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Community learning in environmental NGO projects in Vietnam: A comparative study
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Community learning in environmental NGO projects in Vietnam: A comparative study
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Content
COMMUNITY LEARNING IN ENVIRONMENTAL NGO PROJECTS IN
VIETNAM: A COMPARATIVE STUDY
Copyright 2004
by
Michael Silverman
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
EDUCATION
December 2004
Michael Silverman
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UMI Number: 3155479
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Dedication
This study is dedicated to one little dragon that appeared during the
formative stages of this investigation. She accompanied me swimming in the seas,
visiting fishing villages, Buddhist temples and remote islands, and researching long
evenings in libraries. Like the spirit and soul of the seas, she is one of the true
nurturers’ of society.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge and thank the people and organizations who
have contributed to the learning that took place in this dissertation. Dr. Nelly P.
Stromquist, my dissertation chair, provided keen insights, measured critique, and a
space for me to expand my horizons academically and professionally. Dr. William
Rideout Jr. and Dr. Sheldon Kamienieki, who both also served on my dissertation
committee and further nurtured my interest in international education, participatory
democracy and environmental issues. I would also like to thank the AREA-Spencer
Pre-dissertation Fellowship Committee, whose award permitted me additional
collegial support to complete this research. I would further like to acknowledge IMA-
Vietnam and the lUCN/Hon Mun Pilot Project for welcoming me into their
organizations, for providing me an opportunity to volunteer and contribute to their
projects, and for facilitating this study. Finally, I want to share my heartfelt
appreciation with the people of Van Hung, Van Ninh District, Khanh Hoa Province,
and the people of the Hon Mun MPA islands, Vietnam. They shared not only their
homes, but also the spirit and soul of their villages. Their learning yesterday and
today will make a difference for tomorrow.
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iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication ii
Acknowledgements iii
List of Figures X
List of Tables xi
List of Boxes xii
List of Maps xiii
List of Abbreviations xiv
Abstract XV
CHAPTER 1: Overview
Background 1
Statement of the Research Problem 6
Overview of Research Questions and Assumptions 10
Overview of the Projects 13
Definition of Major Concepts of the Research 19
Limitation of the Study 25
Significance of the Study 26
Organization of the Dissertation 28
CHAPTER 2: Literature Review 30
Overview 30
Non-Formal and Informal Learning: Individual or Collective 32
T ransformation
Institutional Approaches: Individual Transformation? 33
Radical Approaches: Transformation and Empowerment 39
Critical Pedagogy and Participatory Action Research (PAR): 40
Participatory Action Research: A Southern Perspective 45
Summary 50
Non-Formal and Informal Learning: Individual or Collective
Transformation
Participatory and Democratic Practices: Participation and deliberation 52
Participatory Democracy: Transformative policy-making? 53
A Habermasian Participatory Model 55
Deliberate Democracy 57
Participation without Democratization 59
Democratizing Citizen Participation in Coastal Resource 61
Management
Summary 63
Participatory Democratic Practices: Participation and deliberation
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V
Human and Collective Agency: Transformational Possibilities 64
Iterational Agency 67
Projective Agency 69
Contested/Pragmatic-Evaluative Agency 72
Summary 74
Human and Collective Agency: Transformational Possibilities
Summary: Literature Review 77
CHAPTER 3: Research Methods 77
Qualitative Research in Development Contexts 79
Conceptual Framework: Transformative Social Learning 82
Expanded Research Questions 89
Data Collection 92
Narrative Inquiry 92
Textual Information 96
Oral Information 97
Researcher’s Observations and Participation 100
Data Analysis 101
Validity and Credibility of the Analysis and Findings 103
Limitations of the Analysis 108
CHAPTER 4: Vietnam’s Vietnam’s Environmental Narrative: Changing 110
Conservation and Development Practices
Protected Areas in Vietnam: An Evolution 110
Participation in Development and Conservation in Vietnam 115
Summary 123
Vietnam’s Environmental Narrative: Changing Conservation and
Development Practices
Overview: Natural, Cultural, Social and Policy Influences 124
Natural Features: Coral Reefs Draw NGOs to Vietnam 126
IMA’s Coral Reefs 128
Hon Mun’s Coral Reefs 129
The Reefs, Community Participation and Learning 131
Economic Influences 132
1995: The United States’ Embargo Ends 133
Lobster Farming 135
Mangroves Loss 138
Tourism 141
Economic Influences on Community Participation and Learning 143
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Cultural Influences 145
A Cultural Hierarchy: Confucianism, Buddhism, and Ancestor 145
Worship
Cultural Practices and Gender Influences 147
Cultural Influences and Nature 150
Cultural Influences: Limitations on participation and learning 152
Institutions and Knowledge Creation 154
Marine Institutions 154
Knowledge Creation 157
Institutions and Knowledge Creation Affect Participation and Learning 158
Policies 159
Fishing Regulations 160
The General [Commune] Democracy Decree of 1998 163
Fishing Regulations and General Democracy Decree: Opportunities 167
for participating and learning in policy making
Social Organizations, Non-Formal, informal, and incidental learning 169
Social Organizations: Participation in social life, non-formal, informal, 172
and incidental learning
Summary: Natural, Cultural, Social and Policy Influences 173
CHAPTER 5: Case Studies 178
Overview 178
A Family NGO Founded on Coral Reefs: The International Marinelife 180
Alliance (IMA)
The Community 183
Case Study: IMA-Vietnam, The Trao Reef Project, 2001 -2004 184
Introduction: The Project 184
Location of Learning Activities 186
Project Funding 187
Learning Programs’ Organization 188
Target Project Participants and Learners 190
General Learning Objectives and Procedures 191
Non-formal, Informal and Incidental Learning in the Trao Reef Project 193
Introduction 193
Learning through Environmental Action 194
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Acting against Exploitation: The Birth of Trao Reef locally 195
managed reserve
Collectively Opening the Reserve 196
Learning to Guard the Marine Environment 199
Learning Marine Resource Protection: Science, Laws and 202
Communication
Reef Rehabilitation and Coral Farming 207
Monitoring Environmental Changes: Divers as researchers 210
Raising-awareness and Taking Action on Trash 213
Women Problematize and Act on Community Trash 217
Summary: Learning through Environmental Action 219
Learning and Reflecting on Others’ Experiences 221
Consciousness-raising Study Tours 221
Summary: Learning and Reflecting on Others’ Experiences 224
Participating in and Deliberating Environmental Issues 225
Creating Democratic Practices 225
Learning Participatory Democracy through Advocacy 227
Participatory Democracy in Action: Advocates’ dialogues 230
Deliberating Policy 234
Advocacy through the Arts 237
Summary: Participating in and Deliberating Environmental Issues 239
Contesting Environmentally Friendly Livelihoods 240
Summary Non-formal, Informal and Incidental Learning in the Trao 243
Reef Project
Case Study: lUCN/Hon Mun, The Hon Mun Marine Protected Area Pilot 246
Project
Overview 247
An International Environmental Institutions: IUCN 246
The Community 249
Introduction: The Project 250
Location of Learning Activities 253
Project Funding 254
Learning Programs’ Organization 255
Target Project Participants and Learners 257
General Learning Objectives and Procedures 258
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Non-formal, Informal and Incidental Learning in the Hon Mun Project 260
Introduction 260
Learning to Participate in the Project 262
Opening Access to Participation through PRAs 263
Participating in the PRAs to Raise Awareness 266
PRAs and Symbolic Learning 271
Participating and Learning in Policy Meetings: Initiating the Village 276
MPA Committees
Summary: Learning to participate in the project 283
Expanding Community Participation: AIG and Credit 284
Learning to Enterprise Seaweed Jelly 286
Learning Household-based AIG 289
Accessing Credit Programs 292
Summary: Expanding community participation in AIG and credit 295
Accessing Other’s Experiential and Collective Learning 296
Study Tours: Collective Learning Exchanges 297
Accessing, Learning, and Integrating Aquaculture Experiences 301
Summary: Accessing other’s experiential and collective learning 304
Learning to Take Action 305
Learning to Take Action: Collective action on community trash 308
Individual Awareness-raising on Solid Waste 308
Learning through Contestation 310
Collectively Contesting Enforcement Creates Awareness 311
Summary: Non-formal, informal and incidental learning in the Hon 316
Mun Project
CHAPTER 6: Discussion of Findings 319
Overview 319
Contextual Influences on Participation and Learning 320
NGO Influences on Community Participation and Learning 322
Environmental, Economic, Cultural, Social and Geographical 325
Influences on Community Participation and Learning
Non-formal and Informal Learning: Comparing Approaches 337
Overview 337
Comparing Who Learned and How Learners Participated 339
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Comparing How and What Participants Learned: The two projects’ 344
non-formal and informal learning activities
Differing Learning Process and Outcomes 356
CHAPTER 7: Conclusion 361
Implications: Conserving the marine environment 362
Implications: Participation and participatory democracy 367
Implications: Learning and transformative possibilities 371
A Programming Challenge: A more socially and environmentally 373
transformative learning model
Future Directions 382
References 387
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X
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1 Agency Through Learning and Action 76
Figure 2 Comparing Learning and Outcomes 357
Figure 3 Learning through Action: Communities transform political 376
and environmental practices
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1 Concepts for Learning Approaches and Democratic
Practices in Development and Conservation Projects
49
Table 2 Conceptual Framework Indicators Matrix 86
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LIST OF BOXES
Box 1 Definitions of Research Concepts 20
Box 2 Vietnam National Assembly, Decree 19/1998/ND-CP, 165
Selected Articles
Box 3 Criteria and Examples for Transformative Social- 383
Environmental Learning
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LIST OF MAPS
Map 1 Vietnam’s Regions 127
Map 2 Research Site - Khanh Hoa Province 127
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xiv
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Acronym Agency, Organization or Concept
AIG Additional (or Alternative) Income Generation
BAP Biodiversity Action Plan
CBCRM Community based Coastal Resource Management
CRP Center for Rural Progress
DANIDA Danish International Development Assistance
DOLISA Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs
EAPEI East Asia and Pacific Environmental Initiative
ENV Environment for Nature-Vietnam
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization
FFI Fauna and Flora International
GEF General Environmental Fund - funded by the World Bank or the UNDP
GTZ German Technical Assistance
HDI Human DeveloDment Indicators httD://www.undo.ora/hdr2002/hdi.Ddf
HMMPAPP Hon Mun Marine Protected Area Pilot Project
ICD Integrated Conservation and Development project
ICM Integrated Coastal Management
IDRC International Development Research Center, Canada
IG Income Generating
1MA-V International Marinelife Alliance - Vietnam
IMF International Monetary Fund
INGOs International non-governmental organizations
1UCN International Union for the Conservation of Nature
MoFI Ministry of Fisheries
MPA Marine Protected Area
NGOs Non-governmental organizations
NOAA National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administation
North Northern industrialized nations, i.e. - the United States and the European
Union
NSEP National Sustainable Environment Plan - Vietnam
NSMs New Social Movements
PA Protected Area
PMB Project Management Board
PRA Participatory Rural Appraisal
PCRA Participatory Coastal Resource Appraisal
RAMSAR International protection of wetlands treaty signed in Ramsar, Iran (1984)
SIDA Swedish International Development Assistance
South Southern developing nations that have low HDI vis-a-vis the North
UNCED United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development
Rio Conference, 1992; Johannesburg Conference, 2002
UNDP United Nations Development Program
UNESCO United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organization
USAID United States Agency for International Development
USD$ United States’ Dollar
VND$ Vietnamese Dong, Vietnam’s currency. At the time of the research, $1 US
dollar = approximately 15,500 VND
WBCSD World Business Council for Sustainable Development
WWF World Wide Fund for nature
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ABSTRACT
xv
This study explored who, what and how two Vietnamese coastal
communities learned in their respective NGO facilitated integrated conservation and
development (ICD) projects in Khanh Hoa Province from 2001 - 2003. One project,
Trao Reef, was facilitated by IMA-Vietnam. The second, Hon Mun, was coordinated
by IUCN. Both projects aimed to not only protect and enhance the marine
environment, but also to include ordinary villagers in the process. The non-formal
and informal learning context that these projects created and implemented is a
neglected area of educational research. Moreover, within this context, Vietnam’s
coastal communities are undergoing rapid environmental change as its economy
integrates into the region and the world, and as internationally-driven change
challenge its social and environmental fabric. This learning dynamic is further
influenced by Vietnam’s environmental biodiversity, new participatory democracy
decree and its long socio-cultural history.
Using qualitative methods, this research investigated the two projects
through NGO and institutional document reviews, participant observations, and
semi-structured interviews. Data was analyzed through a conceptual framework
based on a synthesis of transformative learning, deliberative and participatory
democracy, and collective agency. Findings suggest that while both projects had
similar non-formal programs and informal learning activities, each used different
participatory approaches resulting in distinct outcomes. IMA-V had many more
informal activities where target participants, the Core Group and the Advocates, in
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particular, had experiential learning experiences to directly protect the marine
environment. In contrast, IUCN focused on involving villagers in credit and AIG
activities, while involving the Village MPA Committee members in learning to
participate in MPA management. The results suggest that IMA-V villagers had more
collective transformative learning experiences leading to their advocacy and
protection of Trao Reef. In comparison, lUCN/Hon Mun villagers learned to
participate in the project, but often for individual and not for collective benefit. The
outcome infers that more transformational learning experiences result when
villagers participate in collective learning activities that are experiential, and where
they not only directly rehabilitate, protect, and advocate for the environment, but
also deliberate environmental policy. Nevertheless, socio-economic environmental
threats remain learning challenges to be contested and addressed.
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As the dawn began to rise up out of the Eastern Sea bathing the two
villages in the golden light of the early day, two trawlers sped by grazing the
early morning sea beds for trash fish. Further out from shore, the Marine
Protected Areas’ enforcement boat was circling the coral reefs in the pursuit
of any fishing violators. Lobster farmers, on shore, were already up waiting
for today’s catch to feed to the 1000s of lobsters farmed. Crab fishers were
pulling in their nets, but squid fishers had long since reached port and were
selling their catch for 15000 VND$ (Vietnamese Dong) per kilo. Children
would soon be heading off to school, some by boat, and others by bicycle or
on foot. Women were busy preparing for market.
“A few years ago, there were few lobster farmers and lots of fish,” said the
old fisherman, “but then, there were fewer people too.”
Later in the day, harvested lobster would be crated up and brought to the
nearby airport for shipping out to Ho Chi Minh City, then on to Hong Kong,
Tokyo or Taipei.
An unknown fishing villager
CHAPTER 1: Background
Vietnam is a developing country in the throes of social, economic and
environmental change. Issues of conservation and development, in general, and
marine conservation and development, in particular, are central to these changes.
With a population of approximately 80 million and growing (50% of its population
was born after 1975), approximately 35% of Vietnam’s population lives on its
coastal plain, upland resources are but exhausted. The sea remains one viable
option to sustain Vietnamese communities (NORAD, 2002). Despite what is
currently promoted in government circles in Vietnam, the sea has not seemed
much of a consequence in Vietnam’s past. It is absent from Vietnamese history,
tales, poetry and song. Yet, the sea has been thought of as a resource to exploit
endlessly. Today, learning how to better manage its coastal resources is a top
priority. These are pressing issues (Nhan Dan, 2002). Communities, organizations
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and agencies have the right to sustainable exploitation of coastal resources,"
explains the Fisheries Regulation Law (Bo Thuy San, 2003). Government policy
continually affirms its support for exploiting Vietnam’s marine and coastal natural
resources while at the same time conserving and rehabilitating them, where
possible, for future economic benefit (NORAD, 2002). Vietnam has developed
rapidly since the lifting of the US embargo in 1994, averaging over 6% growth per
year, which has been the fastest growth rate for states in the lowest HDI grouping
over that period (World Bank, 2002). Today, Vietnam ranks 101 out of 178 nations.
Its cities, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have standards of living similar to much
wealthier neighbors (UNDP, 2001).
Vietnam is a not only a state, it is also culture with over 3000 years of
history. Its people have numerous cultural, social, environmental, political and
economic characteristics that draw attention to issues of learning about
environmental development in non-formal contexts such as NGO facilitated non-
formal learning programs. To Vietnamese, the country is colloquially known not as
the land of Vietnam, but as ‘the land of waters’ of Vietnam (dat nuoc Viet Nam ).
For millennia, Vietnamese culture has been drawn from the connections of people
to the earth and waters that provided sustenance (Borten, 1995; Jamieson, 1993).
Vietnamese literature, both historical and contemporary, also has numerous
examples that weave social life and nature together (Jamieson, 1993). Almost
every province, district, city and village has songs, poems and folklore linking
people with nature. The two projects investigated in this study are no exception.
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“Come to the Giao Luu (social exchange) and hear my new song about
Trao Reef,” said one of the village Core Group members. As he sang the lines to
his newly composed song “...Day von tai nguyen mai mai ben lau ta hay cung nhau
chung tay dung say moi truong sinh thai ch bao do sau,” Hoang Tuyet, Composer.
(Let us intelligently protect our natural resources together to develop an ecological
way of life for future generations), I began to understand the feelings some local
people have for their newly established marine reserve.
In the Hon Mun Project, the Nha Trang Poet’s Society recently composed a
books’ worth of poetry and song celebrating the environment of the Marine
Protected Area with titles such as Den voi Hon Mun (Come to Hon Mun)
“Hon Mun hay den! Moi em,
Khu bao ton bien dau tien que minh,” Cu Haun Tu (Poet).
(Let’s go to Hon Mun, I invite you to the first marine protected area in our
village.)
This prose has an impact in a nation where learning and literacy have
featured predominantly.
Socially and economically, a significant feature is that about 70-80% of the
Vietnamese’ live in, or are involved in a rural economy based-on the management
and sustainability of natural resources (UNDP, 2001). This perhaps is one aspect
of a struggle between the villages and the state, and while the state may claim
authority, localities often control de facto access and benefits (Adger et al. 2001a;
Luttrell, 2001). Vietnam is the fifth most densely populated agricultural nation in the
world, and its economy has been based on wet rice cultivation, where social
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cooperation and environmental reliance, harmony and resilience, have been
important for subsistence and sustainable livelihoods (Kerkvliet, 1995a). From
imperial times through colonialism to contemporary communist party rule, the state
has had ultimate responsibility to ensure the land and waters would feed the people
(Jamieson, 1993; Luttrell, 2001). When institutions have failed, the Vietnamese
people have taken this responsibility into their own hands (Kerkvliet, 1995a; Kolko,
1997; Lutrell, 2001). This has implications for community involvement in
conservation and management of coastal environments.
In village communities that depend on natural resources for subsistence
and wealth, it has been known that conservation and development must go hand in
hand. However, the capacity of local people to effect change is not widely
recognized in a state that continues to be dominated by centralized decision
making (Lamb, 2002). In addition, outside forces are changing this dynamic
further. Since the mid-1990s, Vietnam has opened its society and its economy to
the forces of globalization and many both within and outside of Vietnam see its
natural resources as lucrative commodities for globalizing markets (World Bank,
2000; NORAD, 2002). In order to participate in this dynamic, people’s non-forma!
and informal learning through development projects had become a fundamental
approach to managing, if not contesting change.
This study investigates two distinct, NGO-facilitated marine
conservation/development projects to explore what villagers are learning about this
environmental context. One project, Trao Reef, coordinated by International
Marinelife Alliance-Vietnam (IMA-V, has implemented a locally managed marine
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reserve, and the second, run by IUCN (The World Conservation Union), the Hon
Mun Marine Protected Area Pilot Project (Hon Mun MPA), involves the
development of Vietnam's first nationally recognized marine protected area. Both
projects are located in Khanh Hoa Province in south-central Vietnam, where
coastal resources are known to be rich. Each project has a variety of participatory
activities and community learning programs. However, the two projects differ. Trao
Reef is locally managed. Hon Mun is state controlled, which has resulted in
different approaches and methods. Nevertheless, two overarching features are
both projects stated commitment to “community capacity building and participation
in MPA activities and policies.” Community capacity building and participation
signify the importance of educational activities in each project. Therefore, the two
projects present a timely and appropriate context to analyze the affect of non-
formal and informal learning in Vietnam’s changing development and conservation
narrative. The coastal marine environment in unexplored and largely unregulated
territory for NGO projects in Vietnam, and presents, perhaps, greater policy
challenges than land-based projects, due to its historic and contemporary policy of
open access—meaning that anyone can catch anything, anywhere. As the state
and local villages try to create and enforce policy to ensure coastal resource
sustainability, non-formal and informal learning through NGO projects may play a
significant role.
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Statement of the Research Problem
An important, under-researched educational issue within the context of
development projects, which aims to address both conservation and development,
is the role of non-formal, informal and incidental learning. A new concept and
practice, integrated conservation and development projects (ICDs) that emphasize
community participation and learning are gaining acceptance around the world as
the need to conserve, and the need to develop go hand in hand (Alpert, 1996;
Brown, 2002, Sage & Nguyen Cu, 2001). Moreover, ICD projects pay attention to
local people’s active involvement in conservation through specific non-formal
training and education programs and informal learning activities. These programs
often focus on alternative livelihood and poverty alleviation activities in addition to
conservation awareness, where local people have a stake in conserving resources
(Hughes & Flinton, 2000; Worah, 2000).
