IS SUSTAINABLE MANGROVE MANAGEMENT POSSIBLE IN THE RED RIVER DELTA OF VIETNAM?
By Le Thi Van Hue Although community-based natural resource management attracts international attention, it has not yet been widely implemented in Vietnam. In Vietnam the main strategies have been centralised management by state agencies and the assignment of management responsibility to individual households. We argue that the promotion of nationalisation and privatisation has not solved the problem of resource degradation and overexploitation, but has deprived many rural households of their livelihoods. We base this argument on a study of mangrove forest use and management in a village of Vietnam’s Red River Delta, which shows that the local community is highly heterogeneous. We suggest that sustainable mangrove management requires a combination of institutional arrangements, including state control, private resource rights and community-based management. Study area Giao Lac village is a largely Catholic coastal community located in Giao Thuy district, Nam Dinh province, which lies a
