Recently, Dr. LI Haitao at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, and Dr. BROWN Mark at University of Florida published an article entitled Emergy-based environmental accounting toward a sustainable Mongolia.

This study presented an integrated analysis of Mongolia’s resource use structure, trade status, societal sustainability, and raised policy suggestions toward a sustainable Mongolia. This work was published in Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2017,10(27),1227-1259.

Based on the data from 1995 to 2012, the authors calculated environmental and economic inputs and a series of emergy indicators.

They found that the total emergy use for Mongolia changed from 2.83×1022 sej in 1995 to 4.96×1022 sej in 2012, representing a 75% increase over the 18 years of this study, yet its emergy per capita remains one of the lowest in the world (1.74×1016 sej/capita).

The emergy money ratio (EMR) of Mongolia over the period of 1995–2012 decreased from 1.99×1013 sej/USD to 7.75×1012 sej/USD, indicating that the power of a dollar for purchasing real wealth in Mongolia was declining, while the relatively high absolute values compared to its trading partners and even the world average EMR suggests that Mongolia is continuing a trade disadvantage.

Mongolia’s emergy exchange ratio is increasingly less than one to the point that in 2012 the ratio was 0.3 suggesting that the exported emergy was over 3.3 times greater than the imported emergy. The growing dependence on imports and the dramatic increase in exports suggests that Mongolia’s economy is increasingly vulnerable to downturns in the world economy.

These findings will provide a reference for researchers and policy-makers to discuss the topic of national sustainability from an effective perspective.

The work was supported by Chinese Academy of Sciences President’s International Fellowship Initiative(PIFI, No.2016VBA04).