In Vietnam, ICDPs have been on the development agenda since the early
1990’s, but were not fully implemented until 1997 when the World Bank, the UNDP,
the EU and the GEF projects began in earnest (Sage & Nguyen Cu, 2001). Prior to
that, Vietnamese policy maker, generally like other state counterparts around the
globe, addressed development and conservation as separate issues and
conservation policy was basically a parks creation policy (Law on Environmental
Protection, 1993). In Vietnam, ICDP approaches have complemented Vietnam’s
Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP, 1995). Yet, until 2000, almost all ICDP attention
was on land based issues, the forests, the inland lakes and waterways.
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Environmental NGOs, such as IMA-Vietnam and IUCN, are now some of
the leading advocates of ICD approaches that include non-formal education
programs and informal learning activities to facilitate community involvement in
issues of both conservation and development. Such learning is an under-analyzed
component of NGO facilitated community based conservation and development
projects in Vietnam today. What learning takes place and its effects remain
outstanding issues to be investigated and understood in order to improve ongoing
projects and to better design and implement the learning components of new ones.
Several NGO sources in Ha Noi explained, “We don’t have enough time or human
resources to analyze what local people learn in our project..., but if they attend and
fill out the program evaluation, we know they learned something.” This suggests
that participation is equal to learning. This quantitative approach is the one most
commonly used if any evaluation is done at all, and much of it focuses on quantity
of participation, enjoyment and appearances. This information may be helpful in
understanding the gross affect of the project, but it does not identify what or how
people learned during the process of participating in the programs and activities.
Many projects do complete a “Lessons Learnt” analysis, but these analyses record
what the NGO/ project facilitator learned rather than what participants learned
during project programs and activities, and if that learning had any effect.
Community participation in conservation and development is a new concept
and practice in Vietnam and how to do it is still being threshed out (develop-vn,
2000-2002). Vietnam has 11 funded and administered national protected areas
and an additional 79 proposed sites where such projects can take place (Birdlife,
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2001). This study investigates one specific kind of ICD—specifically based on
marine issues. The two NGOs and their respective projects are IMA-Vietnam (IMA-
V)—the Trao Reef Project, and IUCN—the Hon Mun Pilot Project that center
around two recently established marine protected areas in Khanh Hoa province in
south-central Vietnam. These projects, in particular, approach marine conservation
and development through the principles of ICM (Integrated Coastal Management)
and CBCRM (Community-based Coastal Resource Management). Both ICM and
CBCRM have developed and evolved in the Philippines since the 1980s. CBCRM,
in particular, emphasizes community organization, mobilization, participation,
learning and empowerment through decentralization and a local role in coastal
resource management (Cabaces, 2002; DENR, 2001a; Ferrer, Poiotan de la Cruz,
Cabaces, Reynaldo & Dasig, 2002). Community learning is a key component to
developing participation and conservation capacities (CBCRM Learn, 2003; DENR,
2001b). The emphasis, again, seems to be on community participation in non-
formal and informal learning.
Nevertheless, despite the emphasis on participation and learning in these
projects, little research has been done on what people actually learn during their
participation in a project’s programs and activities. An exception to this is the
CBCRM Learn Resource Center, based in the Philippines, which has put together
three texts on lessons learned from the community side of projects (Ferrer, de la
Cruz & Newkirk, 2001). Several cases presented in that text suggest indications of
community learning that occurred through confronting a coastal resource dilemma,
from community organizing to get control over the issue, and from community
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participation in managing and monitoring the issue. Through action oriented
process that was facilitated by NGOs, coastal resource management practices
were transformed. (Ton That Phap, 2001;Truong Van Tuyen, 2001) These studies
do not identify specify learning indicators, but the do present a narrative of how a
community learned to regulate access and use of coastal resources through action.
The focus on non-formal and informal learning is identifiable in project
documents. IMA-V’s project documents state it will “...provide participatory rural
appraisal training, marine biodiversity training especially for fisherman...and
conduct local environmental protection and resource awareness education
[activities] ...and organize meetings ...involving the majority of the local people...”
(IMA-Vietnam, 2001). lUCN’s proposal indicates that the project will “...develop the
skills required [for local people] to operate a successful MPA and to build the
support and commitment of local stakeholders [through]: training and
environmental awareness.” Furthermore, the project has specific alternative
income generation (AIG) and environmental awareness specialists that conduct
and facilitate non-formal learning programs in marine education, aquaculture and
alternative livelihoods (IUCN, 2001a).
However, while education and training are important features in achieving
the outcomes that these two projects planned to attain, like many NGOs, the
project documents do not explain how this learning will be achieved. It is the black
box of this study. Investigating this under-researched social context of community
learning about conservation and development through non-formal learning
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programs and informal learning activities warrants attention. The research
questions listed below propose to explore and analyze this issue.
Overview of Research Questions and Assumptions
This investigation on community learning through participation in NGO
development projects in two comparative case studies in Khanh Hoa, Vietnam
pursued the research issues and questions that follow. Each research question
below is followed by an assumption that indicates what the researcher felt the
investigation would reveal based on the literature reviewed. The purpose of
presenting these assumptions is to lay out biases, in a philosophical hermeneutical
sense, that affect or in some way could have limited the analysis.
1. Issue: The community and NGO environmental narratives
1A. What has shaped the two respective community’s environmental narratives
from immediately before the project began up till now? How are these
narratives similar or different? How may these narratives affect community
participation and learning?
Assumption: The narratives are similar. Both communities’ have similar
geography and social, economic and marine influences, limited formal
education opportunities, extensive informal and incidental learning
opportunities, and influences of official village and state policies. All of these
factors will affect community participation and learning to varying degrees.
The project has had minimal impact on these narratives. Differences may
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be due to the fact that one community is island based while the other is
mainland based.
1B. What are IMA-V’s and lUCN’s environmental narratives and how have they
been shaped? Are they similar or different? How may these narratives affect
community participation and learning?
Assumption: The narratives are different. IMA-V’s is based on community
collaboration specifically on coastal resources issues. It follows a
community centered ecological narrative based on the Philippines’
experience over the past 20 years, which is grounded in the concept of
social and ecological communities, where participant experiences and
experiential research and knowledge determine development decisions.
lUCN’s is based on a half century of collaboration with multinational
institutions on a wide array of environmental issues, but most specifically on
saving individual species. It follows a conservation narrative that is based
on technical and scientific models and approaches, where experts lead
research and advise communities and others. These differing narratives will
affect who and how communities participate and what communities learn.
2. Issue: Non-formal and informal learning in the conservation/development
project
2A. Are there any differences in who learns, and in what and how the two
communities learn about the environment in the respective NGO-led
conservation/development project in which they have been involved? Why or
why not?
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Assumption: It is assumed that the two communities will learn differently
because of the distinct approaches and practices that their partner NGOs
use, and the differences in project ownership—IMA-V’s is local, whereas
lUCN’s is national and provincial. Furthermore, the target participants in
IMA-V’s project are likely to be more diverse whereas participants in lUCN’s
project will probably represent the elite of the community. The community
participating with IMA will have a more transformative learning experience
that will empower participants to act for economic and conservation
practices that are socially and environmentally sustainable. The community
participating with IUCN will have a less transformative experience, though
some individuals will be more empowered to protect their marine
environment.
2B. Furthermore, what actions have the communities taken since the beginning
of their respective projects that exemplify their respective environmental
narrative? Have actions changed since the project began, and if so, how? Are
any of the actions environmentally transformative?
Assumption: Both communities will exhibit some changes since the
beginning of their respective projects in 2000-2001. The community in the
IMA-V project will likely have taken more deliberative and direct action in
protecting their environment and in initiating conservation and economic
activities that are environmentally sustainable and transformative. This did
not happen immediately, but over time. The community in the IUCN project
will have changed less significantly, environmentally and economically.
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3. Issue: Vision for future sustainability
What consequences do such learning have for the communities and ecosystems
where the project took place? Are community and NGO visions similar or different?
Why?
Assumption: It is assumed that IMA-V’s community partners will have
gained more experiences that can make their community and surrounding
ecosystem more sustainable whereas lUCN’s community partner will have
made limited changes. Despite the influence of the two NGOs, given that
Vietnam has a long history of over two millennia, the two community visions
probably will still be distinct from their respective NGO partner's, who are
only involved with the communities for three to four years.
These research questions identify sorely under-investigated learning issues
in conservation and development projects globally in addition to Vietnam (Finger &
Asun, 2001; Foley, 2001; Hobart, 1993, Quarells van Ufford, 1993).
Overview of the Projects
The purpose of this research is to investigate two communities’ non-formal
and informal learning through their participation in two distinct NGO-led
conservation/development projects in Vietnam. Both projects have an emphasis on
community participation and have a variety of non-formal and informal learning
programs and activities about the environment, conservation and development. The
two NGO’s coordinating these projects favor different approaches to learning.
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IMA-V’s projects have roots in aspects of radical education in social
movements and the development of organic intellectuals (Gramsci, 1994), popular
learning (Freire, 1970), and learning through action (Fals-Borda & Rahman, 1991;
Foley, 1999). IMA-V aims to empower people to have access to, control over and
direct benefit from the natural resources where they live. IMA-V’s project’s
objectives and practices follow some principles of participatory action research
(PAR) as suggested by Fals-Borda and Rahman (1991), where communities
engage in researching and developing approaches and in deliberating issues and
policies to address social, economic and environmental issues. IMA-V’s practices
suggest that more active community participation may be facilitated through direct,
action-oriented activities resulting in enhanced local capacity to conserve natural
resources (IMA-V, 2001a). These learning practices complement CBCRM theories
that are applied in IMA-V’s project. CBCRM is an approach to managing coastal
resources that puts the community first as an agent of control regarding access and
benefit from coastal resources (DENR, 2001a). Furthermore, CBCRM favors
deliberate participation in addition to informal learning approaches to building
community capacity to transform their environmental, social and economic
practices to be sustainable at the community level (DENR, 2001b). Despite IMA-
V’s roots that draw from radical education and participatory democracy, other
mediating factors—a culture of hierarchy in Vietnam, a preference for expertise—
lessens the radical and organic tendencies.
The second NGO, IUCN, is a well-endowed, institutionalized environmental
organization, started after World War II, emphasizing species protection through
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scientific research, with close ties to multilateral organizations (Wapner, 1994). It is
often consulted by the UNDP, other United Nations organizations and bilateral
agencies. IUCN has gradually integrated participatory approaches to
environmental research and development into its projects. However such
participation is without the fundamental political aspects of empowerment that are
associated with radical approaches to learning and deliberate approaches to
democratic practices. IUCN draws from institutional models of expertise. Learning
in IUCN programs can be compared to UNESCO’s (1995) “learning to learn” or
pragmatic models of individualized learning, where individual enlightenment or
perspective transformation does not necessarily lead to collective transformation or
change (Brookfield, 2000; Finger & Asun, 2001), whether such learning be socially,
economically or environmentally directed. Such learning is often at the awareness
or conceptual level without engaging praxis. lUCN’s project objectives and
practices encourage participation but take a more institutional and prescriptive
approach to learning where community participation is likely to be passive or occur
after project decisions have been made. Because of this ontology in addition to
state and cultural influences, achieving learning for transformation in lUCN’s project
faces challenges.
These two projects take place in Vietnam’s ongoing process of transition
(Adger, et al. 2001a; Lutrelf, 2001; World Bank, 2002). Vietnam’s development
policies and practices since doi moi (the opening of its state controlled economy to
privatization and market forces) have initiated transitions in the state’s economic
and social structures. Laws and decrees governing private enterprise, property
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ownership and even decision-making—at the local level—are transition from
centralized control to a more participatory and market oriented approach allowing
more individual and community voice and decision-making (Kerkvliet, 1995a; Thai
Thi Ngoc Du, 2000). Multinational corporations, NGOs, Vietnamese businesses,
communities and individuals are all competing for a stake of environmental and
social resources (Kerkvliet, 1995b; World Bank 2002). Private decision-making on
access, control and benefit from natural resources thus is gaining ground vis-a-vis
the state.
ICD and ICM projects are flourishing in Vietnam’s development context.
These are relatively new approaches to policy debates on how to both conserve
and develop. They have a local and participatory focus, integrate environmental
science research and acknowledge the role of human intervention through science,
technology and markets in maintaining bio-diversity (Hulme & Murphree, 1999).
ICDs are theorized as a win-win approach rather than a blame approach. For
example, in the 1980s, the poor were often blamed for environmental degradation
in their surrounding environment without considering the intervening factors that
influenced the poor to make such decisions in the first place (Brown, 2002;
Chatteijee & Finger, 1994; Wapner, 1994; Worah, 2000). ICDs represent a change
from previous development models based only on conservation, preservation or
neo-liberal markets (Brown, 2002). ICDs firmly commit to approaches that include
local stakeholders are part of the conservation and development process and this
has been seen as complementary to Vietnam's stated goals of social equity (Sage
& Nguyen Cu, 2001). Both IMA-V’s and lUCN’s projects state that they will
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implement a co-management approach for coastal resource management that
draws from ICD and ICM principles. IMA-V begins this process by building
community capacity to learn and act through hands-on activities, while lUCN’s
process favors developing official awareness and capacity first, and then working
on community capacity. The two distinct approaches represent a context for a
comparative study on learning in conservation/development projects
ICDs, such as IMA-V’s and lUCN’s projects, are an effort to apply science,
technology, participatory democracy and market strategies to conservation and
development. This approach have been applied to NGO-community projects for
protecting forests, wetlands and marine areas while enabling alternative
conservation-oriented income generating activities that may lead to sustainable
environmental and economic practices, in general (Brown, 2002; Castellenet &
Jordan, 2002; Chambers, 1997; Wapner, 1994), and in Vietnam, in particular (Sage
& Nguyen Cu, 2001). Not only the NGOs, IMA-V and IUCN, but also the
communities that they work with are learning through their respective project’s
processes of action, and reflection as has been recorded in other ICD type projects
(Brown, 2002). This study captures accounts of community learning through this
process.
In Vietnam, ICD projects are an evolving context where community
participation and non-formal and informal learning are key components. This is
supported not only by participatory leaning NGO’s, but also by the government of
Vietnam, which has passed several laws and decrees over the past 10 years
granting land rights and democratic practices at the local level. For example, the
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Land Law of 1994 firmly established private ownership of land and resources and
gives house-holds rights and responsibilities for managing land resources. These
policies have also been adapted and transferred to inland wetlands, such as
estuaries and bays (Ton That Phap, 2001; Truong Van Tuyen 2001) and
complemented by historical village level experience with self-management of
resources (Jamison, 1993). The General Democracy Decree of 1998 devolved
local decision-making on development issues to commune officials, villages and
their residents. Some communities have informally learned how to use this decree
to take issue with environmentally polluting industries in their neighborhoods
(O’Rourke, 2004; Roodman, 1999). According to IMA-V, these ownership and
responsibility concepts are now being applied to Vietnam’s development of water
surface rights and integrated coastal zoning policies.
Furthermore, and importantly from an environmental perspective, Vietnam
continues to conserve some of the most unique biological diversity in the world
(WWF, 1999; FFI, 2000). For some, this biological diversity represents a natural
heritage worth learning how to conserve and sustain for present as well as future
generations of Vietnamese. For others, this biological diversity represents a wealth
of natural resources to be sustainably managed (World Bank, 2000). lUCN’s
overarching goal in its Hon Mun project is to “protect a representative sample of
internationally significant and threatened marine biodiversity...with the involvement
of local island communities” in Vietnam. This seemingly has a natural heritage
emphasis. IMA-V’s project aims to “...conserve and rehabilitate marine biodiversity
through co-management of resources based on the market mechanism”. This
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suggests that natural resources will serve present and future economic needs.
These distinct goals imply that the communities involved in the two projects will
learn different concepts if not actual distinct learning practices.
These social, economic and environmental changes affirm the need for
Vietnamese to continue to learn about these issues throughout their lives, if
common citizens are to have any influence and impact on policies, in general, and
on environmental policies, in particular, which affect their lives. Such learning may
be in non-formal and informal education programs that NGOs or multilateral or
bilateral donors facilitate. Learning through such approaches is both significant and
important where close to 80% of the population does not attend school beyond the
primary years (United Nations, 2001). These two projects represent a context for
investigating the issue of non-formal and informal learning from, and in,
conservation/development projects for the purpose of conservation, and socially,
economically and environmentally sustainable development. Based on the two
projects overall aims, learning conservation and learning participation practices
seem to be two principle components. What and how people learn these two
principle components are investigated in this study.
Definition of Major Concepts of the Research
The following table presents definitions of the principal concepts that frame
this research. The definitions provided here inform the reader of how these
concepts are understood in this study. These include organizational concepts of
institutions, new social movements, and NGOs; learning concepts of assimilative
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learning, awareness-raising, consciousness-raising, critical awareness, critical
praxis, culture circles, empathy, experiential, incidental, informal, non-formal, social
and transformative learning; conservation and development concepts including
CBCRM, co-management, communities, conservation, development, ICD, ICM,
PAR, PRA, and preservation; participation and political concepts including
consensual, decision-making, deliberative, democracy, dialogue, empowerment,
organic and participation. Within categories, concepts are presented
alphabetically.
Box 1 - Definition of Research Concepts
Organizational Concepts
Institutions: Institutions are the dominant centers of political power in
society. Examples are state governments, multilaterals, such as the UN and
its variety of agencies, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), and bi-laterals, such as USAID, and even some international NGOs,
such as IUCN, which have close financial and administrative ties with other
institutions.
New Social Movements: To some extent, environmental NGOs have been
a part of a new environmental social movement. This social movement has
been composed of a variety of groups and organizations with diverse and
heterogeneous memberships using different approaches to reach their aims
of improving environmental conditions (Melucci, 1989).
NGOS: NGOs, non-governmental organizations, are any organization that
are not a part of government or corporate institutions or association and are
representative actors of civil society (Jamison, 2001). NGOs have specific
interests, such as the environment, children, ethnic minorities, literacy,
women and so forth. In particular, this study is interested in environmental
NGOs that concentrate on addressing environmental issues._____________
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Box 1 - continued
Learning Concepts
Assimilative learning: Assimilative learning also relates to transformative
learning. Schugurensky (2002) asserts that learning for transformation is
often not abrupt, but happens over time as individuals integrate and enhance
transformative concepts and practices.
Awareness-raising: Awareness-raising suggests that people need to have
a problem introduced to them so that they can resist actions or process that
caused that problem (Finger & Asun, 2001). For example, degradation of
the marine environment may be such a problem.
Collective learning: Collective learning means a group of people learning
together in a social learning process. In critical pedagogy and PAR
approaches, collective learning requires a collective process to reach an
effective outcome.
Consciousness-raising: Consciousness-raising is another transformative
learning concept that is more reflective, socially and politically charged than
awareness-raising where people can analyze their own socio-economic
situation vis-a-vis those that have social, economic and political power
(Freire, 1970; Gramsci, 1994).
Convivial learning: Convivial learning is a concept promoted by lllich
(1973) that signifies a community of people learning together having access
to, and control over information and appropriate tools for learning. A
convivial learning process is deliberate, participatory and dialogical.
Critical Awareness: Critical awareness is the process of consciousness-
raising.
Critical Praxis: Critical praxis is both action and reflection on that action
vis-a-vis the political relationships analyzed and acted upon (Freire, 1970).
Critical praxis is dialogue (a political process) between the marginalized and
those in power, for example.
Culture Circles: Culture circles are practices of critical pedagogy and
convivial learning, where community members dialogue and codify their
critical awareness and praxis (Freire, 1970). In convivial learning, culture
circles may involve more developed praxis (Finger & Asun, 2001).
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Box 1 - Learning Concepts - continued
Empathy: Empathy signifies learning that is based on emotions and values
(Schugurensky, 2002) vis-a-vis institutionally and scientific learning that
claims to eliminate the affect of emotions and values from analysis and
claims.
Experiential learning: Experiential learning is learning through doing
(Dewey, 1966) such as through hands-on field experiences about marine
rehabilitation through constructing, installing and monitoring a artificial reef.
Expert Learning: Expert knowledge is developed by the scientific
community—natural and social sciences—and this knowledge is what
institutions and society, in general, accept as what should be known.
Incidental learning: Incidental learning is “people learning from each other
in every day life” (Foley, 1999, p. 7). An example of is villagers sharing
ideas about the marine reserve over a cup of coffee before work.
Informal learning: Informal learning is “people teaching and learning from
each other in social contexts”(Foley, 1999, p. 7). An example is experiential
learning in a NGO project.
Non-formal learning: Non-formal learning can be explained as “an
organized and system learning process” (Foley, 1999, p. 7) but outside of
the state’s formal system (Stromquist, 2000). Training programs, such as
marine biodiversity training and fishing regulations training in both projects
were non-formal learning programs.
Social learning: Social learning includes such concepts as non-formal,
informal, incidental and transformative learning, and in this case, concerns
adults. It focuses on the learning capacity of a group distinct from human
learning that focuses on an individual.
Transformative Learning: Transformative learning often begins with
awareness-raising, but usually includes some disorienting dilemma that
causes an individual to critically reflect on the dilemma and change (Mezirow
(1990,1991). However, transformative learning also has social implications
when critical reflection is considered as “ideological critique unveiling social,
economic and political dynamics of oppression embedded in everyday
practices” (Schugurensky, 2002, p. 61). A supportive social environment,
such as an NGO project, may facilitate and encourage transformative
learning.
