This is a story of wholes and fractions. Siberia’s Lake Baikal contains one-fifth of the freshwater on the earth’s surface, while two-thirds of its species of plants and animals exist nowhere else. One river provides more than half of the lake’s annual inflows. Without this river and its tributaries, there would be no Baikal as we know it.
Although the whole world reveres Baikal — the planet’s largest single repository of fresh water and a UNESCO World Heritage Site — only a small per-centage know the name of its principal source. The headwaters of this incomparable river arise nearly a thousand miles from the lake in the far north of Mongolia. The river basin is the site of numerous proposed dams and diversions, including both hydropower projects and schemes to supply water to faraway cities and mines. Its name — the Selenge (or Selenga in Russian) — is said to derive from the Mongolian verb seleh, “to swim.” And trying to describe its intrinsic value can some-times feel like swimming upstream against a powerful current.
The dangers to the Selenge are not limited to the usual suspects: drought, human migration and unregulated mining. Instead, the river has become a veritable hostage of global geopolitics, a victim of Mongolia’s legitimate desire for energy independence from Russia and China’s ravenous Belt and Road Initiative.
In 2017, the World Bank placed a temporary freeze on plans for two dams in the Selenge ba-sin. While that decision felt like a victory to both local residents and international activists, the necessary engineering and feasibility studies are already complete, and these plans could be revived anytime. Someday, perhaps, after careful consideration and committed attempts to risk mitigation, the communities involved will decide that the river’s health...
The dangers to the Selenge are not limited to the usual suspects: drought, human migration and unregulated mining. Instead, the river has become a veritable hostage of global geopolitics, a victim of Mongolia’s legitimate desire for energy independence from Russia and China’s ravenous Belt and Road Initiative.
In 2017, the World Bank placed a temporary freeze on plans for two dams in the Selenge ba-sin. While that decision felt like a victory to both local residents and international activists, the necessary engineering and feasibility studies are already complete, and these plans could be revived anytime. Someday, perhaps, after careful consideration and committed attempts to risk mitigation, the communities involved will decide that the river’s health...
