Today’s Planet Earth: Our Loving Home will be presented in Mongolian with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mongolian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

Mongolia undoubtedly is one of the countries most seriously affected by global warming. Over the past 60 years, the average temperature in Mongolia has risen more than twice as much as the global mean temperature. Approximately 85 percent of our land surface in Mongolia has been degraded, mostly by wind and by human activities, including mining and livestock.

Greetings, green-living viewers, to today’s episode of Planet Earth: Our Loving Home where we examine how climate change is endangering Mongolia. Mongolia, the world’s second-largest landlocked country, is particularly vulnerable to climate change due to its location and geography.

In the past 60 years the nation’s average temperature has risen 1.6 degrees Celsius. The Gobi Desert, the largest desert in all of Asia, makes up about 30% of its territory and the rest is largely vast, treeless, grassy plains, called the steppes. Annual precipitation is around 50 millimeters in the desert regions, and 400 millimeters in the northern provinces.

For the last 40 years, climate change has devastated Mongolia’s ecosystems, as expanding deserts, extreme cold, heat waves, flooding, forest fires, sand storms, the melting of high mountain glaciers and permafrost degradation have intensified.

Global warming and its negative impacts have become a real threat: increased atmospheric temperatures, desertification, increased occurrences of natural disasters such as typhoons, drought and extreme cold in winter. These negative impacts have become so violent and are shaking the very existence of humankind. As a consequence of human ignorance, our world’s ecosystems are deteriorating and tens of thousands of species are facing extinction.

Desertification, or the process by which an area becomes a desert, affects more than two-billion people living in arid regions around the world and in Mongolia it has been progressing at an alarming rate. The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation says 90% of the nation is at risk for desertification and cites both ecologically damaging human activities and ever drier conditions from the heating of the planet as the primary reasons for the encroaching deserts.

In particular, overgrazing by livestock has been identified by many experts as driving desertification in Mongolia. In response to the many global warming effects that are devastating his nation, His Excellency Batbold Sukhbaatar, the prime minister of Mongolia and his cabinet held a meeting on August 27, 2010 in the middle of the Gobi Desert to call attention to the issue and to discuss a climate change action plan for the country.

During the meeting, Minister of Natural Environment and Tourism Gansukh Luumed stated, “Global climate change accelerates the desertification process in Mongolia. Currently, 70% of Mongolian land is affected by desertification.”

It is no surprise that Mongolia was documented by the 2002 Johannesburg Summit as one of the 11 countries that is most severely affected by desertification, among 120 countries suffering from desertification.

From 1970-2007, the average annual precipitation in the dry steppe region decreased from 236 millimeters to 106 millimeters and the average annual temperature increased from -0.3° Celsius to +0.3° Celsius after 30 years of overgrazing. This community of plant species has degraded to the point where it has been replaced with a different community of Cleistogenes squarrosa- Agropyron cristatum- Leymus chinensis.

In the latter community, overall plant productivity decreased by 10 times, and the vegetation coverage severely thinned by 3 times, resulting in a state that is more similar to a desert steppe plant community.

Seasonal temperatures and weather patterns in Mongolia are being altered by climate change. In January 2010, “dzud,” or severe summer drought followed by heavy snow and extremely low winter temperatures struck Mongolia. Temperatures dropped to minus 40, while the daily seasonal range is usually minus 15 to 35 degrees Celsius.

This period affected over 750,000 people and killed a staggering 8.5 million livestock. In the summer of 2010, an unusual heat wave sparked wildfires across central Mongolia.

As a direct and indirect result of global warming and desertification, forest fires over the past 25 years destroyed 1.2-million hectares of forest coverage. Russian scientist and professor Dr.V. Yarmishko and his team established that the broadleaf forest ecosystem affected by fire disasters in the Khuvsgul and Khangai mountains can never be naturally regenerated.

Reports indicate between 1971 and 1997 there were approximately 2,700 incidences of forest fires that destroyed 14-million hectares of both forest and steppe ecosystems. Extensive solifluction, another negative contributor to the forest ecosystem, has also been observed in the continuous permafrost zone of the Khuvsgul and Khangai mountains, at a minimum rate of 2 centimeters per year.

In July 2009 torrential rains and hailstorms pelted the nation’s capital of Ulaanbaatar and the southwestern province of Govi-Altai, causing the worst flooding in Mongolia since 1966. Twenty-six people perished, 2,000 were displaced and hundreds of homes were destroyed.

We had floods in our khoroo (district). For example, in this khoroo (district), 150 households were in flood. 57 of them lost their homes totally. Six people passed away.

The percentage of arable land in Mongolia used for cultivation and the agricultural productivity of tilled land is dropping due to global warming. Until the mid-1990’s the country produced enough wheat for itself and even exported the crop when yields were high enough. In 2007, Mongolia could supply less than a quarter of its wheat needs from domestic production.