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Box 1 - Development and Conservation Concepts
CBCRM: CBCRM is a process-oriented approach and a component of ICM,
which emphasizes bottom-up, local participation, empowerment and
responsibility in the management and conservation of coastal resources.
Co-management: Co-management is an operational mechanism of ICD,
where local people share indigenous knowledge, responsibility and authority
with government officials and agencies and other stakeholders, who share
administrative, technical and scientific expertise, for sustainable
management of the community’s natural resources(DENR, 2001 b). Both
IMA-V and IUCN aim to implement co-management mechanisms.
Communities: Chaskin explains that community is a social level where
capacity can be built, deliberate democracy is enabled and solidarity can be
strengthened (Chaskin, 1998). For the purpose of this research, the two
communities are such places where the respective IMA-V and IUCN projects
aim to build community capacity.
Conservation: Conservation has its roots in elitist concerns for protecting
wildlife and habitat for hunting and for commercial purposes. This is now
being carried into the protection of biodiversity, including genetic resources
for commercial concerns (Jamison, 2001). Conservation suggests
appropriate and sustainable use of natural resources for people.
Development: Development has typically focused on economic and social
projects that would build infrastructure and draw people into the
capitalization, globalization, and consumption of goods and services and
commodification of most social interactions (Finger & Asun, 2001).
ICDPs: The integrated development/conservation projects (ICDPs) that
situate this study, distinct from conservation only, or development only
projects, have social and economic aims in addition to ecological aims. The
purpose of such projects is to improve the social and economic conditions of
communities surrounding protected areas in addition to conserving
biologically diverse environments (Alpert, 1996; Brown, 2002; IMA, 2002,
Sage & Nguyen Cu, 2001).
ICM: Integrated Coastal Management as a form of ICD that integrates
conservation and development issues, and promotes cross-sectoral,
governmental, non-governmental and local interaction to reach sustainable
coastal social, ecological and economic goals (DENR, 2001).
Mariculture: Marine-based aquaculture, for example, lobster, oyster, and
green mussel farming. __________ _______
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Box 1 - Development and Conservation Concepts - continued
PAR: Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a southern (African, South and
Southeast Asian) approach to bottom-up, grassroots development, where
small communities focus on development through the recovery of people’s
capacity, self-reliance and appropriate technology that has been replaced by
externally imposed (institutional) development practices. PAR is an
epistemological approach to development (Finger & Asun, 2001).
PRA: Participatory Rurual Appraisals (PRAs) are research tools that include
community voices in social inquiry. Villagers collaborate with project
organizers, sample, map, interview and diagram social, economic and
environmental characteristics of their community (Chambers, 1997).
Preservation: Preservation is distinct from conservation. Its concept began
from aesthetic and spiritual notions about the environment (Fox, 1981).
Participation and Political Concepts
Consensual: Consensual refers to a decision-making process that involves
deliberate participation and dialogue.
Decision-making: Decision-making refers to community members’ access
to control, use and benefit of (natural) resources (Webler & Tuler, 2000).
Decision-making based on deliberate participation and dialogue is likely to
be more transformative.
Box 1 - Participation and Political Concepts - continued
Deliberative: Deliberative participation suggests that participants share
opinions, consider alternatives, dialogue and come to a consensus decision
on a social issue (Nylen, 2003).
Democracy: Community members’ daily involvement in decision-making on
public issues, such as common resources at the local level. Involves
community members in dialogue and deliberation, where empowerment,
self-validation and emotional reasoning are part of the process and
understanding a variety of points of view and consensus are paramount
(Schuguresnky, 2002).
Dialogue: Dialogue indicates that people discuss ideas through sharing,
comparing, complementing, expanding and refuting vis-a-vis previous
experiences.” (Schugurensky, 2002, p. 70). Dialogues are techniques of
deliberative democratic processes. ______
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Box 1 - Participation and Political Concepts - continued
Empowerment: Empowerment is essentially a political concept. It is a
significant individual as well as collective component of learning for
transformation. Participants that “overcome their lower
social/economic/political status, struggle, and define their own rights and
receive recognition of those rights from others” may be considered
empowered (Nylen, 2003, p. 28). Foley argues that empowerment “...is not
given to participants by others but it is something that they do for
themselves” (2000, p. 75). Empowerment often evolves from collective
struggle, reflective discourse and committed action to change social
inequalities (Parks Daloz, 2000).
Epistemological Communities: Epistemological communities are learning
communities with similar agendas. These might be one or several
associations of marine scientists who research coral reefs for the purpose of
protecting them. Another example is educational researchers who focus on
adult non-formal education to promote training programs.
Organic: Organic refers to participation and learning rooted in community
experiences vis-a-vis formal schooling experiences. Organic participation is
based on grassroots advocacy of local issues. Organic intellectuals are the
grass-roots community members who learn through the process of critical
awareness-raising and critical praxis (Gramsci, 1994).
Participation: Participation means that community members are involved in
decision-making processes to varying extents throughout the project. Often
this participation occurs “after the majority of development and conservation
issues have been decided” or is largely extractive (DENR, 2001, p. 7).
Limitations of the Study
The findings of this study are limited to the research gathered with the two
NGO projects and their respective participants from the two communities over the
period of the two projects, which is approximately from 1999 through 2003. Actual
field research was limited to 12 months from December 2002 - December 2003.
Other significant learning may have happened outside of this research period.
Furthermore, the study only covers specific diachronic episodes of learning in the
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two projects. The researcher did not have an ethnographic experience, but visited
with villagers and participated in community non-formal and informal learning
activities when they were held. To overcome this limitation, the researcher has
reviewed documented information, such as project notes or newspaper articles
about activities and episodes relating to the actual programs and activities
observed and recorded during the field work, and conducted interviews with
community members who explained their experiences and any changes that they
initiated or observed during the project.
Significance of the Study
For the researcher, it is hoped that this study will have policy implications,
foremost for ICD projects, in general, and for those in Vietnam, in particular. This
study is significant for multinational, state, and local policy makers who are involved
in development aid processes and decision-making in Vietnam. The study may
also shed light on which participatory approaches are more likely to lead to socially,
environmentally, and economically sustainable outcomes for environmentally
focused NGOs such as IMA-V and IUCN, which conduct non-formal education
programs and ICD projects in Vietnam. In addition, it may provide insights for
Vietnamese community decision-makers as to which kinds of development projects
and non-formal and informal learning programs best serve their communities’
conservation and development needs.
Furthermore, this study adds substantive knowledge to the academic
literature on adult/non-forma! learning, participatory democracy and NGO’s in
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addition to contributing to the development literature. For the adult/non-formal
learning literature, the study investigates and analyzes concepts and practices of
transformative learning in a development context where little literature exists
(Finger & Asun, 2001; Foley, 1999). The study should contribute to a further
understanding of concepts of assimilation, integration and enhancement of
transformative ideas on the path to transformative learning. Furthermore, little
research has been done investigating transformative learning in marginalized and
less literate people such as with the Vietnamese fishing villagers investigated in this
study. For the participatory democracy literature, this research provides examples
of learning programs and activities (learning processes in general) that influence
the extent of people’s participation in local advocacy and policy making process
and practices (Schugurensky, 2002). Findings from this study also complement
participation literature in development studies (Cleaver, 1999; Ostrom, 1995)
showing how democratic participation can be facilitated and enhanced in non-
democratic states, such as Vietnam, which are experimenting with different forms
of participatory democracy at the local level (Kerkvliet, 1995b; GDD/1998). This
study will also add to the few studies on community participation in environmental
regulation in Vietnam, but from a pro-active NGO initiated intervention perspective
rather than from a reactive, ad-hoc perspective (O’Rourke, 2004). For the NGO
literature, this study brings to light indications of informal and incidental learning
and local knowledge that are implicit, yet not necessarily explicit features of NGO
training and awareness-raising programs that aim to conserve and rehabilitate the
environment (Jasanoff, 1997). Such participation and learning features are largely
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missing from the NGO literature. Finally, this study’s learning framework adds an
additional dimension to development studies literature, which tends to focus on
political, social and economic dimensions, yet neglects what and how people learn
through their participation in development projects.
Organization of the Dissertation
The dissertation is organized as follows: Chapter 2 covers the pertinent
literature on adult education, transformative learning, participatory democracy and
development, and human/collective agency that inform this study’s analysis.
Chapter 3 explains the research methods used to collect, organize, and analyze
this study’s array of data, and presents the analytical framework. Chapter 4
identifies the natural, economic, cultural, social, geographical and historical factors
that influenced the two communities’ learning about conservation and development.
Chapter 5 presents the case studies on the two NGO’s, IMA-V and IUCN, and
community participation and learning in their respective Trao Reef and Hon Mun
projects. Chapter 6 discusses the first two research questions. It begins by
identifying the relative and comparative significance of each NGOs influence in
addition to natural, cultural, economic and other influences on community
participation and learning in the respective projects; second, it compares similarities
and differences between who, what and how communities learned in the two
projects non-formal and informal programs and activities. The final chapter
synthesizes the analysis from the previous chapter, and then responds to the third
research question, discussing this study’s environmental, participation and learning
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implications for the two communities and two NGOs involved. Furthermore the final
chapter presents a learning model for future ICD projects with the intent that such a
model can provide a framework for deliberative, participatory and collectively
reflective learning, which has an aim of transforming social-environmental
relationships.
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CHAPTER 2: Literature Review
Overview
While many fields can contribute to an understanding of popular
participation in development projects, this study focuses on three domains of
literature that emphasize the significance of adults learning through social action.
Learning through social action suggests that learning can be transformative. The
three domains, adult/non-formal learning, participatory and deliberative democracy,
and human agency identify what and how adults learn about social issues such as
conservation, the environment and development. This chapter reviews this
literature, which informs this study.
First, this is a study on adult learning, so the discourse on non-formal,
informal and transformative learning provides a foundation. Non-formal learning
programs are contemporary mainstays of conservation and development projects,
which focus on people receiving training and capacity development on a variety of
social and economic issues including the environment. Such programs focus on
change, if not transformation. For example, CBCRM environmental awareness
campaigns may seek to change people’s habits of cyanide fishing, yet the
campaign is not likely to ask the questions of why such poor fishing villagers have
to use cyanide to catch fish, and who is purchasing such fish in the first place.
Transformative learning might lead participants to not only question, but to also
contest and change production practices.
Second, the literature on participatory and deliberative democracy has
potentially transformative implications. It is associated with conservation, resource
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management and development issues. From a theoretical perspective, Barber
(1984) asserts that the practice of deliberative democracy is a socially and
politically transformative experience. Popular participation in development has
been viewed a context for learning about and practicing democracy through action
(Schugurensky, 2002). Participating in policy development and implementation is a
feature of deliberate democratic practices in development contexts such as Porto
Alegre, Brazil (Nylen, 2003). Furthermore, people's participation in regulating
common local resources, such as coastal resources, is a feature of many
development contexts (Cleaver, 1999; Ostrom and Gardner, 1993). Integrated
conservation and development approaches that IMA-V and IUCN draw from
specifically make the case for villagers/community members to participate in
creating, implementing and managing coastal resource policies as has been
practiced in CBCRM projects (DENR, 2001a). Therefore, the literature on
participatory and deliberative democracy identifies how environmental action is
linked with learning to participate in environmental policy making.
Third, the theoretical discourse on human and collective agency explains
the relationships of structures, actors and action. While agency has been identified
as a factor in accepting environmental risk (Beck, 1992), agency has not been a
discourse applied to discussing learning and participation in development contexts,
in particular (Cleaver, 1999). Agency, as a theoretical construct, provides a model
for understanding who acts and how, in the process of learning conservation and
environmental practices, and in practicing deliberative democracy. Agency, is also
more suggestive of actions rather than individual’s behavior because it focuses on
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peoples’ and organizations’ actions vis-a-vis the temporal contexts in which they
act. Agency, thus, can signify social change based on social interactions and social
reasons for change; and it is distinct from behavior that focuses on a more
individual, psychoanalytical level (Emirbeyer & Mische, 1998). It is not only a
theory. It is a concept that can be not only be empirically identified but also
operationalized through researching what people do with their informal and
incidental learning (Savage, 2001). Agency is also a concept through which
actions of transformative learning, such as deliberate democracy and rehabilitating
the environment can be explained.
This literature is in no way exhaustive, but it is the source for understanding
the potentially transformative nature of learning in NGO-led ICD projects.
Furthermore, the literature shapes the conceptual framework that will guide the
analysis of this study. The literature review begins with a discussion of adult non-
formal and informal learning. This is followed by a discussion on deliberative and
participatory democracy. The literature review concludes with a presentation on
collective agency.
Non-formal and Informal Environmental Learning: individual or collective
transformation
NGO projects typically include non-formal and informal learning
opportunities. These include a variety of approaches to learning from participant
centered to community-based, from institutionally driven to grassroots grounded.
Not all non-formal learning and informal learning is transformative. In fact, most
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methods used with adults in NGO projects aim to promote social, environmental or
economic changes, yet often divorce learning facts from the values that create and
norm that knowledge. Such separation is the type of learning that some suggest
enlightens individuals but does little to change society and development patterns
that commodify and degrade environment and people as resources (Finger & Asun,
2001). The review on non-formal environmental education programs suggests
similar patterns where learning has typically focused on factual produced through
scientific research rather than the ethics and values that create that knowledge to
begin with (Palmer, 1998). The following section begins with a presentation of
institutional NFE approaches used in development contexts, and is then followed
by a section on radical and transformative approaches.
Institutional Approaches: Individual Transformation?
Traditionally, NFE programs in development contexts have been initiated by
institutions such as the UNDP, UNESCO and other multilateral agencies, USAID,
DAN I DA and other bilateral agencies, corporate funded foundations, such as Ford
and Rockefeller, and some NGOs that are closely tied to multi-laterals such as
Oxfam and IUCN. Environmental NGOs such as IUCN and WWF have operated as
much like institutions as any of these agencies or foundations because of their
hierarchical organizational structures and their close ties to multilateral institutions for
support (Finger & Chatterjee, 1994). UNESCO, internationally influential in adult
education, identifies adult education as ‘earning to learn programs. It stresses that
development can be humanized through the education of ail; not only the education
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of elites. It suggests that science and technology are not “good” or “bad” but can be
humanized through adults having access to learning that knowledge. A theoretical
goal is that enlightened participants will use their knowledge to improve society.
These institutional frameworks have been evident in government run literacy and
reproductive health programs run by state and international institutions (Stromquist,
2000). This framework is also evident in participatory development projects.
Also called the life-long education approach, learning is thought of as an
ongoing process for all people (UNESCO, 1995). A model is that experts—teachers,
agronomists, nurses and other practitioners lead such programs. They transmit
knowledge, or “bank” knowledge in the participants (Freire, 1970). This approach
also suggests that NGOs, community organizations and individuals can be involved
in the learning process. It is based on the philosophy that people can be taught “what
to learn” and “how to learn” so that they can acquire the responsibilities and
knowledge to improve their human capital, or according to some, their knowledge,
skills, and ability to participate in the globalizing, capitalist, market-based economy
(Finger & Asun, 2001, Preface). According to Finger & Asun (2001), this approach,
theoretically, leaves the actual content, process and rewards of learning up to those
who participate—though usually government or well-established foundations or other
such institutions determine the content, the processes and the outcomes in this in
this model. In addition, this approach suggests pluralistic or representative
democratic practices rather than participatory practices.
Despite the concept of humanizing development these knowledge, learning
and political practices are likely to do little to encourage transformative learning and
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action because they remain hierarchical and preference those who are already a part
of the formally educated community (Rahman, 1993). Expert created knowledge in
science and technology is to be learned by the common people. Experiential
knowledge is discounted as irrelevant in learning to live in the modern world (Finger
& Asun, 2001). Many development projects have followed this approach with few
sustainable results. For the most part, such projects have included community
participants as listeners only (Chambers, 1997; Hobart, 1993). As listeners only,
participants have little or no opportunity to dialogue or contest meaning with those
who are presenting. Such processes provide passive learning environments where
participants receive but do not create knowledge.
Some recent case studies provide an example of these expert, science and
technology-led learning environments that have resulted in development projects that
have neither built community capacity nor have conserved or rehabilitated the
environment. Institutions have misplaced their transfer of modernized knowledge in
bilateral agricultural projects in Peru (Quarrels van Ufford, 1993; Van der Ploeg,
1993), in state mandated agro-forestry in Mexico (Arce & Long, 1993) and Cameroon
(Sharpe, 1998), in creating buffer zones in national parks projects in Guatemala
(Sundberg, 1998), and in game management in Zambia (Wapner, 1994). In these
projects, knowledge and technical transfer did not lead to sustainable change, and
people affected by conservation practices gained little social, economic or natural
resource benefits from the environmental, conservation or development practices
instituted by the projects. The results, overall, in each of these cases, was continued
deteriorating environmental and social conditions.
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A second approach to NFE represents person-centered or individualized
learning for change. For the purpose of this study, this most closely matches
Mezirow’s conceptualization of “perspective transformation” (Finger & Asun, 2001, p.
58). This approach is one that is commonly used in institutional adult programs in
the United States and other Western nations in addition to being used in corporate
settings (Brookfield, 2000; Finger & Asun, 2001). Its connection to learning in
development projects stems from many international NGOs involved in development
in addition to institutions that fund development, such as the World Bank and the
Asian Development Bank that think of learning through such an individual lens
(Finger & Asun, 2001). This focus on individual transformation may be understood
as an important ingredient in learning projects that aim to transform social and
environmental practices (Schugurensky, 2002). However, individual transformation
has focused more on individual problem solving and symbolic interaction to change
oneself to “confront ones symbolically constructed self and ones symbolically
constructed environment while solving the discrepancies” one was confronted with
(Finger & Asun, 2001, p. 60).
Symbolic interactionism can be found in Mead’s Mind, Self and Society
(1934) and is most closely associated with Blumer (1969), evolving from the
Chicago School in the 1960s. Blumer suggests that individuals interact with their
environment based on its socially constructed meaning; reality is, therefore,
subjective and based on social interaction. As a result, symbolic interactionism
understands that as individuals interact with each other and the environment [as a
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general concept], the meaning of such interactions change. In such interactions,
one has a role that is constantly being modified and adapted vis-a-vis others
through social interaction (Blumer, 1969). Jarvis asserts that this role playing
results from feedback from others where and individual’s disorientation between
one’s “biography and experience [causes] the start of the learning process” (Jarvis,
1987, p. 87). Symbolic interactionism, thus is a process-oriented approach of
helping adults to adapt to social changes. Alone, this approach to learning is
unlikely to lead to social change, or environmental change, for that matter (Finger &
Asun, 2001, p. 59). However, symbolic interactionism is a principle of the
perspective transformation as conceptualized by Mezirow (1990). Perspective
transformation contributes to praxis of change.
Mezirow’s ideas of perspective transformation could be identified most
closely as individual transformation leading to social change, and it draws from
Dewey, Blumer and Kuhn (Finger & Asun, 2001). This approach considers that
first, knowledge is experiential and action oriented, and dependent upon specific
experiential contexts (Dewey, 1966). Second, that learning is based on symbolic
interaction derived from meaning given by interacting with others (Blumer, 1969),
which could lead not only to “individual emancipation but also to societal
emancipation” (Finger & Asun, 2001, p. 57). Furthermore, a key factor to learning
is the discrepant incident (Kuhn, 1962) that emphasized paradigm shift. Mezirow
indicates that by experiencing something that challenges an individual’s worldview
vis-a-vis one’s known meaning perspective, learning can occur that can be
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individually transformational (Mezirow, 1991). In fact, this approach suggests that
learning would be difficult unless one challenges one’s worldview. A symbolically
constructed discrepant event, as used in laboratory science could accomplish this.
Mezirow’s model of perspective transformation also calls on Habermas, who
considers the discrepant moment to be one where individual emancipation can
occur during rational discourse and through critical reflection of that discourse
(Habermas, 1984). In this approach, participants may have symbolic access to
knowledge and power in the process of learning, yet interaction with others for the
purpose of learning is not clearly established. A facilitator/teacher or leader would
have to guide this process (Knowles, 1970). Research suggests that in adult
learning, disorienting events are rare and that it is more likely that through reflective
discourse, a mentoring community and opportunities for action, individuals and
groups integrate and assimilate transformative ideas that gradually change their
perspective. This gradual transformation can result in action for social or
environmental justice (Parks Daloz, 2000; Schugurensky, 2002). Mezirow attempts
to address this likelihood suggesting that is it not only disorienting dilemmas that
could cause a change in an individual’s meaning perspectives, but also incremental
changes in meaning schemes through critical reflection on social definitions of the
world (Mezirow, 1991). For Mezirow, however, complete transformation requires
not only a change in meaning schemes, which are surface level changes, but
change in meaning perspectives, which are deeper schematic changes.
A weakness in this learning model for challenging and changing
development practices is that pragmatists, like Mezirow and Dewey, did not
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question the method, practices, process or outcome of development. Development
for the sake of development has been thought of in a positive light (Finger & Asun,
2001). Some examples of development projects that went so far as to facilitate
some change attuned to perspective transformation are WWF’s social forestry
project in Cameroon (Sharpe, 1998), and the Rockefeller Foundations Solar Cell
project with Vietnam’s Women’s Union. Both projects presented ecological-
economic approaches to development that challenged individual community
members to change their dependence on specific natural resources—trees and
coal—respectively, which were becoming scarcer and more costly. While some
individual change was noted in the Women’s Union project (Suprenant, 2000), the
Cameroon project left community ecology issues unresolved (Sharpe, 1998).
