In the middle of the Gobi Desert there is a hole in the ground. Underneath it sits one of the largest copper and gold deposits ever found.

Mongolia's mineral wealth has been estimated at between one and three trillion dollars. Three and a half million people live there. Divide it up and every Mongolian would be sitting on hundreds of thousands.

Roughly one in four lives below the poverty line. The capital has some of the worst winter air on Earth. And in 2017 the country needed an international bailout to avoid default.

A trillion dollars underground. And a bailout.

The easy answer is corruption. The real answer is two neighbours, no coastline, one customer, a currency that killed every other industry, and a herding economy collapsing under a warming climate.

⏱ CHAPTERS
00:00 A hole in the Gobi
02:30 Two neighbours and nothing else
05:30 A land that was never meant to be farmed
08:30 What the Soviets left behind
11:00 Turquoise Hill
14:00 The bust nobody stopped
17:30 The winter that kills
21:00 The city made of tents
24:30 385,000 tonnes
28:00 What would actually have to change
31:00 What is being lost
33:30 Wealth is not money

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#Mongolia #ResourceCurse #Economics #Geography #Documentary