The steady loss of national water resources is severely hindering the planting of crops, causing the harvest rate to fluctuate yearly. Official statistics in 2007 showed that over the last few years 852 rivers and streams out of 5,128, 2,277 springs out of 9,306 and 1,181 lakes and ponds out of 3,747 have dried up, resulting in a major water crisis.

60% of the 70 lakes in the Amar river basin, which is a habitat to swan geese populations, reduced in water level by 30-100% and some have already dried up. As a result, the population of the swan geese that annually migrate and reproduce in those lakes reduced by more than two times; the present population being less than 40% as compared to that of the past.

Global warming has degraded the steppes, forests, rivers, lakes and swamp ecosystems and more than 80% of the vegetation coverage is undergoing degradation.

Mongolia has the highest number of livestock per capita in the world, with over 30 million animals and a population of 2.5 million people. In the paper “Livestock and Climate Change,” published in World Watch Magazine in 2009, it was estimated that greater than 51% of human-caused global greenhouse gas emissions are from a cycle of producing and consuming animal products.

Please, eat less meat. This is also one problem in Mongolia, because of the rise of the number of cattle.

We have plenty of land to plant more vegetables in Mongolia.

For the sake of producing meat, we have destroyed the tropical rainforest, what we call the “lungs of the Earth.” Every minute of every day the meat industry is using forest land area equivalent to seven soccer fields Once distributed over half the planet, forests now cover only a quarter of the Earth’s land surface.

30% of the world’s land surface and 70% of agricultural land is used for meat production. Because of this, land is degraded and pasture lands have been depleted. This is one of the main factors accelerating desertification. The annual greenhouse gas emissions caused by livestock production is about 100-million tons of carbon dioxide.

Meat production-related transportation and energy consumption is very high. In the year 2007 alone, the world produced and consumed 275-million tons of meat. Reports indicate that by 2050 meat production will double. The energy and the transportation cost needed to freeze and distribute 275-million tons of meat is enormous.

Ending livestock raising would lift a tremendous burden from our planet. Doctors Enkhbat and Gurragchaa advocate returning to a plant-based diet as the solution to climate change.

The Mongolian government is spending 2.4-billion tugrugs (US$1.6-2 million) per year to artificially lower the price of meat being sold in major cities. From the historical records, we can see that the Mongols in the 13th century chose to eat 4-5 times less food than Europeans at the time.

As per modern definitions, we can call the Mongols from the past as vegetarians. Modern research indicates that vegetarians have twice as much endurance as meat-eaters and five times more recreational ability than meat-eaters, which is also in accordance with the past Mongolians’ health and endurance index. Unfortunately, the science of the past Mongolian diet is long lost and has been replaced with the standard theory of the Western diet system.

We need to: revive traditional Mongolian cultural values. Mongolian people have a tradition of respect for nature and the use of its resources, and refrained from polluting mountains, rivers, the soil and forests.

From the analysis of the causes of global warming, we can see that there is a way to stop it within a short period of time and without a significant investment. That is to strongly reduce meat consumption.

Supreme Master Ching Hai has highlighted the importance of the organic vegan diet to halt climate change in Mongolia and all other nations on Earth.

Mongolia, as with the rest of the world, is experiencing more severe weather, a more fatal pattern of climate change due to the effects of global warming. So, you can see in Mongolia droughts, harsher winters, more frequency of dust storms and blizzards. With livestock raising, we deplete Mongolians’ already limited natural resources and even put Mongolia country more in danger of desertification.

Instead of grazing animals, we can begin planting the organic vegetable, which is more healthy to everyone. We have to choose a vegetarian diet over animal breeding. If more and more people choose organic farming as well, we help each other to the best possible of our ability and most gentle way for all beings and the Earth. From then, we can share food since we have so much food. We have abundance of food, more than enough for everyone without even having to buy it.

And we save time and other resources to go toward other things, like ending disease and helping those in need. By not subsidizing the meat diet, we save trillions of US dollars per year in tax. We save a lot of suffering from meat-related illness. We save a lot of food to share with all the hungry in the world, so our conscience will never have to wake up in the middle of the night and bite us anymore.

Our deep thanks Doctors Enkhbat and Lhagva Gurragchaa as well as Professor Bold, and Supreme Master Ching Hai for informing the public with tireless dedication about global warming and the environmental destruction caused by consuming animal products. May all Mongolian people, and everyone around our world, soon adopt the compassionate, eco-friendly, plant-based lifestyle.

Caring viewers, thank you for joining us on today’s Planet Earth: Our Loving Home. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment after Noteworthy News. May your life be filled with compassion and abundant love from Heaven.