These experiences in ICD projects indicate the inadequacy of learning to learn and
pragmatic learning approaches, alone, to initiate transformative changes in socio
economic and environmental practices.
Radical Approaches: Transformation and Empowerment
This next section examines empowering and transformative approaches to
NFE identified as critical pedagogy and participatory action-research (PAR). These
are approaches to NFE that could have applications in developing more
participatory and emancipatory practices and learning in ICD projects. In the
previous section, a perspective transformation approach was explained as an
empowering process that is a necessary ingredient to the type of collective
transformational learning described by Freire (1970) and Gramsci (1994). Mayo
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asserts that popular education, such as that discussed and proposed by Freire,
Gramsci, Foley and others, suggest alternative forms of participatory learning of
marginalized people that can be individually empowering, but more significantly
socially and politically empowering (1998). Freire and Gramsci have in mind a
much deeper and broader political, social and economic transformation than
learning to learn or perspective transformation practices have demonstrated (Mayo,
1998). Though Freire’s educational approaches dealt largely with literacy issues,
the pedagogy he explained is applicable to other community-based environmental
issues such as community participation and learning in an ICD project. Such public
participation embodies social learning, experiential and grounded knowledge and is
action-based.
Critical Pedagogy and Participatory Action Research (PAR): Transformative
Practice
Critical pedagogy and PAR present approaches to learning in development
that have collective transformative intent. First I will discuss critical pedagogy.
Critical pedagogy is most well known as a political approach popularized by Freire
(1970) for literacy training in Brazil. It is community-based and draws curriculum
from the context in which its participants live and are oppressed (Mayo, 1998).
Practices such as generative words and themes, drawing and writing, and culture
circles are diverse learning techniques that create learning opportunities for
individual transformation and collective empowerment (Freire, 1970). It is
appropriate for development projects because it is a method constructed to be used
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with people in developing countries and marginalized conditions such as ICD
projects in Vietnam represent.
Its techniques, such as facilitation, draws from Rogers and Knowles.
Rogers saw the need to change instructor-learner relationships in order to construct
social change (Rogers, 1969). In the initial phase of this model, the facilitator may
be someone who favors institutional and hegemonic positions (Rogers, 1969).
Knowles explains the role of the facilitator as someone who is often an educated
expert on the issues of concern. The facilitator manages the participants’
conversation, first of all, by creating a humanistic atmosphere of trust, respect and
concern. The facilitator guides learning through well-thought out sequential tasks,
and uses materials and techniques that recognize individual differences, and build
on inquiry (Knowles 1970). To be a transformative facilitator s/he must become
committed to social change (Schugurensky, 2002). Freire and Gramsci’s approach,
in fact, relies on socially committed facilitator/experts to identify cultural themes to
be the starting point for learning through conscienticizing dialog. ICD project staff
that can act as facilitators who have solidarity with the community members can
evoke empowerment that is based on support, challenging tasks, access to
resources and empathy. Foley argues, however, that is not the facilitator’s role to
empower. Empowerment is something that participants have the opportunity to do
for themselves. “It is not given to participants by others” (2001a, p. 75).
In the case of ICD projects, facilitators, such as project staff, could take
such a role and set up learning circles, where issues would be discussed. Freire
label for such learning circles is ‘culture circles’ (1970). Cultural circles are informal
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social gatherings emphasizing the value of each person’s knowledge and life
experience, and participation in the social process of learning. Such processes
are not typically used in development projects, but suggest ways to make learning
more democratic, and are based on a dialogue of negotiation and exchange of
ideas, but not necessarily on agreement (Foley, 2001b). Freire (1970) suggests
that culture circles be set up as weekly meetings where community members get
together to discuss concepts, dialogue and debate meaning and learn about their
world in their own words. For Freire, education is participant-centered and politics
evolve toward more social-constructivist practices. Participation in the culture circle
focuses on dialog among participants to construct learning through social
processes.
Mayo asserts that within the culture circle participants have access and
power to all aspects of the learning process. Though the culture circle seems
cognitively empowering and perhaps transformative, it would have to become a
true dialog between opposing social, political or economic groups to be
transformative in those domains (Mayo, 1998). Freire (1970) explains this critical
process as a technique to addresses issues, and to generate and code concepts.
Through this process, transformative individual learning may occur. Two important
critical practices that take place in culture circles are problematization and
conscienticization. Participants must understand the issue, its social, political and
economic causes and consequences before they can act on it. This understanding
is problematization. Conscienticization, according to Freire, is a process of
understanding being human, and then taking action against contradictory and
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oppressive social, political and economic practices (Freire 1970). This is a process
in which people reflect on their role, their position, and their place in society as both
oppressor and oppressed, and as part of hegemonic force or a counter-hegemonic
force. These dualities maintain a distinction between both vernacular, and expert
knowledge and language. Through contesting ideas, participants in this process
learn and acquire knowledge (Mayo, 1998). Working through this process would
be socially and politically transformative.
By participating in such a conscienticizing process, numerous participants
are likely to emerge as organic intellectuals (Gramsci 1994). These organic
intellectuals often become the culture circle facilitators if such a learning approach
evolves. Culture circles are involved in contesting ideas, but from lived experience
rather than from expert driven knowledge. These transformative processes are
said to lead to social liberation, counter-hegemonic political activities, and personal
empowerment. Participants in this process, therefore, learn how to change social
practices rather than how to fit into it as in learning to learn or perspective
transformation approaches discussed previously. A weakness of this model has
been its lack of attention to development issues. Freire and Gramsci emphasize the
cultural appropriateness of development, but do not question modernization and its
social and environmental consequences (Finger & Asun, 2001).
Beyond literacy, Freireian pedagogy has been used in development work in
Bangladesh to initiate a micro-credit scheme and alternative income generating
activities in rural farm villages (Rahman, 1993). Furthermore, the concept of
generative themes and cultural circles is evident in Foley’s study of Terania Creek,
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where learning through critical social action is evident (Foley, 1999). A good
example of critical reflection and transformation may be the Chipko movement in
Uttar Pradesh, India, which has been identified as a transformative eco-feminist
project (Shiva, 1988).
Shiva (1988) explains that three women, Mira Behn, Sarala Behn and
Bimala Behn, from the Garhwal region, started non-formal learning program that
focused on ecological development. These programs were inspired by Gandhi
(Guha, 1998). The programs took place in camps in the forests near the villages
where the women lived. These non-formal training programs empowered women’s
voices and actions to protect their source of food and subsistence. In the struggle
over a dam project that would have destroyed the social and economic fabric of the
area, the women responded through direct action of “chipko” in the native dialect,
which means “tree-hugging”. Though men also participated in the project and were
active spokespersons, it was women’s long-term commitment to the maintaining
the social, ecological and economic relationships (Mellor, 1992; Merchant, 1992;
Shiva, 1988). The Chipko women’s program of non-formal learning based on the
inter-relationship of social and environmental harmony indicates a worldview that is
more ecological than technological, and focusing on social and environmental
justice. The women’s agenda became a part of the larger Indian development
agenda coincidentally, when economic development forces, and the needs of a
new social movement, represented by the women, contested additional proposed
industrial forestry projects in the same region. However, the Chipko’s movement’s
success at sustaining social and environmental systems was not inevitable. Such
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sustainable development required continual contestation against powerful and
changing interests (Shiva, 1988). Thus, critical pedagogy can have implications
for transformative learning in ICD projects.
Participatory Action Research: A Southern Perspective
Though the concept and practice of PAR has a variety of roots, PAR in this
study is defined as approaches to participatory research led by community
members in developing countries and generally from rural areas. Such people
grounded action research has been studied, analyzed and advocated by Fals-
Borda (1979, 1985) and Rahman (1993). Like critical pedagogy, PAR is a radical
approach to learning that is centered on marginalized communities and peoples. It
is much more of a practice than a theory. People draw from their own experiences,
create new knowledge collectively, and transform their communities (Fals-Borda &
Rahman, 1991). Therefore, PAR is a true learning in development approach that
well situates it for ICD projects. IMA promotes aspects of such an approach, which
is evident in IMA-V’s work (IMA-V, 2002a).
PAR has been applied specifically to development projects, especially in the
areas of agriculture and forestry (Chambers, 1997). PAR approaches are evident
in Participatory Rural Appraisals (PRAs) focusing on agriculture and forestry;
however, many of these PRAs have been rushed approaches where facilitators
take over projects without giving the people time to develop their own learning,
action and research approach (Fals-Borda, 1985). PAR, itself, is becoming
institutionalized as projects apply it, such as those working with IUCN and IMA-V.
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For example, in studies on PAR in Colombian Andean villages, agricultural experts
lived and worked with peasant farmers to create a grounded science. However,
these scientists also ended up taking responsibility for learning outcomes.
Therefore, by not working with the Columbian peasants, the participatory action
component of PAR was subsumed under expert-led direction (Fals-Borda, 1985).
PAR’s approach is to work with communities. It is a constant struggle to maintain
the grounded participatory research intent of PAR (Rahman, 1993).
Nevertheless, PAR offers some theoretical models as well as empirical
examples of transformative learning. Rahman indicates that the goal of PAR is a
form of individual and community mobilization that is based on the desire for self-
reliance. This certainly is a form of empowerment that is both critically reflective
and critically transformative in that self-reliance can change individuals and change
society from “...a situation of marginalization and dependence to independence”
(Rahman, 1993, p. 20). Rahman indicates that PAR is an empowering process
similar to that encouraged by critical pedagogy. He suggests that is it based on
marginalized people having control of their movement or organization, and a critical
understanding of their marginalized status. In addition, PAR complements critical
pedagogies consciousness-raising practices where communities problematize
issues, learn, experience and know, create knowledge, and take action. In PAR
empowerment is a result of self-reliance that is both material and psychological,
and rooted in “solidarity, caring and sharing” with many others (Rahman, 1993, p.
207). Furthermore, PAR is based on reflection and praxis. Fals-Borda explains
that PAR has not only a pragmatic application, such as self-reliant agricultural
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economy, but also a political application of democratic self-determination (1985).
Rahman explains that it is participatory research that generates organic knowledge
that is based on experiential learning. The participants, through reflection and
action represent Gramscian organic intellectuals (Gramsci, 1994). Organic
knowledge is situated knowledge that emerges from direct needs, inquiry and
action vis-a-vis professional knowledge, which is based on theory rather than
experience (Rahman, 1993). Vietnam, in times of war and economic isolation
exhibited qualities or organic knowledge and some suggest that “self-reliance is a
Vietnamese cultural characteristic” (Rahman, 1993, p. 22).
In development projects, PAR has been used in several rural,
environmentally focused projects. These are generally types of grassroots
organizations. The approach in general is for a catalyst to start a participatory
research project. The catalyst may be an individual or a transformative event. This
may be from within or from outside a small rural community. Critical reflection and
dialogue, as in critical pedagogy, builds an understanding of one's role vis-a-vis
others. Communities conduct research and meet regularly to discuss their actions.
Associations develop based on experiential practice and knowledge.
An example of a PAR learning process has been the Bhoomi Sena
movement in India. The Bhoomi Sena used PAR approaches to first, regain land
that had been given to a more powerful class, and second, to seek higher wages.
Community members conducted socio-economic surveys, oral story telling helped
to recapture local history, and popular culture was reinvigorated through folk tales
and music. The Bhoomi Sena movement expanded into education and health
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issues not addressed by the government. Bhoomi Sena created a economic fund
for self-reliant financing (Rahman, 1993). Another PAR project, the Change Agents
Program in Sri Lanka, was a grassroots facilitated project that promoted village
based research to promote new economic actions to take advantage of their betel
production. As a small PAR project, it was a catalyst in initiating self-reliance in
several communities which improved their economic position vis-a-vis outsiders
(Rahman, 1993).
Learning approaches just presented, and participatory approaches to be
presented, are now identified in Table 1 below.
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Table 1 - Concepts for Learning Approaches and Democratic Practices in ICD Projects
INSTITUTIONALLY-CENTERED APPROACHES RADICAL “NON- INSTITUTIONAL” APPROACHES
INSTITUTIONAL LEARNING PERSON-CENTERED
LEARNING
CRITICAL LEARNING COMMUNITY-BASED
LEARNING
ADULT
LEARNING
THEORY AND
PRACTICE IN
DEVELOPMENT
UNESCO (1995)
Learning to Learn
Experiential
Reproductive
Humanization of Science and
Technology
Perspective Transformation
Mezirow (1991)
Individual learning
Symbolic interaction
Assimilation
Critical Reflection
Critical Pedagogy
(Freire, 1970)
Culture Circles
Critical Reflection
Consciousness-raising
Political facilitation
Collective learning
PAR (Fals- Borda &
Rahman, 1991)
Organic Intellectuals
Endogenous tools
Recovered knowledge
Collective learning
Self-reliance
Action and critical reflection
DEMOCRATIC
AND
PARTICIPATORY
PRACTICES
Representative Pluralistic
Technocratic
Policy experts
Interactive democracy
Special interest groups
Counter-hegemonic
Contestational
(new) social movement
Socially-constructed
Deliberative
Empowerment
Grassroots
Non-institutional
Participatory
Deliberative
Consensual
Collective Empowerment
CONSERVATION/
DEVELOPMENT
PROJECT
EXAMPLES
Agriculture Extension
Projects
Parks and Refuges
Mexico Agriculture Extension
Project (Arce & Long, 1993)
Social Forestry Projects
WWF Cameroon Forest
Project (Sharpe, 1994)
Vietnam Women’s Union
Solar Electricity (Suprenant,
2000)
Community Social
Movements
Terania Creek (Foley,
1999)
Chipko Movement
(Shiva, 1988)
Community Agriculture and
Foresty
Andean Village PAR
Columbia (Fals-Borda,
1985)
Bhoomi Sena, India
(Rahman, 1993)
co
50
The purpose of Table 1 is not to show fixed categories and concepts of
adult learning and political participation in relationship to ICD projects, but to
suggest how learning in environmental action, as ICD projects represent, has
learning and participation dimensions. The numerous concepts presented in this
table are conceptual indicators that explain the institutional and radical approaches
to learning and participation. Institutional approaches to learning and participation
in development projects are indicated through learning to leam and individual
perspective transformation programs. These are rooted in Western state-based
representative democratic practices, which believe that change can best occur
incrementally, through institutional processes and regulations. Radical approaches
to learning and participation are indicated through critical pedagogy and PAR
programs. These are rooted in camps of struggle, resistance and southern
community self-reliance programs. Radical approaches believe that change can
only come through initial community struggle and self-reliance to create
development on its’ [the community’s! own terms. Institutions can be part of the
process but only through being invited in by communities (Finger & Asun, 2001).
Complementary institutional and non-institutional approaches to participation in
policy-making will be discussed in the next section.
Summary: Non-formal and Informal Environmental Learning - individual or
collective transformation
Table 1 concludes the section on adult and non-formal learning and
indicates that for learning to be transformative it must include political dimensions.
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The literature indicates the variety of institutional learning approaches that have
been components of development projects, in general, including ICD projects.
UNESCO’s learning to learn approach and Mezirow’s perspective transformation
approaches have focused on individual learning vis-a-vis collective learning,
suggesting that individual learning can change society. However, neither approach
challenges the present development model; therefore it is unlikely that learning to
learn or individual perspective transformation approaches will make a significant
difference in changing social and economic practices that have contributed to
environmental degradation and unsustainable development. Critical pedagogy and
PAR approaches, which are non-institutional, have shown that their learning
processes can initiate and create both individual and collective transformation at
the local level. However, transformation within communities has yet to have a
significant impact at regional or state levels, where institutions remain firmly in
control.
Environmental issues clearly go beyond the local and are a result of larger
systemic ecological, economic and social interactions. Nevertheless, cases of
success in improving both the environmental and society with radical approaches
offer promising starting points for learning that can transform social and economic
practices, which have caused environmental and social issues that are tied to
present capital intensive and market oriented development practices. Furthermore,
radical approaches assert the need to add action-oriented and political dimensions
to learning, as both necessary and significant, to challenge current development
practices. The section below explains how the literature on participatory
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democratic practices has been a component of initiating process of political change
aimed at contributing to environmental change.
Participatory Democratic Practices: P articip atio n and deliberation
The next section reviews the literature on participatory democracy and
deliberate democracy as it relates to social and transformative learning in
conservation and development issues and projects. Though this literature is largely
based on the American experience in participatory democracy, it is appropriate for
this study because the international NGOs, IMA-V and IUCN, facilitating the two
projects investigated in this study, draw conceptually from this American
understanding of participatory democracy. In addition, research on participation in
development projects, again mostly from a Western perspective, indicate that
development projects facilitate or limit popular participation through the variety of
actors and means. Those with more authority, who control most development
projects, influence the extent to which common people can learn through
participating in development activities. Vietnam, itself, is experimenting with limited
forms of participatory democracy at the local political level using the same
concepts, and suggesting similar practices as those indicated in the participatory
democracy literature. This literature indicates how individuals and communities
may participate and learn democratic practices that involve deliberation, direct
action, advocacy and involvement in the political or policy making process, in
general, and on issues of natural resources, in particular. This participation context
prevailed in the two case studies investigated.
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Participatory Democracy: Transformative policy-making?
Democratic principles and practices have a central role in popular
participation in environmental projects and policy making. Although Vietnam is not
recognized as a democracy at the state level, it has put into place democratic
practices at the commune level with the General Democracy Decree/1998
(GDD/1998). Furthermore, as a result of dot moi policies and the Land Law of
1994, property and means of production are now largely privatized—moreover at
the commune level. Furthermore, democratic practices in natural resource
management at the commune level have historical precedent in Vietnam, and in
coastal resource use, in particular (Ton That Phap, 2001; Troung Van Tuyen,
2001). The two projects researched in this study have been implemented at the
commune level where decentralization and democratization of decision-making has
been a relevant factor (O’Rourke, 2004). Furthermore, IMA-V and IUCN proposed
to implement participatory strategies that emphasized some extent of democratic
practices within the two respective projects.
This section of the literature review presents principles and practices that
draw on public participation theory as well as participation policy that have grown in
application for environmental policy-making not only in Western democracies, but
also in the international development arena. Involving local communities as
deliberate and active participants in development projects has been especially true
in the context of environmental and socially oriented NGOs that work up from the
community level rather than down from the institutional level. CBCRM, sometimes
referred to simply as CRM, is such an approach. Moreover, grassroots and locally
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developed social and environmental movements have emphasized popular
participation and deliberate democratic decision-making (Fals-Borda and Rahman,
1991; Rahman, 1993; Shiva, 1988). However, institutionally, community
involvement in environmental policy making has also been highlighted in the Rio—
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)—in 1992
and placed on almost all state’s, including Vietnam’s, policy agendas with their
signing of Agenda 21. Agenda 21 promotes the localization of sustainable
development strategies since “...communities and individuals...are well placed to
assess the needs of and to conserve their local area...” This includes not only
environmental issues, but also quality of life issues (United Nations, 2004). As
Agenda 21 suggests, Ostrom asserts that while institutions are important actors in
natural resource management, communities often already have informal systems in
place that facilitate cooperation and reciprocity (Ostrom, 1990). Therefore,
communities often have learned informally how to manage common natural
resources, such as coastal resources. Such learning and indigenous management
has relevance in Vietnamese communities historical and contemporary
management of natural resources (Jamieson, 1993). Ton That Phap (2001) and
Troung Van Tuyen’s (2001) narratives on coastal resource management also
support the relevance of community informal management in central Vietnam.
Participatory models in environmental policy making often draw from
Habermas’ theoretical model of communication (Fischer, 2001; Schuguresky, 2002;
Webler & Tuler, 2000). In Habermas’ model, public speech is accessible to all, and
communication is based on solidarity, trust, empathy and freedom from
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recrimination (Habermas, 1984). While a theoretical model, state and local
governments, across the globe, and environmentally focused NGOs, in particular,
have emphasized the adaptation of such concepts (if not the model itself) so that
common people, rather than specialists alone, are now participants along with
experts in making decisions on issues of development, conservation and the
environment (Cleaver, 1999; Fischer, 2001; Ostrom & Gardner, 1993).
Furthermore, grassroots community development efforts have made democratic
participation a priority in developing project policies and practices (Castellanet &
Jordan, 2002; Fals-Borda, 1985; Rahman, 1993). This participatory milieu also
exists in Vietnam (O’Rourke, 2004; Roodman, 1999).
A Habermasian Participatory Model
Tuler and Webler (1999) indicate that that public participation in
environmental policy making resembles Habermas’ ideal communicative event. In
newly created spaces for environmental discourse, common people (not experts)
“access the process...and information...and power to implement its outcomes.”
