Competing for Land, Mangroves and Marine Resources in Coastal Vietnam (eBook)

This book presents a historical and ethnographic study of changing mangrove management in northern Vietnam over the past 100 years, grounded in a case study in the Red River Delta in northern Vietnam. The book shows that three primary socio-economic dynamics have affected mangroves:  enclosure movements that have restricted access by different user communities over time, such as the exclusion of women; changing valuation of mangroves and their products and services; and social and class differentiation caused by privatization of once common resources. The result of these pressures have been erosions of norms, rules, and collective action to protect and nurture mangroves, leading to widespread loss of coastal forests. Sustainable mangrove management will require attention to these dynamics to address current-day land conflicts. The book will be of interest to policy-makers, practitioners, and academics and students in forest policy, management and governance; rural livelihoods; and globalization and agrarian change. 

Dr. Hue Le is senior researcher and lecturer from the VNU - Central Institute for Natural Resources and Environmental Studies (CRES), Vietnam National University, Hanoi. Dr. Le's research focuses on natural resource management, land tenure, and gender. Her scholarship examines the differentiating effects of the macro policy and investigates how social differentiation and power relations affect the way in which different classes of people use the resources and the income that each class earns from forest-related resources.

Dr. Le received her MA in Urban and Environmental Policy at Tufts University and her PhD in Agriculture and Rural Development at the Institute of Social Studies, the Netherlands. From February to August 2012, she was a Fulbright visiting scholar at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. From October to November 2016, she was a visiting scholar at York Centre for Asian Research, York University.

---

This book presents a historical and ethnographic study of changing mangrove management in northern Vietnam over the past 100 years, grounded in a case study in the Red River Delta in northern Vietnam. The book shows that three primary socio-economic dynamics have affected mangroves:  enclosure movements that have restricted access by different user communities over time, such as the exclusion of women; changing valuation of mangroves and their products and services; and social and class differentiation caused by privatization of once common resources. The result of these pressures have been erosions of norms, rules, and collective action to protect and nurture mangroves, leading to widespread loss of coastal forests. Sustainable mangrove management will require attention to these dynamics to address current-day land conflicts. The book will be of interest to policy-makers, practitioners, and academics and students in forest policy, management and governance; rural livelihoods;and globalization and agrarian change.