadic Peoples 14 (1), 72–86. Sternberg, T., 2012. Piospheres and pastoralists: vegetation and degradation in steppe grasslands. Human Ecol. 40 (6), 811–820.

105

Sternberg, T., Middleton, N., Thomas, D., 2009. Pressurised pastoralism in South Gobi, Mongolia: what is the role of draught? Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. 34 (3), 364– 377. Sternberg, T., Rueff, H., Middleton, N., 2015. Contraction of the Gobi Desert, 2000– 2012. Remote Sens. 7, 1346–1358. Tanner, A., 2006. Dust-O! Rubbish in Victorian London, 1860–1900. London J. 31 (2), 157–178. Thenevot, L., 2002. Which road to follow? The moral complexity of an ‘equipped’ humanity. In: Law, J., Mol, A. (Eds.), Complexities. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, pp. 53–87. Thomas, P., 2002. The river, the road, and the rural–urban divide: a postcolonial moral geography from southeast Madagascar. Am. Ethnol. 29 (2), 366–391. Tsetsegmaa, L., 2004. The Silica Dust from the Enrich Mining Plant Infact to Motive the Endemic Disorders of Technopathic Origin in Livestock Population. Unpublished Dissertation. Mongolian State University of Agriculture, Ulaanbaatar. Upton, C., 2010. Living off the land: nature and nomadism in Mongolia. Geoforum 41 (6), 865–874. Virilio, P., 1977/2006. Speed and Politics (M. Polizzotti, Trans.). Semiotext(e), Los Angeles, CA. Waters, W., 1998. Revolutionizing childhood: schools, roads, and the revolutionary generation gap in Tepoztlán, Mexico, 1928 to 1944. J. Family Hist. 23 (3), 292– 311. Waters, W., 2006. Remapping identities: road construction and nation-building in postrevolutionary Mexico. In: Vaugn, M.K., Lewis, S.E. (Eds.), The Eagle and the Virgin. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, pp. 221–242. Watts, M., Peet, R., 1996/2004. Liberating political ecology. In: Peet, R., Watts, M. (Eds.), Liberation Ecologies. Routledge, New York, NY, pp. 3–47. WB, 1999. Mongolia: Taming the Tyrannies of Distance and Isolation, A Transport Strategy for Mongolia. Report No. 18242-MOG. World Bank. WB, 2009. Southern Mongolia Infrastructure Strategy. World Bank and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Washington, DC. Weller, K.E., 1995. The Dust Bowl as place to western Kansas women. Soc. Sci. J. 32 (2), 213–218. Williamson, T., 2003. The fluid state: Malaysia’s national expressway. Space Cult. 6 (2), 110–131. Wilson, F., 2004. Towards a political economy of roads: experiences from Peru. Dev. Change 35 (3), 525–546. Worster, D., 1979/2004. Dust Bowl. Oxford University Press, New York, NY. Zhang, B., Tsunekawa, A., Tsubo, M., 2008. Contributions of sandy lands and stony deserts to long-distance dust emission in China and Mongolia during 2000– 2006. Global Planet. Change 60 (3), 487–504.