A site and its narratives in between steppes, springs, herders and administrators: the Mongol Daguur in northeast Mongolia

Our fieldwork was conducted in Mongol Daguur – in the most north-eastern province (aimag) of Mongolia, the Dornod – which the Mongolian Parliament identified as a restricted access area in the early 1990s and the state legislature recognized as a special protection area in 1995. A Unesco Ramsar site, it has been in the Unesco’s World Network of Biosphere Reserves since 2007. The zoning of the area includes a core zone, a buffer zone, and a transition zone, providing for different “levels” of conservation and human presence (see Namkhai 2021). Its identification and later, the redrawing of its borders, caused friction among the inhabitants and the authorities, which currently plays out through silent strategies and “avoidance” on the part of the former and notices and pressure with fines on the part of the latter. The article considers a network of human and nonhuman actors (herders, institutions, companies, laws, animals, bodies of water, etc.) and the narratives around the conflict – at times covert, at times overt – between the authorities and nomads, unfolding in the second part with the topic of the relationship with water and a case study of springs.