The Ministry of Environment and Tourism of Mongolia, based on the law of protecting the environment, government agenda from 2016 to 2020 and national agenda “Sustainable development education”, initiated and has been implementing a series of campaigns under the name “Let’s change our attitude” to increase youth’s participation in conservation of nature. Upon the initiative, the “Green Passport” campaign has been organized among the eco clubs of all secondary schools since 2018 in cooperation with the Freshwater Resources and Nature Conservation Center, an environmental conservation organization under the MET.

Currently, over 120,000 secondary school students all around the country have joined the campaign, keeping “Green Passport”. Starting from December 2019, the digital version of the “Green passport” launched and “Green Passport” application is now available on the App Store and Play Store to be downloaded free of charge.

The application has a purpose to educate the next generation to care and protect the mother earth. Users of the application can make significant changes in his or her life including reduction of paper use, getting the latest news on competitions, trends, trainings and meetings, taking incentives with their collected scores and expanding their knowledge on the environmental issues and act upon them.

There is an interesting section in the menu of the application called “Digital Forest”. One can take positive actions for the environment and collect scores using the section. When the collected score is high enough, the user can go to one of the “Green Passport-Green Grove” gardens in 9 districts of Ulaanbaatar and 21 aimags to plant a tree with the help of professionals. The gardeners will offer the students to choose from 18 different types of trees and put their name tag on it.

Students are learning to sort their waste, save water and electricity, reduce carbon dioxide in their own environment with simple steps by keeping the Green Passport. It is expected that we will save 44 million m³ water and 324 million kW electricity, plant 1.4 million trees, prevent 42 tons of greenhouse gas emission nationwide starting from 2030 as a result of the campaign. Financially, we will save an annual unproductive expense of 12 trillion MNT beginning in 2027, according to the economic estimation.

Source: MET