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Explaining Failure in Decentralized Natural Resource Management: How Citizens’ Property Rights Constrain Local Official Implementation of National Forest Policy in Vietnam
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Explaining Failure in Decentralized Natural Resource Management:
How Citizens’ Property Rights Constrain Local Official Implementation of
National Forest Policy in Vietnam
by
Cari An Coe
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Political Science
University of California, Los Angeles
Western Political Science Association Annual Meeting
March 20, 2008
San Diego, California
Abstract
Why do local officials in developing countries often fail to implement national environmental policy as the national government intended? Designed to engender “community-based natural resource management,” the decentralized implementation of environmental policy has been largely unsuccessful in meeting its intended goals of enhanced resource conservation and sustainable resource use. Common explanations for these local failures include corruption on the part of local officials or a lack of sufficient resources and training locally to allow effective implementation. Thus, local officials are either portrayed as unaccountable to local communities or as incapable of serving them. This paper challenges this notion with a case study of Vietnam by showing that there are dimensions of local officials’ accountability to their communities, even in non-democratic settings, which may constrain how they implement national policy. Using data from household surveys and interviews with local officials living in the immediate periphery of Tam Dao national park in northern Vietnam, I argue that the reason why households are using protected forest land in the national park for agro-forestry purposes is because local officials honor long-standing, community-recognized household property rights over this forest land. Because local officials are accountable to existing community power structures, they may fail to locally implement policy in the way intended at the national level.
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Explaining Failure in Decentralized Natural Resource Management:
How Citizens’ Property Rights Constrain Local Official Implementation of
National Forest Policy in Vietnam
by
Cari An Coe
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Political Science
University of California, Los Angeles
Western Political Science Association Annual Meeting
March 20, 2008
San Diego, California
Abstract
Why do local officials in developing countries often fail to implement national environmental
policy as the national government intended? Designed to engender “community-based natural
resource management,” the decentralized implementation of environmental policy has been
largely unsuccessful in meeting its intended goals of enhanced resource conservation and
sustainable resource use. Common explanations for these local failures include corruption on the
part of local officials or a lack of sufficient resources and training locally to allow effective
implementation. Thus, local officials are either portrayed as unaccountable to local communities
or as incapable of serving them. This paper challenges this notion with a case study of Vietnam
by showing that there are dimensions of local officials’ accountability to their communities, even
in non-democratic settings, which may constrain how they implement national policy. Using
data from household surveys and interviews with local officials living in the immediate
periphery of Tam Dao national park in northern Vietnam, I argue that the reason why households
are using protected forest land in the national park for agro-forestry purposes is because local
officials honor long-standing, community-recognized household property rights over this forest
land. Because local officials are accountable to existing community power structures, they may
fail to locally implement policy in the way intended at the national level.
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