World News Environment

Losing The Eternal Blue Sky In Mongolia

Muguntuul Oyutan, 11, walks to school with her sister and friends in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. Mongolia is the world's most sparsely populated nation, and an increasing proportion of its citizens reside in the capital.
Muguntuul Oyutan, 11, walks to school with her sister and friends in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. Mongolia is the world's most sparsely populated nation, and an increasing proportion of its citizens reside in the capital. Claire Harbage / NPR

Mongolia is changing. Rivers are dry. Pastureland is giving way to mines. And wintertime smog obscures the famed blue sky. How did Mongolia get here? It's a story of internal migration and economic transformation in an era of climate change.

Explore the visual narrative at https://apps.npr.org/mongolia/

Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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