(Webler & Tuler, 2000, p. 576-577). Their case study on a participatory
environmental decision-making process centers on communities in the northeast
United States is applicable because it builds a grounded model for public
environmental policy-making. While this context is distinct from Vietnam, the NGOs
and communities working on environmental issues in Vietnam have the legal right
to create such public discourse spaces, and in practice, many Vietnamese
communities are doing so (O’Rourke, 2004). Webler & Tuler’s analyses shows
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that common people not only attend policy making activities, but that they can also
initiate and participate in the back and forth of discussions and be involved in
making decisions on environmental issues (Webler & Tuler, 2000). However, their
findings also suggest that politics often hold precedence over science and local
knowledge, thereby limiting analyses before decisions are made; information is
sometimes withheld for political or economic gain, for example. Furthermore, non
verbal skills are often as important as verbal skills. Furthermore, some community
members are not able to participate in the process due to social or economic needs
that inhibit their participation (Webler & Tuler, 2000).
Development projects non-formal and informal learning programs represent
such a context where participation can be both deliberate and democratic. In IMA-
V’s and iUCN’s programs, for example, all participants should have access to
knowledge and resources of the project, where they can learn, and share their
views and experiences as freely as any other participant. Informal learning is a
context that theoretically promotes a community of participants who have
experience and capacity to be responsible and to make deliberately constructed
decisions (Schugurensky, 2002). Participatory ICD projects and alternative forms
of NFE in development provide such a public space that can encourage or
discourage democratic practices.
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Deliberate Democracy
Additional participatory approaches to making democracy work have been
developed and coined under the concept of deliberative democracy or strong
democracy, as explained by Barber (1984) and Nylen, (2003). Deliberative
democracy was a Jeffersonian and de Tocqueville idea that citizens should be
involved in political action as part of everyday life and not just on election-day
(Barber, 1984; Nylen, 2003). Deliberative democracy rejects power relationships
within its system that often do not yield to the public good, and which furthermore
disengage the public from the public’s “values, beliefs and actions.” (Barber, 1984,
p. 145). It is, in contrast, open and process oriented, requiring “active participants,
civil relationships, reciprocal respect, dialectical and vernacular communication and
creative consensual decision-making” (Barber, 1984, p. 219). In strong democracy
as deliberate democracy, the public makes actual policy decisions. This
definitions matches up well with Habermas’ ideal speech event explained earlier.
Deliberative democracy also has an educational focus that resembles
principles of PAR and general informal learning practices that transform individuals
and society through action. Dewey (1966) asserted that people learn democracy
through doing it. Schugurensky (2002), on his study of the participatory budget
process in Porto Alegre, Brazil, affirms Dewey’s ideas, and moreover explains that
the deliberative democracy project itself has transformative pedagogical principles.
Deliberative democracy is a much more interactive approach where people directly
participate in making policies in an arena where social goals are to promote
collaboration, cooperation and collective learning rather than individual gain
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(Barber, 1984). Barber further explains that deliberate democracy also includes
the ideas of organizing citizens. But it involves more than an organized group of
citizens; it involves more than a politically representative group, it needs a large
number of participants who can become engaged in decision-making. This
requires an education process that not only informs, but that also allows for
questioning and reflection (Barber, 1984). This suggests transformative principles
as identified by Schugurensky (2002).
The role of learning through doing—informal learning—is a key to
deliberative democratic practices. Research has shown formal education—civics
education in high school—to be the least effective approach in creating citizens
who participate in public policy (Barber, 1984). Rather it is civil society, made up of
private organizations, voluntary associations, and community groups that educates
citizens non-formally. Civil society provides citizens a place and activities to both
acquire knowledge and to put that knowledge to use (Barber, 1984; Putnam, 1993).
This suggests a role for popular education and community organizations, including
NGOs, in contributing to more participatory democracy.
Barber clearly connects with concepts in Habermas’ ideal speech situation.
In strong democracy, like in Habermas’ model, citizens must voice their interests,
use a vernacular voice and be free from undo special interests. Participants should
use their voice persuasively, yet truthfully in presenting and reconstruction ideas
into an agenda. They can do this by affiliating and empathizing with others to create
consensus and build community. In many ways, the strong democracy model
captures Habermas’ ideal speech situation where citizens can participate fairly and
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competently vis-a-vis all institutional representatives. PAR and critical pedagogical
practice suggest that such transformative participation is possible. While critical
pedagogy and PAR approaches to non-formal and informal learning may
encourage Habermasian communication, there is no guarantee that such
conditions exist. It is more likely that ICD projects, which are based on
conservation and development traditions rooted in institutions, will rely on technical
knowledge and expert decision-making that is similar to the structure of
representative democracy as explained by Dahl (1956) rather than the deliberative
democracy and strong democracy models that complement PAR and critical
pedagogy approaches.
P articip atio n w ith o u t Democratization
Despite international development emphasis on participation, in most
development projects, participation is often not empowering or transformative.
Instead, project organizers and implementers use it strategically and instrumentally
to get local communities to buy into, or feel a part of, a development project
(Cleaver, 1999; Finger & Asun, 2001). Participation is not always a good thing
(Mayoux, 1995). Development projects often put primacy on participation but
without democratization of the decision-making process. People participate, but
without any role in making policy (Cleaver, 1999). Participation also has its
drawbacks according to some researchers, not because people cannot participate,
but because rationale for participating or not participating varies among community
members. Men may represent women in some cultural contexts. Some local
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residents are excluded from the participating when projects perceive that they are
not direct stakeholders (Cleaver, 1999).
PRA’s are examples of participatory techniques that development
organizers use, which involve community members in sharing ideas and opinions,
yet which typically exclude community members from project and policy decision
making (Chambers, 1997). People are included but their interests are often
subordinate to the greater development agenda or the agenda of the more
influential stakeholders (Cleaver, 1999). In other cases, projects may set up
advisory boards or new community organizations that have the fagade of local
participation and democratization, but which participate passively as listeners or
information gatherers with no authority to influence policy making (DENR, 2001b).
ICD projects such as those investigated in this research create de facto, if
not de jure, democratizing spaces where ordinary citizens may become engaged in
learning how to implement, and perhaps contest and transform policy. To the
extent that such participation is deliberately democratic and transformative depends
on who and how people participate. IMA-Vs’ and lUCN’s approaches to democratic
participation should be taken in the context of the often competing, yet sometimes
complementary bottom-up vis-a-vis top-down, community vis-a-vis institutional
approaches to decision-making on public resources, as explained here.
Participatory process in the two projects may thus be understood as being more or
less deliberately democratic based on how villagers are involved in decision
making process. Since these two projects focus on coastal resource management
and include aspects of CBCRM in their aims and objectives, participatory and
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democratizing influences of CBCRM also play a role in who and how people learn.
Possible influences, evident in the CBCRM literature, are presented next.
Democratizing Citizen Participation in Coastal Resource Management
(CM and CBCRM projects have consistently emphasized citizen
participation in the sustainable use and management of coastal resources through
partnerships across state and non-state sectors and including community and
government collaboration (DENR, 2001b). CBCRM practices indicate several
participatory levels of citizen engagement from “passive participation to self
mobilization” (IIRR (1998) cited in DENR 2001 b, p. 7). As the two projects are
based in the I CM framework inclusive of CBCRM principles and practices, the
literature on popular participation in CBCRMs, which is mostly technical and
practitioner oriented, rather than academic, is relevant to this study. Most of this
literature is based on practitioner experience in the Philippines, where CBCRM
practices have over two decades of evolution (DENR, 2001a).
In CBCRM, community participation primarily focuses on non-forma! and
informal learning about coastal resource management. This learning involves
“community visioning, organization, planning, researching, implementation,
monitoring and enforcement of a CRM plan in addition to community education and
advocacy to raise greater environmental awareness about community CRM
programs” (DENR, 2001b, p. 9, 14). CBCRM principles suggest that participation is
most effective when is interactive or is a result of a community’s self-mobilization.
Learning in CBCRM attempts to enhance citizen’s understanding of participation
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beyond merely listening, volunteering information (as in a survey or PRA) or going
along with what expert say as is common in many development projects that claim
to be participatory (Cleaver, 1999). CBCRM asserts that participation can be
empowering when community members are not only involved in a process, but
moreover when they are collectively responsible for and have authority to address
CRM issues through their own research and action (DENR, 2001b). This contrasts
with relying on experts to resolve issues as in a technocratic environmental policy
making model that most institutions and organizations employ (Waddell, 2000).
Learning through a CBCRM process could be understood as a synergistic
social-constructivist process of informal learning from other community members,
inclusive of expert as well as experiential knowledge. CBCRM programs create
Habermasian public speaking spaces where participants not only have access to
information, but also access and influence on the environmental policy making
process and outcomes (Webler & Tuler, 2000). This implies that CBCRM promotes
deliberative democratic principles explained by Barber of ordinary citizens being
organized and involved in policy making (Barber, 1984). Furthermore, CBCRM
facilitates learning oriented toward PAR, where community members organize
themselves outside of institutions (Fals-Borda, 1985). In CBCRM programs,
communities become empowered. Their empowerment results from their research,
recovery and implementation of endogenous knowledge (Fals-Borda & Rahman,
1991). This literature indicates that CBCRM principles and practices have
transformative learning properties. Therefore, the CBCRM principles and practices,
which the two projects may apply, can contribute to transformative learning.
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Summary: Participatory Democratic Practices -participation and deliberation
Popular participation in environmental projects and policy-making has
become central to ICD projects and has non-forma! and informal learning
implications. This focus has been implied through multilateral agreements, such as
Agenda 21, and made more explicit through actual ICD project practices. Some
projects emphasize participation conceptually, but without democratization of the
decision-making process. This suggests principles of humanizing science,
technology and development complements UNESCO’s paradigm of adult learning.
To some extent, contemporary NGO ICD projects are creating spaces for
participation, some of it deliberate. In doing so, informal and incidental spaces for
deliberate democracy are being created. Such spaces resemble Habermas’ model
of a democratic speaking context, suggesting that such spaces can be created
when communities participate in ICD projects. Participation alone, however, does
not assure democratic practices. Such practices require a conscious commitment.
Concerning natural resource issues, in general, and coastal resource
issues, in particular, CBCRM projects illustrate an emphasis on citizen participation
and deliberate democracy in coastal management in cooperation with state and
non-state sectors. CBCRM processes consciously design and implement non-
formal and informal learning to engage communities in environmental and political
change. In CBCRM projects, communities have participated in Habermasian public
speaking events where they have access, information, and power to participate and
deliberate in the decision-making process and to implement their decisions.
Deliberative democracy practices are one key to transforming decision-making.
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They negate power relationships and incorporate the general public’s experiences,
reflections, values and beliefs into decision-making. Participation and deliberate
democracy theory, in addition to CBCRM principles and practices, suggest that
communities are more likely to have transformative learning experiences when
participation and deliberation is interactive or is a result of a community’s self
mobilization.
Deliberate democratization of development is relevant in Vietnam, despite
its one-party state and history of centralized control. In contrast to state
centralization and control, Vietnam has a number of laws, as well as historical and
contemporary commune-level practices that emphasize local participation, access,
control and decision-making over local natural resources. Participation is an
eminent feature of IMA-V’s and lUCN’s coastal based projects examined in this
study. The projects create spaces for public discourse on the local environment and
natural resource policy making issues. The action-oriented implications of
participating for change are further conceptualized and explained in the next
section on agency.
Human and Collective Agency: Transformational Possibilities
Whether learning about conservation or development or participating
deliberatively and democratically in a development project, human agency is an
appropriate concept that can explain the causes and the outcomes of specific
action. Agency is particularly appropriate for the analysis of changes in capacity to
act critically or imaginatively (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998). Both critical and
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creative action is needed to solve environmental problems that have not been
served by normative science-technocratic approaches (Finger & Asun, 2001).
Increasing capacity for the purposes of making change is a key objective of most
conservation/development projects including the two studied here. Analyzing
agency, therefore, can provide an understanding about peoples’ collective capacity
to change social, economic and environmental practices for the purpose of
conserving and rehabilitating the environment. The role of agency in environmental
learning has had a theoretical focus in research on environmental risk and nature
(Beck, 1992), and on indigenous knowledge and development (Quarrels van
Ufford, 1993). However, few studies have specifically operationalized agency, and
no studies have analyzed agency in the dynamic of social learning and political
practice in conservation/development projects. The two projects researched here,
effused with social, political and economic conflict, provide ample context for
analyzing the extent of transformative social learning as indicated through the
operationalizing of agency.
The concept of collective human agency used in this study assumes a
socio-historic contextualization of agency in which peoples’ contemporary actions
are influenced by historically developed norms, values and beliefs (Abrams, 1982;
Emirbeyer & Mische 1998; Ratner, 2000; Sztompka, 1994). As explained by
Emirbeyer and Mische, this model of agency is pragmatic and centers on collective
action in contrast to post-modem or post structural models of agency, such as
Giddens who views agency as structuration (Giddens, 1984), where actors are
influenced by structures, but not visa-versa, or Archer, who explains
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morphogenesis, where agents are effected by structure, but who in turn reshape
structure in cycles of change (Archer, 1988).
Collective human agency or social agency as explained by Emirbeyer and
Mische (1998) complements principles from several socially-oriented disciplines
that make it effective in contributing to an understanding of transformative social
learning, not only as a theoretical construct, but as a practice in conservation-
development programs. It includes principles from critical social theory (Bookchin,
1993; Habermas, 1984) social learning (Foley, 1999; Freire, 1970; McLaren, 1999;
Morrow & Torres, 2002; Schugurensky, 2002; Shor, 1993; O’Sullivan, 2002 among
others), eco-feminism (Merchant, 1992; Warren, 2000) new social movements
(Cohen, 1985; Melucci, 1989), and democratic participation practices (Barber,
1984; Cleaver, 1999; Waddell, 2000). Changes in agency, therefore, can
contribute to learning for transformation as much as learning for transformation can
contribute to the capacity to expand and transform one’s agency.
According to Emirbeyer & Mische (1998), agency can be disaggregated into
three modes of action, iterational, projective, and contested agency. This is
different than other research which focuses almost exclusively on iterative agency
and action theory that focus on precise, unambiguous “rules of conduct’ or actions
taken without the need for judgment (Emirbeyer & Mische, p. 994). They suggest
that whatever actions are taken, agency is always influenced to some extent by
past social schemas—“mental categories, embodied practices and social
organization that are not cognitive schematic structures, but actions based upon
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social relationships.” (p. 975). These inter-social schemas are contested or
projected as agency is transformed.
Iterational Agency
In iterational agency, actions are taken based on selectively choosing
previous strategies from a “zone of knowledge, based on experience” (Schutz,
1964, p. 283) that have served well in the past without reflecting or problematizing.
The concept “selective”, is important, because it indicates that people do not
respond mechanically, but intentionally to best fit the context, to have a stable
future (Emirbeyer & Mische, 1998). Iterational agency, does not suggest non-
learning, but it suggests a strategy based on recognizing the typical similarities
between present and past social contexts, and then taking social actions based on
those past experiences so that new social contexts fit previously successful
strategies of action (Emirbeyer & Mische, 1998). It can be explained through
Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and routines (1977) that constrains agents’ collective
action due to race, class, gender or expertise, for example. This form of agency
pairs with traditional institutionally led learning in development, and the “learning to
learn” models proposed by UNESCO (1995), where experts lead projects and tell
participants what to do without participant reflection or problematizing. Despite
learning a new skill in such a learning model, participants are likely to keep their
social and economic place. A feeling of powerlessness to change the status quo is
a likely result (Finger & Asun, 2001).
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Empirical findings on iterative agency in organizations may be most
appropriate for this study that involves two organizations, IMA and IUCN. Those
findings indicate that organizations’ routines become rationalized even in that face
of inefficiency. In addition, organizations resist change (Emirbeyer & Mische,
1998). Such inefficiencies have become redundant in development work
(Chambers, 1997; Finger & Asun, 2001) and may be evident in IMA-V’s and lUCN’s
work. Findings on iterative agency in cultural competencies show that actors
impose limits on their social aspirations. This may also factor into this study as
IMA-V and IUCN project participants show the extent to which they conform to or
break cultural hierarchies that would limit their participation and decision-making.
In ICD projects across the globe, there are several examples of iterational
agency demonstrated in the prescriptive learning activities that maintained the
status quo. This approach can be seen in many capacity building and agricultural
extension development projects that have an environmental emphasis; for
example, forestry/development projects in Guatemala (Sharpe, 1998); and in
Cameroon (Sundberg, 1998) that were facilitated by NGOs reflected iterative
agency. Expert plans in these projects relied on people using well known technical
production patterns that did little to challenge environmentally unsound and
economically impoverishing income generating practices. Because the experts
thought their plans were appropriate for the social forestry issues in these projects,
expert plans were imposed and ultimately failed to create environmental changes
they had planned for. Social interaction with forest resources remained relatively
unchanged (Sharpe, 1998; Sundberg, 1998).
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Projective agency
Projective agency is one label for transformational agency. In projective
agency, schemas can be challenged and changed. Emirbeyer & Mische (1998)
indicate that in projective agency, actors look towards the future, sometimes
abductively, with imagination and innovation that transcend their past experiences.
However, the past is also incorporated as actors draw from typical experience and
identify and assess alternative paths vis-a-vis social relationships that have a
history. It is conflict driven and demands reflection for the purposes of “projecting
oneself into a possible future” (Emirbeyer & Mische, 1998, p. 986). Actions are not
taken “...based on rationale choice, but on continually evolving possibilities”
(Schutz, 1967, pp. 67-68). Dewey (1981) suggests that projects are essential for
human life to “reach forward into the unknown...to read future results in present on
goings" (p. 69). In essence, projective agency is a form of “freedom in pursuit of a
common good.” (Emirbeyer & Mische, 1998, p. 988). Projective agency includes
the following concepts: Narrative construction, which is based on visualized plots
(Bruner, 1986) and maps of actions (Ricoeur, 1991) that are possible; symbolic re
composition that involves actors experimenting with a variety of action scenarios for
collective action (Melucci, 1989); Emirbyer & Mische (1998) add to the definition
explaining hypothetical resolution that is based on the actors’ wants such as
“solidarity” in a social movement or “money" from a job (p. 990); and experimental
enactment, where actors try out different roles, perhaps to” test alternative ways of
social interactions” (p. 991).
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Empirical research on projective agency applicable to this study has
involved research on revolutionary movements, where there has been a “conscious
effort to establish a new moral and material world and radical new patterns of day
to day life” (Walzer, 1980, p. 202). Both IMA-V’s and lUCN’s projects have the
potential to create new daily patterns based on creative projects. Another research
line covers issues of “framing that is both diagnostic and prognostic” and one which
emancipated actors through collective action (Snow and Benford, 1992, p. 137).
This affirms both IMA-V’s and lUCN’s collective activities. A third research
application involves institutional and organizational innovation and reform process
through the lens of collective action-oriented projects (Emirbeyer & Mische, 1998).
Both projects, but moreover, IMA-V’s, is likely to involve organizational innovation.
Projective agency could be identified in non formal and informal learning in
participatory action research projects (Fats Borda & Rahman 1991) and in convivial
society based learning (lllich, 1973). It can be exemplified through Meads’
conceptualization of “distant experience” in which the actors distance themselves
from habitualized routines and begin to reflect while creating or imaging new
relationships. Such agency can be transformative. Agency can be forward-looking
and not necessarily rational (Schutz, 1967, cited in Emirbeyer & Moshe, 1998 p.
987). Transformative action is not assured. It is dependent upon social
relationships and social action that create such transformation. This involves
“anticipation, future-thinking narratives, symbolic construction, creative intent and
their application” (Emirbeyer & Moshe, 1998, p. 990). Abductive thought, dialogue
and deliberations with others may facilitate projective agency. It can be understood
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as an emancipatory agency where individual’s collective engagement can bring
about social changes. This fits well with concepts of transformative individual or
transformative collective learning.
Such projective agency is evident in alternative approaches to the
environment and development in the Chipko movement in Uttar Pradesh, India, in
the Keyan’s women’s greenbelt movement (WomenAid International, 2000) and
similar NSMs across the globe (Pearce, 1991). Bhatt, one of the leaders of the
movement, was an organic intellectual who had sensed that protest was not
enough; it had to be followed by reconstruction, by the willed action of villagers in
reclaiming and re-vegetating hillsides made barren by decades of commercial
forestry. The vast majority of activists were village women whom planted and
protect trees. Ninety percent of such resource allocation work was a women’s
activity. Women, organized, teamed through dialogs, and creatively developed
programs and projects to protect their livelihoods and to rehabilitate the
environment that through creative projects inspired by women that created new
social networks focused on environmental issues. Projective agency is evident in
participatory action research, where ordinary people are the researchers and
knowledge creators in a development project (Chambers, 1997; Fals Borda &
Rahman, 1991). Some examples of these PAR projects are in agriculture and
forestry and have been organized in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Zimbabwe, Morocco,
Nigeria, Bolivia, Honduras and Guatemala, among others (Chambers, 1997). In
Fals Borda’s vision of PAR, people re-ignite knowledge and learning organic and
indigenous to their time and place (Fals Borda, 1987). The IMA’s project in Khanh
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Hoa, Vietnam has PAR project components that could achieve similar results (IMA,
2002).
Contested/Pragmatic-Evaluative Agency
Iterative agency is embedded in the social relations of the past, while
projective agency imagines new relationship. Change in most organizationally led
conservation-development projects is likely to be enabled through practical-
evaluative agency, where people directly contest past schemas to address problem
filled with “ambiguity, uncertainty and conflict.” (Emirbeyer & Mische, 1998, p. 994).
