“Dzud” is the most harmful disaster to Mongolian herders resulted in over 20 million livestock mortality and had degraded almost 1.2 million people’s livelihood only in past 20 years. This research aimed to explore the effectiveness of disaster management system in Mongolia, especially in terms of response effectiveness toward “dzud” disaster at the county level during the winter of 2016. The author applied qualitative research methods including in-depth interviews and focus group discussion involving 30 key informants from local and national levels. The findings had shown that the information prior and during the disaster was insufficient for stakeholders’ to make a rational decision for the response. The scarce internal resource, lack of collaboration among local stakeholders and absence of disaster management expertise at the county level were the main reasons for the poorly functioning disaster management system. The following suggestions were made to improve the response effectiveness by improving the availability and diversity of early warning information, establishing a local resource fund, modifying external assistance type, creating a regular working commission and enhancing the networking among the stakeholders at the local level.

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