Myagaa - Eight Lakes, Mongolia

Young mother Myagaa lives with her husband and children in a ger that currently overlooks a landscape so breathtakingly beautiful it seems almost surreal. Unable to reach the area by vehicle, we have trekked on horseback for a day to reach her.

Emma looking out over the Eight Lakes valley

She has seen many changes that she associates with global warming. There used to be eight great lakes but some are now tiny and others have even dried up completely. There also used to be many more streams and rivers. Recently she's seen dust rolls here too, which is a worrying new sign of a changing climate.

One of the Eight Lakes reduced to a puddle

This all makes the nomadic herding life more difficult. The animals do not get fat as they should and give less milk. Myagaa worries that her nomadic lifestyle will not be possible in the future. It's a big problem everywhere and most people she knows are worrying about it.

Morning at the lakes

Myagaa believes it's everyone's job to fix climate change but she's not convinced it's possible. She says she can't do much and it's not difficult to see why: this way of life could hardly be lower impact. The family do not have a car, which would be useless in this terrain. Heating is provided from the ubiquitous wood and dung burning stove that resides in the centre of each round ger tent. However, Myagaa tries not to litter and uses yak dung for the stove as much as possible, to avoid cutting down trees. The government here talk a lot about taking action on climate change but Myagaa can't see them doing much yet. Sound familiar?

Myagaa & her husband in front of their ger

Myagaa knows it's possible to live without fossil fuels because this is the ancient way of life Mongolians have been living "since the times of Chinggis Khaan" and beyond. She is optimistic for the future but worries for her children. She is particularly worried that a lack of rain from climate change will force them to leave behind forever the nomadic way of life that she loves.

Boli - Gurvan Saikhan National Park, Mongolia

Boli and his wife and children live the traditional nomadic life in the beautiful Gurvan Saikhan National Park, which lies in the Southern, Gobi region of Mongolia. He is worried about climate change and has been well informed about it by his radio.

Emma, Boli and guide/translator Khuu

The last few years have been very dry with not nearly enough rain. No rain equals no grass, so Boli's animals don't have enough to eat. If they don't get fat enough over the summer, they will die in the winter. The situation is not disastrous now, particularly as the tourist trade supplements the diminishing support from his livestock, but he's concerned about how things will be in 30-40 years time if things carry on as they are. He has a longer time frame than most people I know.

Nomadic life in the Gobi

Boli thinks that everyone should try to fix climate change and has low energy lighting, which is powered by a solar photovoltaic panel, a fixture of most gers. He is also concerned about litter, which is heartbreakingly ubiquitous here, and tries not to contribute to the problem himself.

Curiously, for someone who remembers when animals not oil were the primary power source, as recently as the 1970s, he can't imagine a life without fossil fuels. He knows this sort of life is possible but cannot see how things can go back to how they were.

The view from a gerr

Later that day, after we leave Boli, we visit the 'ice gorge', which until recently boasted a year round ice packed crevice. Even our 2008 guidebook doesn't tell how the summer heat now steals away this impressive attraction and disappoints the many who visit in the height of the tourist season. That said, this is not all that surprising from the 'book of lies'.

Like the ice gorge, Boli's traditional nomadic family life is an attraction for tourists that is under threat from climate change. His dwindling income from the degraded environment is now supplemented by the very people who are destroying it by flying into the country in droves to gawp at a life, which demonstrates a stark contrast to their own cash-rich, wellbeing-poor existence at home.

The question that I cannot escape at the moment is whether this destruction is merely absent-minded or knowingly selfish? With knowledge of the great damage we're doing ourselves becoming clearer every day, I fear we can no longer excuse it as the former.

Khuu - Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

We asked to meet our guide before we began the trip. Mainly because the hostel we booked the trip with were cagey about their ability to provide someone with sufficient English skills for translation purposes. As soon as Khuu (pronounced 'hoo') entered the room and said hello we knew she'd be great. Her English was fantastic and, as we would soon find out, her sense of humour was wicked. She's from Southern Gobi region but now lives in the capital, working as a guide to help pay for her sisters' education.

Khuu in the doorway of a (typically) solar-powered gerr

On the second day of the trip, with the backdrop of the incredible 'White Cliffs' in the Dundgov province, South of Ulaanbaatar, our conversation drifts towards climate change. Khuu tells me about how she can see the climate changing and its effect on the landscape. It's getting drier each year and Khuu discovers more rivers have vanished from her tourist trail each new season, as she makes the long trips around the country with van-loads of adventure-seekers.

Emma (with pickles) and Khuu at the White Cliffs

The elders talk about how they used to be able to predict the seasons and the weather, particularly when there would be a good or a bad year, but this is no longer possible. Even the rain falls differently now. It comes in shorter and more intense bouts that doesn't get absorbed by the land.

These changes have had a dramatic effect on wildlife. The land used to be graced with many herds of wild sheep, gazelles and donkeys. The lack of rain has meant there's no longer enough grass or water to support them.

Khuu teaching Emanuel & Emma to make camel meat dumlings

According to Khuu, everyone in Mongolia is aware of climate change as a global problem too because they have radios and some have televisions. She also tells me that looking after the environment is deeply embedded in the Mongolian psyche and promises to tell me the old folk tale, which warns Mongolians as children about the dangers of wronging the earth that supports us.

Khuu beating us all at the traditional Mongolian game of anklebone shooting

She tells me that she thinks the nomadic lifestyle will die out and that most Mongolians want to leave the country because they think they can have a better quality of life abroad. I fear she is mistaken though. We may have more money but we are demonstrably no happier for it. Rather than exporting our disfunctional and self-destructive Western ways, in the name of so-called 'development', perhaps we should show a little more humility and learn what we can from societies like Khuu's before we obliterate them completely.