From Challenge to Solutions: Ulaanbaatar’s Youth Tackle Urban Climate Challenges
August 7th, 2024 | story
Hackathon participants at work. Photo: GerHub NGO
Climate change is an urgent reality affecting cities like Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. More frequent and intense severe weather events, such as flooding and dzuds (extreme winter weather), have led to recurrent climate migration crises in recent years. The Asia Resilient Cities (ARC) Project is working with residents to solve climate-related problems and advocate for their needs. This includes partnering with youth, who are often excluded from urban planning. Funded by USAID, ARC is implemented by JSI with our partner The Asia Foundation in Ulaanbaatar.
ARC uses creative approaches to engage residents, like the Resilient City Hackathon held in Ulaanbaatar in June 2024. Twenty-five 18–29-year-old Ulaanbaatar residents were selected to participate in the hackathon through an application process and organized into five teams. Each team was asked to design innovative solutions to the climate-related problems facing residents of Ulaanbaatar’s ger areas (unplanned settlements), with a focus on resilience, community engagement, and sustainability. Each team included youth with experience living or working in ger areas.
In this piece, we have summarized the experience of Munkhshur Erdenebat, ARC Project Officer in Ulaanbaatar, during the hackathon and discuss why youth are critical to the city’s climate change response.
Why focus on Ulaanbaatar’s ger areas and choose a hackathon approach?
Approximately 60 percent of Ulaanbaatar’s residents live in gers (traditional Mongolian yurts) in settlements that lack basic infrastructure such as sanitation, a clean water supply, and heating. Residents experience poverty, pollution, floods, and related health problems.
ARC organized a hackathon because its collaborative and intensive nature facilitates creation of awareness of critical issues and development of practical, sustainable, and community-centered solutions. To help the five participating teams develop their solutions, the hackathon included guest-speaker sessions to learn about ger areas; a visit to the Ger Innovation Hub, a community center run by ARC partner organization GerHub NGO; and a chance to work closely with mentors, including Munkhshur, and other subject experts.
The guest speaker’s talk helped me reflect on my values and provided a fresh perspective on how we should see our city, especially ger areas. I never realized that ger areas held significant cultural and historical heritage. Thanks to the talk, my appreciation and hope toward my city has sparked.” -U. Tselmuun from Go Green Team
U. Tselmuun from Go Green Team
How does youth participation help build resilience?
Youth participation in civic solutions and advocacy is vital because they are creative and eager to solve their community’s problems. Involving them in advocacy and decisions imparts a sense of ownership of and responsibility for outcomes. Munkshur found it “refreshing to witness their evolving appreciation of the ger areas’ cultural and historical heritage” during the hackathon.
Young people can provide valuable insights about community needs and offer action-oriented ideas that decision-makers can test and adopt. The Resilient City Hackathon demonstrated this by providing participants unique resources and community through its creative approach. I was pleasantly surprised by the youth’s solutions, which combined passion, rigor, and innovation which can be feasible for piloting and scaling.” -B. Tamir, Mongolia Country Director at Lorinet Foundation
Team members and experts discuss solutions. Photo: GerHub NGO
What was GerHub NGO’s role in the hackathon?
GerHub NGO has worked with The Asia Foundation for many years. The organization has a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities in ger areas, and extensive experience in implementing projects that involve those communities. Instead of using a top-down approach, GerHub NGO engages and provides a platform for ger area residents to share their thoughts and ideas, and partner in the implementation of solutions. It has been organizing hackathons that use design thinking methods since 2020. Its expertise and grassroots relationships helped ensure that the solutions developed during ARC’s hackathon were relevant, feasible, and helpful for ger area residents.
How did the hackathon use design and systems thinking?
The Resilient Cities Hackathon taught participants to use design and systems thinking methods to identify problems and root causes and come up with ideas to overcome them. Since systems thinking was a relatively new concept for the hackathon participants, the five-day event began with an introduction to the approach’s terminology and application.
Systems thinking helps people understand elements, interconnections, and relationships within a city or neighborhood. For example, understanding the increasing frequency of floods in ger areas requires examining how climate change exacerbates natural disasters, and the effect of those disasters on the rural herders who migrate to urban areas and settle in flood-prone districts because of land shortages in Ulaanbaatar. Design thinking involves five phases and focuses on understanding people’s needs, empathizing with their experiences, and developing human-centric solutions. By integrating these approaches, the hackathon ensured that the solutions were holistic, user-focused, and effective.
My hackathon experience showed me how design thinking can be applied to both daily life and projects. I realized that as an architect, I used to jump to find the solution before fully understanding the problem when it comes to the built environment. Design and systems thinking helped me to realize that not all problems are on the surface level.” G. Hulan, Urtoo Team
G. Hulan from the Urtoo Team
Tell us about the winning team’s solution.
The five teams were asked to develop innovative solutions related to enhancing green spaces, improving service accessibility, and promoting green livelihoods in ger areas, with an emphasis on local resources, community engagement, and sustainability. Three of the five solutions focused on flood and disaster mitigation. Inspired by a member’s experience of the severe ger-area flood in the summer of 2022, winning team Dusal/Drop proposed a nature-based solution to store, retain, and drain rainwater. It involved planting elm, maple, and cedar trees, which are low maintenance and have excellent water absorption capabilities, and building permeable pedestrian roads to absorb rainwater. The team will pilot their plan under ARC.
Dusal/Drop Team members and representatives from The Asia Foundation and ARC. Photo: GerHub NGO
Dusal/Drop Team’s “Power of a Drop” Solution
What was your biggest takeaway from the hackathon?
The hackathon highlighted the importance of involving youth in planning and decision-making processes, as their ideas and enthusiasm foster feasible and sustainable solutions. It is also crucial to include members of affected communities in problem solving. By including youth with experience living or working in ger areas, the hackathon generated insights and ideas that would otherwise not have been heard. Finally, the hackathon reinforced the value of collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches to solving complex urban problems.
Learn more about the Resilient City Hackathon and ARC’s activities in Ulaanbaatar.