For example, fisherman return home day after day with adequate catches to sell in
the market; then, one day, and then the next, fish catches drop to 50%, then 25%
and then 10%. What will happen next is uncertain. Or take the case where
unknowledgeable shrimp farmers release their chemically treated pond water
directly into the bay causing the direct death of 90% of the farmed lobsters. Such a
situation creates a conflict. These two cases have occurred at IMA-V’s project site.
Emirbeyer and Mische (1998) suggest that such situations “necessitate new
agential interventions.” (p. 994).
Actions are based on the context, so iterative approaches are considered,
but due to ambiguity of newness of the situation, i.e. -no fish are found where
people have normally fished for years—the situation forces actors to re-think what
they will do. Previous approaches to deal with problems are challenged through
collective dialog and deliberation, increasing participants’ capacity to act
transformatively. Modern action theory goes against ambiguity, but it is such
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contexts where individuals and collectives can share practical wisdom and dialog
and deliberate critically (Emirbeyer & Mische, 1998). Such decisions, illustrating
pragmatic-evaIuation explain “a whole of common interests and purposes” (Dewey,
1978, p.286), and feminist notions of situated knowledges based on contextual
judgement (Haraway, 1988).
Practical-evaluative agency reflects characteristics of critical pedagogy
(Freire, 1970) and learning based on social constructivism. In the process of
critical learning, participants problematize, make decisions and execute those
decisions within a concrete situation. This differs from projective agency, which
can be hypothetical or a possible scenario. Actors problematize to resolve
unsatisfactory situations, such as no fish or chemical pollution. Emirbeyer &
Mische (1998) indicate that in pramatic-evaluative agency, actors characterize
unsatisfactory situations by relating this situation to past schemas or typifications
(typical actions) that may be the basis for resolving the problem in the past. The
next step is deliberation on the past and projecting such actions into the future.
Through deliberation, different, non-iterative approaches are considered. People
would not continue to fish; shrimp farmers would not continue to use chemicals.
More people need to be brought into the dialogue to understand the complexity of
the situation and probably workable alternatives. The actual action decided upon
needs to be adaptable and executed at an appropriate time.
Empirical findings on practical evaluation have applications for this study. In
development contexts, the Chipko movement and the Kenyan Women’s Green belt
movement are also examples of pragmatic-evaluative agency and critical learning.
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Problematization of the development context and deliberative decision-making are
examples of this process in both cases respectively (Pearce, 1991; Women Aid,
2000), which can find similar contexts in this study. In findings on tactics of
resistance among marginalized groups in Vietnam, Scott suggests that
marginalized groups may resist domination through disguise and deception (1986).
This may be evident in how villagers, at the lower end of the hierarchy scale in
Vietnam, feign practice of regulations while circumventing them by other means.
Results on "local or prudential” action studies have focused on ambiguity of roles in
public activities, where roles are negotiated through interaction (Leifer, 1988, p.
865). This is appropriate for analyzing villagers’ and officials’ roles in these new
marine protected area co-management regimes where authority, control and
responsibilities are being worked out. Practical-evaluative agency in political
decision-making research indicates that decision-makers work through
uncertainties during political process (O’Donnell & Schmitter, 1986). Finally,
studies on deliberation in publics, such as Mansbridge’s (1983) study on New
England town meeting that found that when participants contributed their
experiences to solve problems, results were more satisfactory.
Summary: Agency
Emirbeyer and Mische’s desegregation of agency, as a theoretical
construct, can explain how and why people take certain iterative, pragmatic-
evaluative or projective actions. For participation and learning to be identified as
socially transformative, groups of people need to take action that indicates this
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socio-political change. Pragmatic-evaluative and projective agency are constructs
that can explicate this change. Figure 1, Agency through Learning and Action
presented below illustrates and adapts Emirbeyer & Mische’s (1998) concept of
agency indicating the model as process-oriented. This could be considered the
broader, process-oriented theoretical foundation for this study indicating examples
of agents, learning contexts, and potential outcomes from the actual study.
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Table 2 - Conceptual Framework Matrix
ITERATIVE AGENCY PRAGMATIC-EVALUATIVE
AGENCY
PROJECTIVE AGENCY
PARTICIPATION
AND POLITICAL
PRINCIPLES AND
PRACTICES
Institutional
Representative
Limited access to
power and information
Special Interest Groups
Epistemological
Communities
Non-institutional
Participatory
Deliberative
(New) Social Movements
Contestation and resistance
Access to decision-making
Solidarity
Control over production
Empowerment
De-institutional
Community responsibility, trust and
action
Organic
Consensual
Active decision-making
Local Social Movement
Self-reliance and mobilization
Empowerment
LEARNING
PRINCIPLES AND
PRACTICES
Learning to Learn
Symbolic interaction
Prescriptive
Expert knowledge and
decision-making
Individual awareness-
raising
Collective
Problematization
Consciousness-raising
Critical Awareness
Critical Praxis
Conceptual frameworks
Situated knowledge
Participatory and dialogic
Assimilative
Process-oriented
Convivial
Culture circles
Organic intellectuals
Control over knowledge production
Empathy
Re-captured knowledge
Imaginative scenarios
Experiential
Reflective
Transformative
ENVIRONMENTAL
PRINCIPLES AND
PRACTICES
Learning about
environmental
concepts
Learning from
environmental experiences
Disorienting dilemmas
Learning from, environmental
experiences and advocacy
Social and environmental
transformation
a>
77
Figure 1 suggests the process-orientation of agency, which may be
explained through IMA-Vs and lUCN’s projects in Vietnam. Central to this figure,
and to this investigation, is the learning context created by the two NGO projects at
Trao Reef and the Hon Mun MPA respectively. Learning in each project is
influenced by the actors involved, the village MPA committees, the Core Group and
the NGOs—IUCN and IMA-V in addition to the temporally constructed social and
political structures. Each of these features of agency, the development project and
the sponsoring NGOs, the agents and the structures, determine, to some extent,
access to participation, learning, and decision-making. Through a process of
participating, learning and acting (or not acting) in the respective projects,
outcomes may be transformative, contested, or inherited agency.
Summary: Literature Review
The three discourses on adult/non-formal learning, participation and
deliberative democracy, and agency, just presented, represent the transformative
learning, political and action dimensions that provide a foundation for this study.
The discourse on non-formal, informal and transformative learning suggests that
radical approaches, based on PAR and critical pedagogy have been more
appropriate for facilitating collective transformative learning and change that has
benefited communities, their surrounding environment, and natural resources.
Radical, non-institutional approaches include political components that are absent
from institutional approaches of learning to learn and perspective transformation.
However, experiential and reflective learning practices from institutional
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approaches also contribute to transformational possibilities. The literature on
participatory and deliberative democracy complements concepts and practices of
social and transformative learning. While participation has sometimes been more
of a concept than a practice in development projects, studies in natural and coastal
resource management, such as CBCRM, indicate that when participatory and
deliberative democratic decision-making practices have been employed, citizen
empowerment and fair decisions on natural resources are evident. These practices
have historical antecedents as well as contemporary foundations. Empowerment
and transformation can be conceptualized in agency. As a theoretical construct,
agency provides a model for understanding who acts and how. Agency suggests a
social process of learning and action. In the case of this study, agency can be
identified in communities enacting alternative conservation and environmental
practices and in practicing participatory or deliberative democracy. The agency
literature asserts that communities may use iterative agency to maintain current
development practices or may develop pragmatic-evaluative or projective agency to
transform social-environmental relations that are not only economically sustainable,
but also socially and environmentally sustainable. The three discourses presented
indicate compatible features providing a foundation to situate and analyze this
study’s findings.
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CHAPTER 3: Research Methods
Qualitative Research in Development Contexts
Qualitative research is appropriate for studying the human realm of social
and cultural phenomenon that can best be analyzed and understood through a rich
variety of participatory methods to gather information and make knowledge claims
(Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Polkinghorne & Gribbens, 1998; Atkinson & Silverman,
1997). Community participation and learning in an ICD project in Vietnam is a
dynamic social-environmental phenomenon appropriate for qualitative research.
This approach may be considered more sensitive to culture and social influences
than quantitative approaches, largely applied by institutions that have created the
current state of deteriorating social and environmental conditions (Castellanet &
Jordan, 2002; Chambers, 1997; Finger & Asun, 2001).
Sensitivity to context is a significant issue in Vietnam, a culture and a
society that has hundreds of years of history of being dominated and colonized by
foreign powers. Sensitivity is not apparent in the majority of analytical studies on
conservation development projects tend to be technical and apply quantitative
measures. These studies have been institutional documents that are part of World
Bank United Nations and other multi and bilateral agencies, and NGOs projects. In
Vietnam, sensitivity to each social situation is extremely important. Qualitative
approaches may be more sensitivity to the context. Sensitivity to the social context
is especially important for a foreigner and privileged individual such as me,
conducting research in Vietnam. Sensitivity to the social context is an important
consideration for research validity—to understand and empathize with local and
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personal conditions which participants identify, define, explain or measure (Lincoln,
1995; Whittemore et al. 2001). Issues present themselves where interpretations of
words and actions diverge. From start to finish, my role has been that of an outside
researcher and guest. These privileges could be removed at any time, so
sensitivity to cultural, social and political issues has been vital.
To gain emic (local) sensitivity, this research applied qualitative techniques
based on narratives inquiry that included ethnography, participant observations and
interviews, and case study practices of reviewing documents and project materials.
From a narrative inquiry perspective, these techniques are for the purpose of
gathering data, interpreting and analyzing the information gathered, and developing
themes, which could explain and compare the learning experiences and the
evolving environmental narratives, in these two ICD projects in Vietnam. Such an
approach is similar to Foley’s (1999) analysis of the Terania Creek, Australia
community green campaign, and Schugurensky’s study (2002) of learning in
participatory democracy project in Brazil.
This study follows in the realm of qualitative research on development
projects and development issues pursued mostly by anthropologists (Arce & Long,
1993; Hobart, 1993; Quarells van Ufford, 1993; Van de Ploeg, 1993; and Zerner,
1996), that focus on community-based knowledge and human agency, and by
community and adult educational researchers (Foley, 1999; Schugurensky, 2002),
whose studies use community and individual narratives to support their claims. It
also applies concepts from environmental narratives that challenged contemporary
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social paradigms such as Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), and Leopolds’ A Sand
County Almanac (1949).
In Vietnam, previous qualitative studies on environmental and development
issues have not focused on the learning concepts or practices, but instead, have
looked at technical, economic and political factors. Concerning development and
environmental issues, research studies have focused on policy and management
issues of upland, forest and watersheds. Studies by Adger (Adger et al., 2001a,
2001b; Adger, 1999) relied heavily on institutional documents and technical reports
along with some interviews to identify indicators of social vulnerability, adaptation
and resilience in the face of environmentally degrading development in Vietnam’s
rural areas. Dery (2000), for example reviewed documents and conducted
interviews to analyze the affects of migration on forested lands in the central
highlands following reunification in 1975. Lutrell (2001) analyzed technical reports
and documents and conducted interviews with community officials to assess
property rights changes vis-a-vis changes in coastal land use. In addition,
O’Rourke (2004), studied community responses to pollution based on documented
evidence and interviews over a period a several years. O’Rourke’s interested was
in community capacity to participate in the environmental regulatory process. In
addition, there have been technical reports on non-formal environmental education
in Vietnam (VFSTA, 2001). However, these have been policy documents that have
described policy or programs without any analytical lens on what learning was
taking place. Two studies (Ton That Phap, 2001; and Truong Van Tuyen, 2001)
have focused on CBCRM and the emerging empowerment of communities to take
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action to manage their natural environments. These studies are narrative in nature
and suggest possible participation and learning themes for this study. However,
while these studies did identify some participation and learning themes, they did not
analyze learning, in particular. These qualitative and narrative studies inform and
provide a foundation for this research.
Conceptual framework: Transformative social learning
The conceptual framework for this study is based in interpretive research, in
general, and in a social constructivist perspective, in particular. Interpretive
approaches are appropriate because at the core of this research is an
understanding of the “social actions that people take and why” (Schwandt, 2001, p.
191). Do people instruct for, learn for and act for the environment or not? The
essence of the research questions is to get at this fundamental issue within the
context of the community research site, NGO programs, activities and participants.
However, this paper follows a particular interpretive approach—philosophical
hermeneutics as explained by Gadamer, (1989) and Taylor (1995). The interpreter,
the researcher in this case, must understand the social and historical temporality of
social acts vis-a-vis his/her own understanding of those act. According to Gadamer
(1970), understanding is interpretation of “something as something” based in
accepting, stating clearly and comparing finding to the socio-historic bias we [the
researchers] have (p. 87). This bias is laid out in the conceptual framework that
shows the socio-historical lens that the researcher used to interpret the data. The
conceptual framework shows a preference for finding indicators of transformative
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learning, individual and collective. From the gathered data, the documents,
interviews and field work texts, the researcher conducted an analysis through this
stated lens. Furthermore, this does not mean that the conceptual framework is
some kind of objective understanding that is applied to the analysis, but that
through both theoretical and empirical research that were a part of this study, the
framework has formed its present shape. The concepts that compose this
framework have been defined by the researcher, yet are subject to different
interpretations as different readers review this research through social and
temporal changes. So, it is also up to readers to participate in the interpretation.
Interpretation, therefore, is “...a process or understanding and not a specific
empirical procedure” (Gadamer, 1989, p. 263). Gadamer and Taylor affirm that
“truth” can be found through the interpretation process (Schwandt, 2001, p. 198).
This conceptual framework sets out to provide a model for analyzing what
was learned on the ground in the two field studies that were part of this research on
community teaming through environmental action in NGO conservation and
development projects. The model involves not only principles and practices of
transformative learning, but also draws on complementary theories of deliberative
democracy and human agency. The researcher feels that specific theories of
transformative learning, participatory and deliberative democracy and human
agency, identified through this framework, are inter-related and can explain why
change does or does not happen as a result of non-formal and informal learning in
these two NGO facilitated ICD projects. This is a significant factor, because
projects, using non-formal and informal learning programs and activities that also
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promote incidental learning, set out to facilitate changes in a community's capacity
and actions. This can be understood as learning that changes agency—or peoples’
praxis to both know and to act (Freire, 1970).
Contributions to the conceptual framework have been introduced in the
literature review. This conceptual framework has broad applications for analyzing
social learning in conservation/development projects. While many studies have
applied theoretical political, economic, or policy lenses to analyze
conservation/development projects (Sharpe, 1998; Sundberg, 1998, Wapner, 1994)
and some studies have applied a cultural 'knowledge’ frame (Arce & Long, 1993;
Croll, 1993; Hobart, 1993; Richards, 1993; Van der Ploeg, 1993, Zerner, 1996), no
known studies have explicitly analyzed learning or accounted for specific social
learning processes and actions embedded in community and organizational
participation in an environmental or development project. Furthermore, this
conceptual framework emphasizes the relationship among learning, participation in
policy-making, collective agency and change.
This conceptual framework draws from the theoretical framework on
agency, adapted from Emirbeyer and Mische (1998), adult non-formal and informal
learning theories as indicated by Finger & Asun (2001) and Foley (1999),
transformative learning as explained by Schugurensky (2002) and participatory and
deliberate democracy theories and practices synthesized from Habermas (1984),
Barber (1984) and CBCRM (DENR, 2001b) identified in the literature review.
Furthermore, since the study focuses on conservation issues, features of
environmental learning as learning about, from and for the environment (Palmer,
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1999), are also included. The framework suggests the relationships between the
principles and practices of learning, participation and collective agency that is likely
to be engaged in an ICD project. Learning, participation and agency, should not be
thought of as separate factors, but as inter-related features of non-formal, yet
moreover, informal and incidental learning that ICD project facilitate. The
framework is now presented in Table 2.
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Figure 3 - Learning through Action: Communities transform political and environmental practices
Awareness Change
Policy Change
Public Relations
Communication
Social Marketing
Regulations
Deliberating
Advopating
Dialoguing
Enforcing
Convivial
Community
Locally Protected
Marine R feerw "
Locally Initiated
Marin#
Conservation
Rehabilitating
Protecting
Monitoring
Guarding
Incubating
Marine
^Reserve
Marine
'Biodiversity
Trademarked
Ecological
Aquaculture
Socio-cultural
Eco-tourism
Use Change
Environmental Change
00
CD
o f z o i> N-z>oo r- > h z m
87
Some general premises on learning, participation and action in ICD
projects, based on this framework, are as follows:
• Participation and learning should be considered to have a reciprocal
relationship in ICD projects. As people and communities participate, they
learn, and as they learn, they are involved in, or create different forms of
participation.
• Agency is the capacity to act that everyone processes. This capacity is
socially created by interacting with others. Learning and participation in ICD
projects can facilitate and enhance more transformative agency, such as
pragmatic-evaluative or projective agency.
• Agency can be individual or collective. Collective agency is more likely to
result in actions that transform social-environmental relations.
In ICD projects, environmental learning includes learning about
conservation, natural resources and development. This conceptual framework
represents an approach to analyzing the principles and practices of participation
and learning in these projects. The framework suggests that this learning is likely
to be affected by the type of participation and the type of learning principles and
practices that ICD projects favor. For example, participation in an ICD project that is
based in institutions, and is directed by experts, is likely to favor prescriptive
learning that focuses on environmental concepts and result in communities
practicing iterative agency. No change in community participation or environmental
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practices would result, but the community might become more aware of
environmental issues. This is a result of typical awareness-raising programs.
IUCN seems to favor this approach. It is an NGO, yet a highly institutionalized one,
which favors expert knowledge dissemination. Participation in ICD projects that is
facilitated by non-institutions, such as NGOs, is likely to encourage contestation of
ideas and practices, and be deliberative and empowering. Such facilitation usually
allows participants more access and information for making decisions, and often
takes place in the environment where participants learn experientially, and have
dialogues with other participants. Through such informal learning, participants may
incrementally transform their social and economic relations with the environment, in
general, and natural resource use, in particular. IMA-V practices are similar to this
approach. Participation that is de-institutional is likely to take place outside of NGO
projects such as in community or grass-roots CBCRM projects. Learning about the
environment in CBCRM projects has been shown to be organic and convivial
drawing from communities’ experiences and communities’ advocacy for conserving
and rehabilitating the social and natural resource base of their livelihoods.
The participation, learning and environmental concepts presented in this
framework will be applied to analyzing the findings presented in this study. The
concepts set up a framework for understanding the extent to which participation
and learning in the two ICD projects investigated is transformative. Concepts that
show indications of pragmatic-evaluative or projective agency indicate participation
and learning that could lead to transformative learning and praxis. These concepts
have been identified and defined in Chapter 1. These concepts will be further
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exemplified through the analysis of the Vietnamese context, presented in Chapter
4, and in the two case studies, presented in Chapter 5.
An expanded set of research questions, investigated through this
conceptual framework, are now presented. These research questions begin with a
focus on the respective and distinct community and NGO environmental narratives.
The second question focuses more closely on the respective NGO projects’ non-
formal learning events and the incidental learning that were a consequence of such
activities. The final question moves on to investigating the environmental and
development learning consequences of the two communities involved in the study.
Expanded Research Questions
This study aims to address the following issues and research questions:
1. issue: The community and NGO environmental narratives
1A. What has shaped the two respective community’s environmental narratives
over time? Are these narratives similar or different? How might these narratives
influence community participation and non-forma! and informal learning in the two
projects?
Have they been shaped by any of the following features or factors?
• Natural features such as unique geography, species or ecosystems?
• Cultural features such as Confucianism, gender, day-to-day practices?
® Policy factors such as citizen access to resources and responsibility for
making policy?
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• Social features such as participation in mass organizations and access
to both formal and non-formal education
• Historical features such as colonization and war?
• Experiential factors vis-a-vis academic knowledge?
• Other factors?
1B. What are IMA’s and lUCN’s environmental narratives and how have they been
shaped? Are they similar or different?
Have they been shaped by any of the following factors?
• Interests in specific environments, species or ecosystems?
• Concerns for specific societies or cultures?
• Particular approaches to gathering and sharing knowledge?
• Other factors?
How may these factors affect community participation and learning in the
respective projects?
2. Issue: Non-formal and informal learning in the conservation/development
project
2A. Are there any differences in who learns, and in what and how the two
communities learn about the environment in the respective NGO-led
conservation/development project in which they have been involved? Why or why
not?
Furthermore, what additional learning features indicate similarity or difference
between learning in the two NGO projects? For example:
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• What were some of the specific non-formal learning activities?
• What instructional approaches were evident?
• When and where were informal and incidental learning active and what
influence did such activities have on environmental learning?
• Have any of the approaches, practices or experiences contributed to
social learning that is environmentally, socially or economically
transformative?
2B. Furthermore, what actions have the communities and NGOs taken that
exemplify their respective environmental narrative? Have actions changed since
the project began, and if so, how? Are any of the actions environmentally
transformative?
3. Issue: Vision for future sustainability
What conservation and environmental policy-making consequences do such
learning have for the two communities and their respective MPAs? Are community
and NGO visions similar or different? Why?
The following section presents how data was collected and analyzed to
answer the three research questions. It begins by discussing the influence of
narrative inquiry on collecting the data. This is followed by a description of the
textual, oral/aural and participant/observation data that was collected. Analyses
methods are then explained. This section concludes with a discussion of validity
and credibility of the findings.
