Administrative co-management in special use forests of Vietnam

To protect its natural heritage and biodiversity, Vietnam has established a system of ‘special use forest’ (SUFs) which is “the backbone of the national protected areas”. The ineffective management of SUFs based solely on the state leads to a decline in biodiversity and density of the forests. Recognizing this, collaborative or ‘co’-management for SUFs is advocated to get more participation and shared responsibilities and rights between government and non-state actors. However, it is widely noted that co-management is a particularly great challenge in Vietnam because of the nature of strong state control, decades of SUF conflicts, and the lack of capacity and initiatives of communities to negotiate with the government in co-management arrangements. This PhD thesis questions the degree to which co-management can be put in Vietnamese SUFs and the degree of ‘adaptiveness’ it can engender. Conditions of the economic, political and social context surrounding SUFs becomes key to any understanding of how co-management can be implemented, including insights into how co-management may need to be amended to adjust to ‘fit’ the context of mono-organisational states.