A site and its narratives: Mongol Daguur, an area where it is still possible to halt the “Fortress Conservation”

The research focuses on the Mongol Daguur – situated in the most north-eastern province (aimag) of Mongolia, 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 Ramsar site, it has been in the Unesco’s World Network of Biosphere Reserves since 2007. The zoning of the area providing for different “levels” of conservation and human presence (see Namkhai 2021). The creation and enforcement of protected areas with the identification of the zones 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. Through the lens of the “fortress conservation” (Robinson 2007, Brockington 2002), the article considers a network of human and nonhuman actors (mobile pastoralists, authorities, 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 “social life of water” (Wagner 2013) developing the case study of wetlands and springs. Our investigation will lead us to examine and critically discuss the fortress conservation process that is taking place in these areas, identifying the possibility of stopping it and implementing policies that go against it.