Application of the City Blueprint Approach in Landlocked Asian Countries: A Case Study of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Abstract

Urbanization is a major global development. At present, more than half of the world population lives in urban areas, i.e., cities. One of the fundamental requirements of citizens is safe and sufficient drinking water. The premises for water security are adequate water management and governance. In this study, we determine priorities for Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and assess the governance capacities of different organizations to address IWRM in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of the landlocked Asian country Mongolia. We apply the City Blueprint Approach (CBA), a diagnosis tool, to assess IWRM in Ulaanbaatar city, Mongolia. The overall score, the Blue City Index (BCI), is 2.3 points for Ulaanbaatar, which categorizes the city as wasteful. Flood risk and economic pressure have a great impact on the water sector in Ulaanbaatar city. In particular, Ulaanbaatar’s waste water treatment (WWT) can be improved. Often, only primary and a small portion of secondary WWT is applied, leading to large-scale pollution. Water consumption and infrastructure leakages are high due to the lack of environmental awareness and infrastructure maintenance. Operation cost recovery is not sufficient to sustain urban water services in Ulaanbaatar. Water governance and more specifically monitoring, evaluation and statutory compliance are among the factors that need to be addressed.

A preliminary assessment of urban water security in Ulaanbaatar, a semi-arid region in Mongolia.

“…The final report reinforced the unequal distribution of water resources and highlighted Ulaanbaatar as a severe water insecurity hotspot [29]. However, assessments of water security at the urban level are limited [37] [47] [48]. This study aims to address this data gap by constructing a preliminary urban water security index for Mongolia's capital city drawing from a range of publicly accessible government data and secondary literature.…”

Understanding contemporary challenges for water security in Ulaanbaatar, a semi-arid region in Mongolia

“…The final report reinforced the unequal distribution of water resources and highlighted Ulaanbaatar as a severe water insecurity hotspot [29]. However, assessments of water security at the urban level are limited [37,46,47]. This study aims to address this data gap by constructing a preliminary urban water security index for Mongolia's capital city drawing from a range of publicly accessible government data and secondary literature.…”

Political ecological perspectives on an indicator-based urban water framework

“…The CBA has been applied to over 45 cities within Europe , for instance, Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Sabadell in Spain (Šteflová et al, 2018). Outside Europe, cities such as Ho Chi Min City in Vietnam (Van Leeuwen et al, 2015), Melbourne in Australia (Van Leeuwen, 2015) or Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia (Munkhsuld et al, 2020) have been assessed. The development of the CBA and its subframeworks has continuously been improved through the integration of constructive feedback submitted by the cities themselves (Feingold et al, 2018).…”

“…The CBF is a baseline assessment providing a quick overview of the state of the IWRM's sustainability . The data used for the CBF are preferably assessed at city level, but data from international organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) or the World Bank are also used -along with literature or official reports -to calculate the indicators (Munkhsuld et al, 2020). The CBF assesses the following seven categories, in order to depict the entire urban water cycle: (1) water quality, (2) solid waste treatment, (3) basic water services, (4) wastewater treatment, (5) infrastructure, (6) climate robustness and (7) governance, and these contain 25 indicators (Aartsen et al, 2018).…”