Community-Driven Regulation : Balancing Development and the Environment in Vietnam

In Community-Driven Regulation Dara O'Rourke proposes a new policy model forpollution control, based on detailed case studies from rapidly industrializing Vietnam. He showsthat environmental problems can be solved when affected community groups mobilize to pressure bothstate and industry and argues that this strategy, which he terms "community-driven regulation," usedsuccessfully in Vietnam, can achieve similar success in other countries.Vietnam's recent entry intothe world economy has brought many benefits to its population--more jobs, higher income levels, moreplentiful goods and services. But this very rapid growth of industry has also brought predictableenvironmental problems. Areas near industrial plants experience declining crop yields and pollutedgroundwater; residents downwind from factories suffer respiratory ailments. Vietnam thus serves as amodel for nations dealing with environmental problems during the transition to an industrializedeconomy and global integration.O'Rourke offers six detailed case studies, based on his own fieldworkin Vietnam, that show how strategies adopted by local communities achieved positive results despitea strong state bias toward development and the absence of existing advocacy groups, a free press, orpolitically vulnerable elected officials. The firms studied are both state-run and multinational;they include a Taiwanese textile factory, a state-owned fertilizer plant, and a Korean factoryproducing shoes for Nike. The communities affected range from traditional villages to urbanneighborhoods. O'Rourke's policy model of community-state synergy challenges traditional notions ofstate-centric environmental regulation and questions the growing literature that identifies marketmechanisms as the best way to solve environmental problems in developing countries.