The 2011 Protests in Inner Mongolia: An Ethno-environmental Perspective

Abstract

In May 2011, Inner Mongolia experienced the most serious ethnic unrest in the region for 30 years. In this article, I explore the broader context that led to the eruption of the protests, with a particular emphasis on environmental issues. My aim is to explain why environmental issues occupied such a prominent position in the protests, and how these issues were connected to ethnicity. After discussing the material and practical implications of grassland degradation for Mongolian herders, I analyse the symbolic implications of this environmental crisis for the Mongolian educated elite, who have linked environmental issues to ethnic politics and identity. I argue that in the last 20 years or so, Mongolian intellectuals have developed a highly ethnicized environmental discourse, and that this discourse played an important role in informing the 2011 protests. My analysis focuses on this discourse as it is manifested in the domains of art, academia and daily discourse.

Factors Influencing Public-Sphere Pro-Environmental Behavior among Mongolian College Students: A Test of Value–Belief–Norm Theory

“…Apparently, altruistic values are more powerful for promoting PSPB than biospheric values are in this study. This may be because Mongolian educated elites mainly link environmental issues to ethnic politics and identity [24]. For example, when college students participated in the 2011 protests in IMAR, they expressed their strong discontent regarding the serious environmental and economic injustice to the local people and culture [23,24] but not directly regarding the damage to the natural environment itself.…”

“…For example, in the spring of 2011, environmental damage from mining triggered Mongolian college students' involvement in massive protests and conflicts. To quell the widespread protests in IMAR, the government adopted more stringent and explicit environmental policies to regulate the local mining industry [23,24]. There is an urgent need to understand the influences of different social-psychological antecedents on Mongolian college students' PSPB and to promote their participation in PSPB rationally from the actors' perspectives based on a comprehensive theory framework.…”

Pastoralism after culture: environmental governance and human‐animal estrangement at China's ecological frontier

“…Ever concerned with social stability in this ethnic minority‐inhabited border region, the local state in Alasha has tended to prefer economic incentives over forced resettlement. Inner Mongolia in recent years has not witnessed the scale of unrest and crackdowns seen in Xinjiang and Tibet, though large protests did occur in 2011 after a Mongol herder was killed by a coal truck (Baranovitch 2011). 3…”

State, Popular Mobilisation and Gold Mining in Mongolia

“…4 Environmentalist problematisation of pastoralism and 'green governmentality' in North China 'converted pastures to grasslands' (Yeh 2005;Kolås 2014), leaving many herders displaced and without herds. This turned many into ex-herders, but the former herders were also left with the anxiety of becoming ex-Mongols in Chinese urbanisation (see also Baranovitch 2016). N. Baranovitch writes about the 2011 protest in Inner Mongolia, sparked by the 10 May death of a Mongolian herder called Mergen, who was killed by a coal mining truck driven by a Han Chinese driver.…”