Abstract

From environmental activism to international law, ‘cooperation’ between states is widely seen as key to protecting the environment from anthropogenic harm. Emphasising working together over the pursuit of self-interested goals, cooperation is imagined both as a method for managing water resources, and a description of the collaboration involved. But how cooperation is actually imagined and practiced in everyday life is not anthropologically well explored. This paper draws on historical and ethnographic material from Mongolia to examine how practices of joint water management were enacted between this country and the Soviet Union. Focussing on ideas of ‘fraternal relations’ between these two socialist countries during the second half of the twentieth century, it examines how kin relations were appropriated to frame the enaction of inter-state cooperation in environmental management. The material on which this paper is based relates to the Selenge river (Mon. Selenge mörön; Russ. reka Selenga), a major Asian transboundary river which rises in Mongolia’s western highlands before crossing the Russian border and flowing into lake Baikal.