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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
187017
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| Summary/Abstract |
Coal-fired thermal power has recently become one of the most pressing issues in Vietnam's development agenda. The country's economic development, industrialization and modernization, and population increases have put increasing pressure on energy demands. The Vietnamese government sees coal-fired power as a way forward in ensuring energy security, which had led to the planning and construction of plants nationwide, particularly from 2016. Simultaneously, a growing anti-coal power development movement argues that coal-fired power adversely transforms local people's lives and livelihoods, and negatively impacts the ecological balance in plant locations. Through the lens of environmental justice, this paper examines the development of Vietnam's power sector with a focus on coal-fired thermal power and its impacts on local livelihoods, food production and water resources. The paper argues that Vietnam's development of coal-fired power is about much more than energy. It speaks to the state's rule over resources, and how this very process of power generation disproportionately affects local communities in the Mekong Delta.
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| 2 |
ID:
171916
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper investigates the adaptation processes with reference to the narrative analysis of human–environment interactions in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. From the political ecology perspective, it focuses on the discourses of the power relationships embedded within the ‘state‐society‐flood’ nexus over the course of its ‘opening‐up and closing‐off’ processes (e.g. excavating large‐scale canals for human settlements and agricultural expansion (opening‐up) and human interventions into natural systems through water control structures (closing‐off)). Drawing on empirical data gathered from 33 interviews and nine focus group discussions in three study areas and relevant literature, the paper argues that human interactions with the flood environments are intertwined with adjustments of adaptation patterns as evidenced through three periods: free adaptation (pre‐1975), transitional adaptation (1976–2010) and forced adaptation (after 2010). These processes have witnessed a gradual power shift in the ‘state‐society’ relations in manipulating floods, which moves from the top‐down towards a more collaborative fashion. By unravelling the political ecology of the ‘state‐society‐flood’ nexus, this paper exhibits the skewed development in the delta, which is largely bound to short‐term development planning to prioritise local socio‐economic and political objectives. The paper contributes important policy implications for achieving socially just and environmentally sustainable development in the delta.
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| 3 |
ID:
118924
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the latter half of the twentieth century thousands of Khmer people were displaced from their homes along the freshwater rivers of Vietnam's Mekong delta. Their pattern of settlement along freshwater tidal rivers was an ecological adaptation unique in the Khmer-speaking world, of which only vestiges remain. Drawing upon oral histories and ethnographic observations of O Mon, a district in the central Mekong delta, this paper reconstructs a picture of the traditional river-based livelihoods, social structure and religious life of Khmers in this region in the 1940s. It describes how these Khmers were driven from their villages early in the First Indochina War. Experiencing ongoing dislocations in subsequent periods of war and peace, most have been prevented from returning to their former homes or reclaiming their land. Relying on testimony by elderly Khmers, who witnessed the disintegration of their riverside communities, the account challenges existing depictions of the ecology and history of the Mekong delta, offering new insights into the complexity of the Indochina wars and the severity of their consequences.
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| 4 |
ID:
148645
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| Summary/Abstract |
After the Communist Tet Offensive of 1968, General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, supposedly credited the Army-Navy Mobile Riverine Force (MRF) with having “saved the [Mekong] Delta” for the allied cause. The MRF drove enemy forces from key population centers and decimated the Viet Cong main force units that stood and fought them. But in August 1969, General Creighton Abrams, Westmoreland’s successor, disbanded the MRF. Despite the MRF’s impressive battle history, Army and Navy leaders never fully embraced the creation, development, or operational deployment of one of the few truly joint-service units of the Vietnam War.
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| 5 |
ID:
118897
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2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Twentieth-century industrialization in the agricultural landscapes of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam took a very different form from other places, characterized less by a continuous spread of large-scale technology than by its destruction in mid-century and the subsequent spread of small technology which powered scooters, water pumps, and boats. The numbers of these portable motors, an everyday technology in 1960, rose from a few thousand units in 1963 to millions in the present day. The colonial and post-colonial state in Vietnam played a key role in the demise of large technology and, ultimately, of the water infrastructure. Its failures during wartime spurred farmers to adopt cheap, small engines to survive; however, the state's role was complex during this time. Several key factors, including the influence of American aid programmes and the contributions of Taiwanese agricultural advisers, especially those pushing high-yield rice, favoured the adoption of small engines. From an ecological viewpoint, the post-1960 explosion in the use of small motors, especially as water pumps, has brought people and states in Southeast Asia to an ecological impasse as unrestricted use has impacted on water tables, salinity levels, and the long-term sustainability of agriculture in many places. This paper examines the state's indirect role in shaping this silent revolution, and it considers the political and ideological factors underpinning its history.
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