Ulaanbaatar
Support to be provided to retrieve vehicles sunken in Khuvsgul lake
Environment
Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. Minister of Environment and Tourism B.Bat-Erdene met with Minister of Environment of Japan Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi.
The meeting touched on environmental issues, climate change, desertification, dust storms, water management, carbon sequestration, biodiversity, air pollution, saxaul protection, and the retrieval of vehicles and equipment sunken in Khuvsgul lake, and signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the field of environment.
Thanking Minister B.Bat-Erdene for paying a visit to Japan on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, Minister Yamaguchi expressed willingness to further strengthen bilateral friendly relations and cooperation.
The two sides discussed ways to jointly implement multilateral and practical cooperation in environmental protection. In this context, the Japanese side pledged to support the President of Mongolia’s initiative to protect Lake Khuvsgul and the works to pull out 28 vehicles and equipment sunken in the lake.
Khuvsgul lake is a strategically important lake that accounts
for 74.6 percent of Mongolia’s freshwater. Five of the 28 sunken vehicles in
the lake have fuel inside, so it is necessary to pull them out promptly in
order to avoid the possible risk of fuel polluting the freshwater. Last year,
at the initiative of the President of Mongolia U.Khurelsukh, the Sukhbaatar ship
that sank in 1985 was successfully pulled out of the lake.