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Data Collection
Narrative Inquiry
Narrative inquiry is one qualitative approach that is appropriate for collecting
data for this research. Narrative assumes the storied nature of real life events
(Polkinghorne, in press a). This can be considered as the storied nature of
people’s participation in IMA-V’s and lUCN’s ICD projects. It can also be the two
organizations’ programs, activities, plans and processes documented and executed
(Czarniawska, 1997) in their respective projects. Participant observations,
interviews and document analysis gathered in this study are considered narrative
texts (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). These are community-participant narratives,
NGO documented narratives and researcher field note narratives. The data,
therefore, are not considered separate components of information, but as specific
episodes of time within a common subject—i.e.—the community's emerging marine
conservation/development story. It can be considered a narrative because it
conforms to principles of narrative, i.e.—including a series of event over time that
bring about a specific outcome (Polkinghom, in press a). To validated narrative
research, these texts are not taken at face value. These narratives will be
interpreted hermeneutically, for their socio-historical context and analyzed from a
critical perspective to go deeper than interpreting by reflecting and reassessing
meaning alone. The analysis is a fusion of horizons as Gadamer (1989) infers,
fusing the horizons of the researcher, the participants, and the temporal socio-
historical context of the research. This is suggested in the section explaining the
analytical framework for this study.
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A narrative inquiry approach is especially appropriate when social
relationships are important factors in gathering and in interpreting research. In a
context such as Vietnam, relationships are serious matters that infer their own
rights and responsibilities (Jamieson, 1993). This study agrees with the eco-
feminist approach suggested by Warrens (2000), who argues that narrative is
based on relationships of care for people and the environment, and not on
relationships of utility (p. 108). This suggests sensitivity to context. From an eco-
feminist perspective, narrative can depict people’s stories and their interaction with
nature. For example, community members who share their environmental
narratives develop a relationship with the researcher as they contribute to
developing the community corpus. Furthermore, some community members
dialoged with the researcher to improve the formative analysis to improve meaning.
This ethic is not the “universal, a-historical, Western rule bound arrogant ethic, but
a temporal, place-based and human, loving ethic where relationships to other
people and care is more central than being right” (Warren, 2000, p. 105). This is
particularly important in rural areas in Vietnam, where this study took place.
Outsiders, such as the researcher, need to care for the people who became
involved in this study.
The focus on gathering NGO and community member narratives based on
the respective projects suggests an ethic of care, sensitivity, integrity and
explicitness of purpose that is appropriate for a development context as Vietnam
presents. Such ethic contributes to the validity of the research design, information
gathering and analysis processes (Whittemore, Chase & Mandle, 2001). However,
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this sensitivity cannot stand as valid on its own. Other researchers, for example
(Atkinson & Silverman, 1997) criticize narratives when they are not analyzed.
Though not criticizing all narrative research, they condemn, especially narratives of
“illness” that take patients’ stories at face value. They criticize both the form of
these stories and the methodology of face-to-face, "empathic" interviews that often
is used to produce them. For Atkinson and Silverman, then, personal narrative is
useful only when it is subjected to some form of cultural criticism, or when it is
theorized, categorized, and analyzed. Such an analytical approach is included in
the process of this study.
As Riessman explains, analyzing narratives is a continuum of different
approaches to narrative texts rather than a standard method. Sequence is one
approach as traced to Aristotle’s Poetics (Reissman, 1993, p. 17; Polkinghorne, in
press a). The approach used in this study focuses on “topical, hypothetical and
genre based narratives” (Reissman, 1993) found in IMA-V’s and lUCN’s
documentation of the two projects. Evident in their documents are themes of
marine conservation, income generation, co-management and enforcement.
My position as a foreigner, and my role as a volunteer researcher, is likely
to have affected what was told, heard and understood in these two projects in
Khanh Hoa, Vietnam. For example, sometimes people told me what they wanted
me to hear, but what was not actually the ‘truth’ of the situation. In one case,
village leaders had told me that they had “created” a document of regulation with
community input. Upon trying to confirm this information with other Vietnamese
outside of the project, I learned that what was “created" was actually copied from
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state documents. The difference between creating and coping may have not been
significant for the village leaders. However, in the context of learning, at least from
a theoretical perspective, it is a different process. Other times, project staff
asserted the highly participatory nature of project activities; however, upon
conferring with community members, it was found that participation was
“attendance” and not advising, exchanging or otherwise contributing to creating
knowledge during the activity. These two examples suggest the hermeneutical
nature of narrative research and that interpretive factors affect meaning.
The data collection process was an ongoing and iterative activity that
happened simultaneous to the formative analysis. Field work began with IUCN and
IMA-V staff in Hanoi. At that time, program documents and materials, and other
supporting state documents were collected, analyzed and discussed with project
staff. After two months in Hanoi, my field work proceeded to Khanh Hoa Province.
Most of the first few months on each project were for relationship building, first with
the staff of each project, and second, with the community members involved in the
projects. After participating as a volunteer trainer or assistant for two months, I was
able to begin longer conservations and interviews with social groups and individual
committee members. The interviews with individuals represented the two
communities learning and were considered two corpuses of narratives. Analyzing
individual accounts was not as important as identifying comparable themes among
the accounts, as the focus of the research is on the collective, the two communities
and the two NGOs and not on individuals. Ethically, this served the purpose of
being responsible and caring in research relationships so that no one individual
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stands out (Lincoln, 1995). This is a significant feature of relationships in Vietnam,
where relationships establish mutual obligation of care and protection (Jamieson,
1993). The two NGOs’ documents and program materials composed additional
corpuses. My field notes provided one more narrative corpus. I will now further
explain the textual, oral and field note data that I collected.
Textual information
Documented information: A common approach to narrative research is to
first gather oral, first-person accounts of experience derived from interviews,
although they can be accounts from groups, communities, organizations and even
nations or empires (Becker, 1992). This was not the first step in this research
process; because the two NGOs had a wealth of documented data on the projects
and participants perspectives that could form the foundation for the analysis. All
documents were read in their original Vietnamese or English and translated as
necessary. To begin with, I collected technical, draft documents and newsletters
from both projects. These were reviewed and analyzed for emerging participation,
learning, and conservation themes. Each NGOs newsletter in addition to their
respective PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal) documents provided some specific
insights into community viewpoints. These provided one foundational corpus.
Additional state documents that contributed to this development narrative, such as
the Land Law of 1993, the General Democracy Decree of 1998, and the National
Environmental Plan of 1994, were also gathered and reviewed. Overall, these
technical materials identified the state’s and respective NGOs’ environmental
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narratives. Reviewing these textual sources provided a context to inquire into
participation and learning in the two projects.
Oral information
Interviews were a significant part of this process. Eliciting participants’
narratives encourages mutual researcher-participant responsibility in research
practice that may or may not be encouraged in other qualitative approaches
(Lincoln, 1995). Research shows that during interviews "people strive to organize
their temporal experience into meaningful wholes and to use the narrative form as a
pattern for uniting the events of their lives" (Polkinghome, 1988, p. 153).
Interviews, therefore, can assist in identifying people’s learning and their present
and emerging environmental narratives. Reissman (1993) suggests that interviews
be treated as conversations in narrative research. Participants may be asked
about artifacts such as pictures and photographs or other natural materials from the
area or may be asked to sketch out thoughts visually if such an approach seems to
further enable conversation about environmental learning experiences. These
techniques were applied during this study.
The interview is a co-created text is constantly negotiated during the
interview process. Primarily organized by the person giving the account, but also
shaped and, perhaps revised, by the researcher’s questions, comments, responses
and probes. For each community, in order to hear a variety of voices and to have a
clear understanding of competing or complementary development narratives, an
initial round of semi-structured interviews were held with representatives of the
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commune’s (community’s) government, participants in the development project,
who were often village leaders, MPA committee members or consistent participants
and project activities, and staff of the conservation/development projects. These
questions were reviewed and approved by both projects’ staff and we agreed that
they served as a general guideline and not as fixed questions. In Vietnam, as in
most contexts, there were formal and informal gatekeepers that limited my access
to others (Seidman, 1998). Initially, I was given access to village leaders and
project committee members, but over the course of the two projects, I participated
in a variety of informal activities where I had casual conversations with a wide
variety of community members—approximately 70 to 80 members from each
project. As this research proceeded, approximately 12 individuals became key
informants. Accessing multiple voices may ensure greater credibility of information
(Lincoln, 1995).
The purpose of this approach was not to get to know one individual in-
depth, but instead to get a general, credible sense of each community’s non-formal
and informal learning about the environment through their respective
conservation/development project. This approach contributed to coding data for to
saturate categories. It also protected individual respondents’ identify. The semi
structured interviews focused on the group’s or the individual’s participation in
specific non-formal and informal learning activities in relationship to conservation
and development issues present in both projects. When appropriate, photographs,
other artifacts and documents were shared with the interviewees to stimulate
conversation and dialog. Across interviews, questions were targeted and refined
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based on analysis of previous documents and interviews and the interview
participants’ specific experience in the project. A second and third round of
interviews were held approximately three to six weeks after the first interviews with
these key informants in order to further clarify the participants learning experiences.
With additional information, I refined learning categories and themes and began an
analysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The saturation of categories indicated
competing or complementary environment and development learning themes
evinced though the participants’ experiences in the project’s non formal and
informal learning activities.
During each conversation and interview, I was accompanied by a bilingual
staff or community member; however, I did conduct most of the interviews
completely in Vietnamese and took notes in both English (simultaneously
translating) or in Vietnamese. Before beginning, I told each group or individual the
purpose of the interviews, that they could refuse participation, that their names
would not be recorded, and that they could review my findings after the interview.
Up till the time I departed Vietnam in January 2004, these were my interview and
analysis practices. No interviews were tape-recorded, and at times, participants
asked me to not even take notes. Some participants felt uncomfortable with note-
taking. "It seems official,” they told me. Once the notebook closed, they typically
shared ideas and stories, often contradictory to their statements when project staff
were around. In such cases where I was asked to not take notes, immediately after
the interviews or at the end of the day, I and my staff partner met together to
debrief. At that time I would write up all shared thoughts from the interview(s) that
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day. When meeting with the staff partner, I asked specific questions about ideas
that I did not understand. Issues that remained outstanding provided my initial
questions for follow-up interviews or discussions with project staff. I also followed
up (debriefed) with several key informants and project staff to confirm outstanding
issues that were not clear in the interviews. This provided an additional validation
process.
Researcher’s Observations and Participation:
Participant observations were an additional feature of this research and an
integral part of qualitative research, where the researcher can gain an emic
understanding of the social and cultural context being investigated (Denzin &
Lincoln, 2000). Over a period of four to five months at each development project, in
addition to pursuing textual resources and interviews, I was a volunteer researcher
and project assistant in the two communities. This is a common practice in
qualitative research (Angrosino, M. V. & Mays de Perez, K. A., 2000). Some days,
I was heavily involved in office work with project staff. Other days were entirely
devoted to the field, and in the case of IMA-V’s project, field work often continued
for consecutive weeks. Field work on the IUCN project was regular, but sporadic
and limited by official regulations that kept me (and other foreigners) off the islands
at night. Participant observation provided me with further community insights,
context, and social understanding (Lofland & Lofland, 1995). Through participant
observation, I learned about the communities’ and the NGOs’ actual development
agenda and environmental learning on the ground. Furthermore, it provided
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context for understanding, interpreting and analyzing both projects’ documents and
the interviews that I conducted. My main participant observations were during
NGO activities, in general, and in NGO-led NFE events IFE contexts in particular. I
also use the participant observation experience to hold incidental conversations
with NGO staff and participants to further identify their learning and their
environmental narrative. I also wrote field notes daily to log observations and
reflect on my participant experiences (Emerson, Fritz & Shaw, 2000). These field
notes were composed of NGO staff and participant comments and actions, in
addition to my own observations, personal reflections and analytical insights. This
is an additional narrative corpus that contributes to the analysis. These analytical
field notes were also made available to the community and NGO staff as an
approach to dialoging and building a relationship in addition to increasing the
credibility of the analysis (Whittemore, et al. 2002).
Data Analysis
As stated previously, the data collection and analysis is an iterative and
sequential process. Preliminary categories were the result of analyzing and
interpreting the three corpuses. As the data was gathered and categorized, I used
an approach called analysis of narratives (Polkinghorne, 1995), though this is
similar to general qualitative process of analysis and includes coding, mapping,
categorizing, sampling and theme creation (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). A difference
in this research is that a narrative lens is being used to suggest the personal and
organizational construction of life experiences (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). In this
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case, community and organization’s life experiences through an ICD project.
Narratives in this research refers to the community members accounts, NGO
documents, program materials, and the researcher’s own field notes related to the
events, actions, experiences, and outcomes of the NGO led
conservation/development project activities. These texts compose narratives
experiences (Reissman, 1993). Narratives used for research purposes can be
considered “stories...that uniquely describe human experience [and organizational
experience] in which actions and happenings contribute positively and negatively to
attaining goals and fulfilling purposes” (Polkinghome, 1995, p. 8).
The analysis follows and interpretive approach, where the researcher’s
interpretive lens is indicated through the conceptual framework. As Gadamer
(1975,1989) and Taylor suggest, interpretation is situated in the social and
historical temporality of not only the researcher, but also of the readers of the
research. The conceptual framework identifies this socio-historical context. This
analysis and interpretation process creates an understanding based on the
interplay between socio-historically constructed concepts identified in the
conceptual framework and the actually data. This is the “adventure in
understanding” that Gadamer explains (Gadamer, 1981, p. 109). As new data was
collected through participant observations, field notes and recorded oral texts, it
was coded inductively (Hammersley, 1992; Strauss & Corbin, 1998), and compared
for similarity or difference with the earlier analysis. Particular attention was paid to
concepts and practices of participation and learning that could be identified and
referenced from the conceptual framework directly. There was ongoing tension
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during the analysis between organizational narrative and community narratives.
This is evident in the themes that are identified and explained. For this study, the
main task was to analyze the narratives related to the conservation/development
project in general, and the NFE events, informal learning and unplanned and
incidental activities and their respective outcomes, in particular. This is a similar
process to the one that Foley used in his analysis of a community green campaign
in Terania Creek, Australia (Foley, 1999, pp. 40-45). These narratives drew from
the past, before the current NGO projects, in addition to sketching out possible
futures that may come to be after the project has ended.
Validity and Credibility of the Analysis and Findings
For this qualitative approach to collecting and analyzing information that
includes an analysis of narratives, the analysis is an ongoing interpretive and
hermeneutical process, where validity resides in creating well supported knowledge
claims. Knowledge claims made on the information collected are, first of all,
interpretive (Polkinghome, in press b). Knowledge claims are also hermeneutical.
The researcher interpreted the information collected through the social and
historical lens that frames the analysis. Taking into account the socio-historical
uniqueness of the development contexts vis-a-vis the researcher’s biases in the
analysis has been referred to as criticality and integrity, which exposes researcher
and participant biases in the research process and analysis (Hammersley, 1992).
Philosophical hermeneutics is a process of identifying and accounting for
such bias. Part of this process was stating research biases in the assumptions
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listed in Chapter I, where the research questions were introduced. This bias was
reviewed when analyzing and reanalyzing the data. Further researcher, participant
and organizational presumptions, which are based on social, historical and
contextual conditions at the time of the investigation, are also indicated in specific
sections of this document. For example, the researcher’s conceptual framework,
described in this chapter, represents one lens. Furthermore, the community
participants’ and each organizations’ lens are laid out in Chapter 4, which suggests
influences on community and organizational learning and participation processes
and outcomes. Community and organizational biases not only affected
participation and learning, these biases also affected how the communities and
organization thought and talked about participation and learning. Identifying these
biases is part of the hermeneutical process of validity.
Researcher reflexivity is part of this process. Through the analysis process,
I considered opposing and alternative categories and themes, justifying or
disregarding discrepant findings, and reflecting on biases in selecting and
substantiating certain themes, while avoiding inference by association (Maxwell,
1996). Having lived worked in Vietnam for close to three years, while gaining
competence in language and cultural skills, and having done comprehensive
research on Vietnamese environmental and development issues, I was able to
reflect on my field experiences vis-a-vis my theoretical knowledge and academic
training. Such experiences may indicate credible researcher reflexivity.
Furthermore, integrity in the analysis process and in writing up the findings is a key
in this interpretive approach, since the research findings can be considered overly
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subjective. Integrity has been emphasized through iterative analysis checks from
the community and NGO staff involved in the study as suggested by Maxwell
(1996). As a volunteer researcher for IMA-V and IUCN, I invited NGO staff and
community participants to verify and critique my analysis for subjectivity. The
analysis of these narratives has been an on-going process that occurred during the
research as well as after leaving the field. For example, I emailed draft versions of
my analysis to NGO staff members to review and comment on. An important issue,
while in the field, is to ensure the validity of the analysis through community and
expert checks (Lincoln, 1995). This has been especially important working in two
languages in Vietnam. Fortunately, bilingual, capable and interested staff were
working on both projects and arranged time to work with me. My critiqued
assessments were shared with key informants from both staffs and from the
communities involved in the project.
According to Whittemore, et at. (2001), there are primary and secondary
criteria for assessing validity that resonate for this study. Two primary criteria are
credibility and authenticity or what Maxwell labels as interpretive validity (1996).
Since this is an interpretive analysis, such validity is important for the knowledge
claims that are presented in this study. Credibility is strongly related to integrity, or
as some label, trustworthiness—as in trusting the findings. Credibility is shown
through an analysis that is clearly representative of the community members and
NGOs staff non-formal and informal learning experience in the project (Lincoln &
Guba, 1985 cited in Whittemore et ai., 2001). In this study, this was established by
having the community and NGO staff members check and confirm the formative
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analysis developed by the researcher. Similar or distinct views about
conservation/development and learning by outside experts and related community
members, both Vietnamese and English-speaking, from within the project and from
outside the project also critiqued the findings in this study to contribute to its
credibility. These expert and community critiques supported that the researcher’s
knowledge claims are grounded in a context apart from the researcher’s possible
bias (Whittemore, 2001). Authenticity is reflected in the presentation of participants’
voice and the emic perspectives of the development context. To assure
authenticity, I have reflected on my involvement and any affect I may have had in
the interviews and the interpretation of meaning in the three data collection
methods used. Rich use of directly quoted speech, including the use of
Vietnamese, in this case, has contributed to an authentic account.
Secondary criteria that are significant for this study are explicitness,
thoroughness, vividness, congruence and sensitivity. Explicitness refers to giving
an auditable account of how the researcher interpreted evidence (Lincoln & Guba,
1985). All interested parties from the two organizations and communities involved
in this study have been able to access field notes and analytical notes written up
while conducting participant observations and analyzing texts. Thoroughness is
also an important criterion. Beyond the saturation of categories and themes with
sufficient examples, thoroughness means that the research questions have been
answered using those examples as persuasively as possible (Whittemore, et at.
2001). Congruence relates to thoroughness and is the convergence of the research
questions, method, analysis and findings. Congruence also suggests that the
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findings should go beyond the strict confines of the two specific communities and
NGOs researched, and should connect to related studies in the field. In this case,
the fields of study are social and non-formal learning, NGOs, and ICD work.
Findings from this study converge with findings from similar studies on social and
non-formal learning such as those by Foley (1999), Schugurensky (2002), and on
NGOs and ICD work in Vietnam by Ton That Phap (2001), and Truong Van Tuyen
(2001). Vividness plays an important role in accounts of social phenomenon
(Geertz, 1988). The account created for this study, hopefully, easily invites the
reader into experiencing and understanding the research site and contexts. This
document clearly introduces the reader to the colors, smells, sounds and thoughts
of the development context—rural Vietnamese fishing communities that are
learning to use their skills and knowledge to change their life on the emerald seas
and rocky islands of Khanh Hoa, Vietnam. The account presented in this study is a
refined description of the salient features of the research context that clearly
explicates the community members and NGO staff, the environment, the non-
formal and incidental learning, and the actions that took place during the 10-12
months of research, from December 2002 - December 2003.
Furthermore, to be credible, the findings must be valid for the Khanh Hoa
community members and the NGOs, IMA-V and IUCN, which participated in the
research in addition to others, such as policy makers and members of the academe
who may read the final research publication. This approach to validity has been
substantiated by a research process that present claims that may be considered
credible, authentic, vivid, thorough, congruent and sensitive (Lincoln, 1995;
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Whittemore, et al. 2001). This variety of validity features contributes to an analysis
that believes in no final truth, but in the mutual responsibility of the researcher and
the readers of the research to interpret critically (Kinchoeloe & McLaren, 2000;
Polkingnhorne, in press). These methods should contest readers accustomed to
surface level understanding of knowledge claims to consider a variety of possible
meanings. This suggests that findings are viewed through the researcher and
readers’ philosophical hermeneutical lens—interpretation embedded in one’s socio-
historical experience and bias. Therefore the readers of this analysis also have a
task of interpreting and understanding the narrative accounts of the community
members and the NGOs involved in the study based on their (the readers’) values,
beliefs and such that shape their analytical lens in relationship to the researcher’s
and the research context. This could be considered a Gramscian notion of
conscious self-critique to understand the uncritical way in which one views the
world (Gramsci, 1994).
Limitations of the Analysis
The findings are limited by the analysis as well as the research practices.
