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Lost in the Gobi: Japanese
aid
By Nobuyuki Takahashi
Previous story: Corporate
scandal and the Gobi connection
During the
five years that the Japanese government was allocating
more than 3 billion yen in grant aid to the country's
biggest trading houses to spend on alleviating
Mongolia's electrical-power shortage, Japanese civil
society expressed concern about the project.
Keiichi Kawasaki, an engineer official with
Miyakonojo National College, and six colleagues set up a
group in 1992 for the provision of small-scale wind
power generators for Mongolian nomads' ger
(portable tent-type dwellings). This grassroots effort,
a joint project with a Mongolian technical institute,
initially aimed to provide light so that the nomads'
children could study at night, as these children had to
work during the daytime.
While visiting the
village of Bayandorai in the southern Gobi desert,
Kawasaki found that diesel power generators supplied by
the former Soviet Union were not being used. Hasty
introduction of privatization in Mongolia had hit the
country's remote areas hard, making the costs of diesel
fuel and maintenance too high for the locals to operate
the generators.
Meanwhile, Assistant Professor
Yoshiko Imaoka of the Osaka University of Foreign
Studies, pointed out that Japanese official development
aid (ODA) was repeating the Soviet Union's mistakes. In
fact, she said, the current situation was worse in that
during the Soviet era, Moscow had covered the
generators' operating costs for its ally.
While
Mongolia was part of the Soviet bloc, not only
generators but spare parts, engineers and fuel were all
supplied by Moscow, and the generators were able to
operate at full capacity. But after the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1991, the flow of supplies and services
into Mongolia dried up, as did Soviet-backed education
of engineers, resulting in political turmoil and
instability in villagers' livelihood.
Under
these circumstances, it is difficult to draw a clear
line between aid and business, namely penetration into
the fledgling economy or rural Mongolia by the Japanese
trading houses Marubeni Corp, C Itoh & Co Ltd and
Mitsui & Co Ltd. The sudden introduction of
privatization and consequent high generator operating
costs, out of synch with the rural income level, made it
difficult for the trading houses and oil companies to
collect cash from the villagers.
The Japanese
Bank for International Cooperation (JICA) reported that
Mongolia's social sector spending - including education,
health care, welfare and social security - was cut
rapidly in the 1990s from 22.3 percent of gross domestic
product (GDP) in 1991 to 14.9 percent in 1998. The bank
pointed out in a poverty report that the country's rural
areas were hit hardest by privatization, as the quality
and quantity of medical services had deteriorated. After
the harsh winter of 2000, the privatization of livestock
farming hit peasant families hard.
According to
political scientist Muneyuki Murai, a leading Mongolia
expert who teaches at the Osaka University of Foreign
Studies, human relationships are very important to that
country's group-oriented society. At every governmental
layer - the aimag (provincial) level, the
sum (village) level and bag (neighborhood)
level - administrators tend to divert benefits to their
friends and relatives. Murai pointed out that the
Japanese trading houses, not necessarily aware of these
favoritist relationships, could inadvertently worsen the
plight of the poor by colluding with those in positions
of influence.
A little-known fact is that while
Mongolia was under the influence of the Soviet Union,
the Renewable Energy Institute of the Science Academy of
Mongolia was actively experimenting with alternative
energy sources to fossil fuels. According to Wind Ltd,
the institute at the time conducted intensive research
into developing solar and wind power generators and wind
pump systems. The institute set up small, movable wind
power generators and larger windmills for study. Today,
only the ruins of these windmills and experimental
generators remain.
JICA commissioned
professional consulting companies International
Development Center of Japan and Nippon Koei Co Ltd to do
a study, subsequently titled " Master Plan Study for
Rural Power Supply by Renewable Energy in Mongolia",
from September 1998 at the request of the Mongolian
government. The government acknowledged that 117 sums
were supplied by electricity via power lines as of
November 1997, but it was judged too difficult to extend
the power grid to 197 other sums. For these villages,
the government concluded, "independent electric supply
systems (solar, wind etc)" should be adopted. According
to the Japanese Photovoltaic Energy Association, JICA
once set up a solar battery device and a wind power
generator in Mongolia for research purposes in May 1999.
A source close to JICA said the initial project
of installing diesel power generators was only meant to
be a temporary measure by the Mongolian government,
which wanted renewable-energy generators in the long
term. But the Japanese trading houses, apparently more
interested in generating profit at home than in carrying
out the altruistic aims of ODA that would actually help
the Mongolian people, ignored the Mongolian government's
wishes - almost to the point that, according to another
source, the government gave up the project altogether. A
plan for a joint study by Mongolian University and a
Japanese venture for the development of renewable energy
was also turned down by the Japanese government.
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