Empowering communities with river-monitoring and data-collection knowledge and skills is a crucial component of future water conservation and responsible resource management in Mongolia. Information gathered locally about water quality and river conditions enables the overall health of waterways to be assessed, and leads to the development of a comprehensive inventory of Mongolia’s rivers that can help the government, civil society and local communities to better manage natural resources, and that can guide future water-use policy and resource management practices.

To achieve these outcomes, The Asia Foundation’s Securing Our Future program has embarked on Water Quality Monitoring, in which Mongolian and international ecologists, biologists and educators are sampling rivers throughout the country, as well as training a large number of teachers, students and citizens in conducting their own river assessments and biological monitoring, including how to test water quality for dissolved oxygen, biological oxygen demand, fecal coliform bacteria, turbidity, pH, and benthic macroinvertebrates, how to assess river morphology and river hydraulics, and other physical assessment techniques. The monitoring work involving teachers and students is introducing new experiential learning techniques in schools in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, while the work of scientists is contributing robust chemical, physical and biologic data to the development of a national database.

The Asia Foundation is also establishing Regional Environmental Learning Centers in five regions in Mongolia that will capitalize on the potential of information and communications technologies to address critical economic and environmental issues that have negatively impacted on natural resources, human health, and the quality of life for Mongolians. Equipped with computers, environmental monitoring kits, generators (where necessary), and internet access, these Learning Centers will provide a forum for schools and community-based organizations to access and share environmental information and research results. They also will be a valuable tool for NGOs and other civil-society and community organizations conducting community outreach and environmental education programs.