The analysis is limited by the conceptual frameworks’ focus on participation and
learning situated within a paradigm of transformative learning. While this
framework is a comprehensive lens to understand adult learning in non-formal and
informal learning environments, alternative conceptual frameworks would surely
suggest different findings. However, the purpose of this study was to pursue a
better understanding of transformative learning, in general, and in ICD projects, in
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particular. Further, research practices were affected by the researcher’s adequate,
but by no means bilingual abilities in understanding and interpreting Vietnamese.
Despite the use of a professional interpreter/translator, some intended meaning is
likely to been lost through the process of translating between the two languages in
addition to other semantic issues. However, meanings explained and indicated in
this text are wells-supported. The researcher’s had both a broad and in-depth
engagement with numerous complementary as well as contrasting sources and
reviewed supporting texts to compare, contrast and confidently make claims on the
data gathered. Furthermore, the researcher’s analysis was critiqued, and
contested and supported by Vietnamese and international colleagues in the field.
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1 10
Forest is gold. If we know how to conserve it well, it will be very precious.
Destruction of the forest will lead to a serious effect on both life and
productivity. We should protect our forests and we will be a rich nation.
Ho Chi Minh, 1962
CHAPTER 4: Vietnam’s Environmental Narrative: Changing Conservation
and Development Practices
The following section is an overview of Vietnam’s environmental narrative.
It is based on reviewing policy documents and conducting interviews with state,
bilateral, and NGO officials in Hanoi, Vietnam. It provides a preface for identifying
and analyzing the natural, economic, social, cultural, and geographical influences in
addition to the policy and political influences on community learning in the two
projects. This section indicates that Vietnam is in the process of changing its
conservation and development practices. These changes emphasize both
conservation and an increase in international as well as local participation in the
process.
Protected Areas in Vietnam: An evolution
As a state, Vietnam has developed a commitment to protecting the
environment beyond national laws and international regimes, especially when
assisted and funded by external multilateral sources such as the UNDP/GEF/SGP,
and facilitated by NGOs, for example IUCN and IMA. This is an important factor
given that conservation and development issues are in conflict at the borders of
these protected areas. Ho Chi Minh, whose words and actions still have an
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111
important influence on Vietnamese policy today, had a commitment to the
environment that could resonate in the establishment of national parks in Vietnam
today. Perhaps, had Ho Chi Minh spent time in the coastal areas, he might have
said the same for mangrove forests and coral reefs. However, it is forest protection
that has come first in Vietnam, and only recently has there been an awareness of
marine environmental issues (Vo Quy, 1997). Vietnam’s patterns for the protection
of natural resources seems similar to national park and species protection
processes in Costa Rica and in Bolivia over the last quarter century. First
mountainous areas and forests were protected in piecemeal approaches, and as
further political and public interest was generated, more comprehensive systems of
protected areas were established (Steinberg, 2001)
IUCN is one organization that has continued to support Vietnam’s protection
of indigenous species in forested areas over the past 15 years. With several
national forests and protected areas now established, the state has recently begun
to pay attention to its marine biodiversity. IMA-Vietnam is one actor that can take
some credit for putting marine issues on Vietnam’s national policy agenda. Since
2000, several new marine protected areas or marine parks have been established
on paper, and a handful is now being funded. Nevertheless, the concept and
practice of protected areas is still somewhat novel to a country recently recovering
from decades of war, still more decades of colonization, and a population that has
tripled since Ho Chi Minh declared independence in 1946. However this is now
changing.
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As argued by Thrift and Forbes (cited in Kerkvliet, 1995, p. 23), civil society,
both inside and outside of Vietnam, has pushed environmental issues onto
Vietnam’s policy agenda. Learning about environmental issues through this
process can be understood as contestational with some benefits for the economy
and for environmental conservation but few for social issues. People, who live near
these national parks have often been the most affected, yet most neglected in the
creation and implementation of state environmental policy. Even as the parks have
been established, environmental issues, the lack of enforcement of environmental
regulations, and resource extraction from outsiders have left local communities
vulnerable with few options but to exploit whatever local natural resources remain
(Adger, 1999). One reason is that the parks are in more remote areas where
people are poor with limited access to educational and technical resources. These
cultural and historical aspects of social-environmental relations also weigh in on
state and local development practices that have favored social dominance of the
environment.
The national parks program shows little affect on changing this context, but IMA-V’s
or lUCN’s projects in Khanh Hoa may show an alternative civil society, and people-
oriented approach.
According to the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment
(MNRE), like other nations, Vietnam has several protected areas, and most are
considered national parks opened to the public. Most, also, include resident
villages, where communities have lived prior to the park’s establishment.
According to development professionals in Vietnam, this results in potential for
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conflict, as well as the possibility of engaging communities in alternative
approaches to natural resource protection, rehabilitation and conservation.
Vietnam is moving towards designating over one hundred protected areas, over 15
of which are receiving financial support for upkeep through the World Bank,
DAN I DA, the UNDP, IUCN, WWF, FFI and others. Adger et al. (2001a) explains
that the state’s improving, yet poor economic standing is one reason why state
funds for the environment remain limited at about 0.8% of its budget. Vietnam has
one RAMSAR - wetland site, 79 have been proposed and 24 more marine sites
have been proposed (FFI, 2002). One of these is the Hon Mun marine conservation
sites in Khanh Hoa province. The IUCN Hon Mun Marine Protected Area Pilot
Project (HMMPAPP) is, in fact, viewed by IUCN as a type of Marine Park. Vietnam
also has similar marine parks on Con Dao, in the south and in Bai Tu Long in the
north. IMA-V’s site is not part of the national plan and is somewhat of an
experiment in local management of coastal resources. Another site is Cat Ba
Island in the north. The other sites are forested areas, which include 62 nature
reserves and 18 landscape conservation areas, two Man and Biosphere Reserves,
and four World Heritage Sites as determined by UNESCO. The Ministry of
Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) has proposed further increases in all
land-based categories of protected areas (Adger et al. 2001 b).
The creation of these sites, on paper, is a result of research and policy
efforts of Vietnamese scientists and their supporting associations such as CRES
(Center for natural Resource management and Environmental Studies) and ENV
(Environment for Nature-Vietnam), bilateral agencies and NGOs. Several of these
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114
protected areas are sites for ICD or specific non formal environmental education
activities. Most have been set up to protect rare or representative ecosystems,
such at the Hon Mun Project that has an aim to preserve a representative sample
of outstanding coral reef in Vietnam (IUCN, 2000). In cooperation with various
international and environmental NGOs, such as Flora and Fauna International
(FFI), WWF and IUCN, there have been informal and non-formal environmental
education programs set up at several of these parks. Some of these non-formal
education programs, once established, are being run directly by the parks or by
Vietnamese environmental associations such as ENV. Most of these programs
focus on long-term environmental awareness (devel-vn, 2000-2002) and target
children. They may also have short-term training sessions for local residents.
According to a recent workshop on protected areas in the Vietnam, the
general goal of these programs is to train park guides in non-formal environmental
education, train local primary school teachers to deliver environmental education,
and to engage local school children to have an interest in protecting species, such
as rare animals, in particular. In the past decade, four new species have been
found in Vietnam (WWF, 1999). These environmental education programs are
generally at the conceptual level. Some programs included field experiences in the
natural areas as well. According to various program staff, they are general
awareness-raising activities.
Reported outcomes are that hundreds of teachers and thousands of
children have had their awareness-raised on environmental and conservation
issues in their localities (VNPPA, 2001); however there has been no assessment if
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this learning has resulted in any changes in policy or action towards the
environment. Most NGOs or donors, such as the UNDP, which are involved in
these activities typically report on general number of participants and perhaps,
general indications of awareness. Most of these programs have taken place in the
hilly uplands in the northwest and central areas of the country where a majority of
the national parks have been established and staffed. An indication that these
programs have had little affect is the recent road building activity (from 2001
through 2004) of the national government through Cue Phuong National Park—
Vietnam’s first declared National Park, and one of the most targeted areas for
environmental education in the nation. Most resistance to the road building has
been from the international community and not from the Vietnamese (devel-vn,
2000-2002).
Participation in Development and Conservation in Viet Nam
As in other low-income countries, development projects, whether led by
institutions or NGOs, have largely failed to improve social, economic and
environmental conditions for the vast majority of Vietnamese (Thai Thi Ngoc Du,
2000). One project officer recently explained, “A development project is considered
successful if it doesn’t do any harm to 30% of the community during its first three to
five years.” Secondly, popular participation by Vietnamese citizens in development
projects has been problematic due to historical as well as contemporary conflicting
approaches to policy and practice among donors, the state and communities. Top
down, state control remains the norm, yet at the local level, “the government seems
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116
invisible,” explained one villager. While the state makes edicts, local levels of
government have not had the capacity (or perhaps the interest) to enforce those
edicts (Jamieson, 1993; Kerkvliet, 1995a). Third, Vietnam’s unique ecological bio
diversity is facing increasing pressure from influences of modernization and
globalization, yet persists in directly supporting over 75% of its population through
farming, forestry, fishing and the like. Forty percent of Vietnamese protein intake
depends on marine resources (UNDP, 2001b). However, despite the local
demand, lobsters, for example, native to Vietnam’s coral reefs, are not farmed to
sell in Vietnam, but “We sell them to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan for as much as
much as $30 USD/kilo.” Fourth, new multi-stakeholder approaches, such as ICM,
that aim to simultaneously address conservation and development in, or adjacent
to, protected areas through community participation are being implemented in
Vietnam with some components being initiated by international environmental
NGOs, i.e. IMA-Vietnam and IUCN. Fifth, Vietnam has a recent history of
developing and implementing natural resource and conservation regulations since
its participation in the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Rio in 1992.
Its policies and decrees aim to manage, conserve and rehabilitate Vietnam’s
natural resources, including its coastal resources through both centralized and
decentralized approaches. Decentralized approaches call on NGOs, communes,
social organizations and households to participate in natural resource management
(Bo Thuy San, 2003; Law on Environmental Protection, 1993; NORAD, 2002).
In the case of Vietnam, these new approaches suggest that communities
will participate and learn in the conservation and management of natural resources.
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Nevertheless, how people participate and learn in this process has yet to be
analyzed. The two ICD projects investigated in this study, present pragmatic
approaches to address practical economic and environmental needs of both the
state and the communities, and are unlike the practices of past projects that
focused only on one feature, i.e.—environmental education, conservation
management or development. (Castellanet & Jordan, 2002; Sage & Nguyen Cu,
2001; Wapner, 1994). IMA-V’s and lUCN’s projects follow this trend and indicate
the importance of community involvement and participatory learning. This study
aims to investigate this learning context, and any changes—social, economic and
environmental—that such participation and learning effects.
In addition to IMA-V’s and lUCN’s recent marine ICD projects, Vietnam has
been the site for a number of conservation and development projects that have had
elements of non-formal or informal learning opportunities. Bilateral aid agencies,
international NGOS and Vietnamese scientific associations have been involved in
research and training in many of these projects. Many of Vietnam’s research
based, non-formal environmental education programs have been components of
social forestry projects or have been initiated as programs in Vietnam’s newly
designated national parks. Several Vietnamese associations, Vietnam’s National
Parks and Forest Association, the Forest Science Institute of Vietnam, the Center
for Research and Development of Ethnomedicinal Plants, and others have recently
become involved in social forestry through bilateral projects such as those funded
by DAN I DA, SI DA, and GTZ. These have been research oriented for policy
development and have included people to the extent that the projects have
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118
surveyed local people to gather local knowledge about non-traditional forestry
products that have commercial potential (Mekonginfo, 2002).
One participatory, non-formal environmental education project was
sponsored by German technical development assistance (GTZ) along with the
Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) (Nguyen Thi Hang &
Gerbert, 1996). In this project, German and Vietnamese experts conducted
surveys and set up workshops specifically targeting women’s learning of social
forestry skills. The Women’s Union was also involved in becoming trainers for
future projects. The training involved knowledge sharing from local women in
addition to GTZ presenting information on marketable forest products. Even though
indigenous knowledge seemed to be an important focus, the learning approach
was observed as being top-down with the format organized by GTZ and elite from
the Women’s Union while participants were disenfranchised ethnic minority women
and men (Nguyen Thi Hang & Gerbet, 1996). Long-term transformational social-
environmental learning therefore was unlikely. According to Nguyen Thi Hang,
The fact that women became more aware was an important achievement.”
(Nguyen Thi Hang & Gerbert, 1996).
Another important institutional sponsor of both formal and non formal
environmental education is the UNDP. It is an important conduit for, and a financial
sponsor of environmentally focused development projects with community-based
learning. It directly manages a dozen of these projects and one specifically targets
environmental education in formal education contexts. The environmental
education project is also being supported by the World Bank in its support of
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119
environmental education policy. This, like some NGO environmental education
project focuses on developing and implementing environmental education materials
for school children and conducts training for teachers. Success has been based on
reaching hundreds of schools with add on environmental education programs
(develop-vn, 2000-2002).
The UNDP also manages and distributes funds for small environmental
projects through the General Environmental Fund (GEF) Small Grants Projects
(UNDP, 2001a). These projects are typically field-based and rely on partnerships
between state agencies and social organizations. Some rely only on experts, such
as the Center for Consulting, Investment (CCI) and Department of Science,
Technology and the Environment (DoSTE) of Thanh Hoa Province, which funds
scientific research on uses of bamboo. Others have community participation
components. Currently there are about 15 UNDP funded projects that support local
organizations’ participation in development, such as the Women’s Union of Cat Ha,
the Women’s Union of Loc Tri Commune in Thua Thien Hue province, the Farmer’s
Association of Vinh Phuc Province, The Farmer’s Union of Cam Ranh Township.
These are local, mass or popular organizations that are permitted by the
Vietnamese government. These tend to be environmentally friendly AIG projects.
In addition to IMA-V and IUCN, the Center for Rural Progress (CRP), WWF,
Frontier and FFI also have community-based partnerships in several rural areas,
with CRP, Frontier and joining IMA-V in marine issues in the Ha Long Bay and Cat
Ba areas of northeast Vietnam. Frontier and FFI have developed marine education
programs, adapting a UNESCO marine education template to promote marine
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120
conservation at their specific project sites (CEN, 2002 - 2004). These materials
are targeted towards the formal schooling program and pilot programs have been
set up to train teachers in basic marine education content. This is a common NGO
approach and outcome for conservation or environmental education in rural areas
in Vietnam.
In the non-formal sphere, WWF has funded Women’s Union projects for
ethnic minority women in Kon Turn Province, where women started farming
mushroom (Nguyen Thu Ba, 2000) in addition to participating in a general
awareness raising program on the forest ecosystem. FFI has facilitated community
honey and handicraft cooperatives in villages on Cat Ba Island (FFI, 2002). These
were alternative income generating (AIG) activities where villagers gained new
skills and new ideas for working with the forests rather than continuing to cut them
down for charcoal or lumber.
Several Vietnam associations are also involved in environmental education
from a research perspective. Vietnam’s Biology Associations members conduct
and disseminate research on biologically based agricultural management and
provides training for new researchers (Mekonglnfo, 2002). VUSTA’s members
conduct scientific based research to inform policy makers and international donors
(VUSTA, 2001). There are several Vietnamese environmental associations that
specialize in particular environmental content. The NWG (National Working Group)
focuses on research and training. It has set up research teams to review
community based environmental management, such as community based forestry
in several ecosystems in Vietnam (RECOFTC (2000). Eco-Eco focuses on
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121
environmental design for residential and industrial developments (UNESCO, 1999).
These organizations, as epistemological communities, tend to reinforce their own
worldviews on social-environmental relations, which favors experts and scientific
and technical approaches, rather than participatory learning, research or decision
making to solving environmental issues. Their work tends to be with other
agencies, NGOs, or international institutions in providing research or technical
assistance.
The first local environmental NGO in Vietnam is Environment for Nature-
Vietnam (ENV). It has set up an environmental education and training center in
Cue Phuong National Forest. First trained by FFI, ENV’s staff and programs have
been successful at creating environmental awareness, again targeting school
children that live on the borders of the National Forest. Its programs have been
internationally acclaimed. The program earned the Whitely Award—a British
environmental prize for contributions to environmental awareness. ENV now runs
workshops at other national parks, especially in the north of Vietnam (ENV, 2001).
EVN is an example of intersecting organizational agendas that have contributed to
strengthening Vietnamese environmental civil society.
CBCRM also has some history in Vietnam. Narratives by Ton That Phap
(2001) and (Truong Van Tuyen, 2001) explain the experience of two villages in the
central part of the country, located in Tam Giang Lagoon worked with IDRC
(International Development Research Center, Canada) in a project to manage
fishing in the lagoon. Unlike coastal waters, lagoons have more of a history of
management similar to land. According to Ton That Phap (2001), after reunification
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in 1976, that management system broke down. The result was open competition
for the lagoons water surface rights. IDRC set up a project, similar to the one that
IMA-V has facilitated in Van Hung. IDRC worked with the villagers to set up
community regulations and an enforcement program. During the three years of the
project, the community learned how to create and enforce regulations and local
access and control over the resources of the lagoon improve, suggesting some
empowerment, according to the authors. However, after the project ended, the
enforcement system weakened. This suggests that change was dependent upon
the project’s physical presence. Today, villagers in the lagoon have made renewed
efforts to manage it with some degree of success (Ton That Phap, 2001; and
Truong Van Tuyen, 2001). These narratives point out important lessons on
community learning that could be applicable for IMA-V and IUCN.
In addition, Vietnamese communities have also shown their capacity to
engage in environmental issues when they directly affect their health and general
welfare. Unlike the non-formal and informal learning process indicated above,
which have largely been directed or facilitated by institutions or organizations, such
as NGOs, several Vietnamese communities have directly mobilized to confront
polluting practices of state or transnational companies (O’Rourke, 2004; Roodman,
1999). Through the process of contestation—or learning through struggle—
community members have learned about the environmental protection policies and
how those policies can be implemented. This suggests that given a disorienting
enough environmental dilemma, Vietnamese communities can mobilize to
deliberate policy and have it enforced. Furthermore, these contemporary incidents
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confirm historical tendencies for Vietnamese village to create democratic spaces to
deliberate and contest policy vis-a-vis the state (Jamison, 1993; O’Rourke, 2004,
Scott, 1986).
Summary
Vietnam’s Environmental Narrative: Conservation and Development
Practices
Vietnam, at the state level, has developed a commitment to protecting its
unique biodiversity in addition to rural reliance on natural resources for production.
This commitment has endogenous undertones. Vietnam has more than 15 funded
national parks and several are in the process of being funded. Numerous
Vietnamese associations, as quasi-NGOs are focusing on environmentally related
research, policy and pilot projects. Through park programs and a variety of
associations, Vietnamese are not only participating in non-formal programs, but
also in informal and incidental activities, where they leam about the value of natural
resources and the environment through the framework of state policy.
This trend has been encouraged by international donors, such as the World
Bank and bilateral agencies, and project facilitation, especially by environmental
NGOs. These international donors and NGOs are promoting participatory
approaches to natural resource management. This is being facilitated through non-
formal and informal learning programs as components to conservation and ICD
projects. However, popular participation and deliberate democracy have been
challenging concepts to conservation and development practices. Even as
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Vietnam decentralizes some policy making and decrees permissible democratic
practices at the local level, these challenges remain. Several Vietnamese
communities have shown their capacity to engage in environmental issues when
such issues directly affect their health and general welfare. The two projects thus
draw from this milieu.
This section just completed identified Vietnam’s conservation and
participation context. The next section of this chapter draws from this foundation
and begins to present findings gathered during fieldwork. It further focuses on
describing and analyzing the specific natural, cultural, social, and policy influences
on community participation and learning in the two projects.
Overview: Natural, Cultural, Social, and Policy Influences
The following section responds to the first research question. This section
presents findings and analyses on what environmental, cultural, social and political
factors have shaped the two communities that are participating in IMA-V’s and
lUCN’s respective projects. The factors are diverse but each one identified plays a
role in learning and participation in the projects. In this section, each of these
factors are presented followed by an analysis of how each influenced participation
and learning in the two projects. The main factor that drew IUCN and IMA-V to the
two communities was environmental—the coral reefs. The environment was a
principal rationale for both projects as the reefs have both economic and scientific
values. Learning about these features was emphasized. This environment has
been affected, mostly negatively, by unmanaged fishing and aquaculture practices
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and un-enforced fishing regulations. The state’s policy of ‘doi moi’ and the United
States’ normalizing relations with Vietnam, beginning in 1995, added further
economic incentives to exploit coastal coral reef resources. Despite experiencing
resource declines firsthand, coastal communities have resisted changing fishing
and coastal resource exploitation practices. Global markets are driving this
process. Cultural Influences also have had an affect on participation and learning.
Hierarchical relationships and gender inequality based, in particular, in
Confucianism, but also in Buddhism and Ancestor Worship practices, tend to limit
who and how participation is practiced. State laws, represented in the new
commune-level laws, also contribute to framing participation in decision-making
processes. The Commune-level General Democracy Decree of 1998 promotes
participation and complements both projects’ goals of communities learning to
participate in the decision-making process. Social organizations further reflect how
the state has organized social life in Vietnam, and influence how participation and
learning was organized in the two projects. Other less influential factors were
migration to these areas after the reunification of the country. This increased the
population with people who did not have experience earning a livelihood from the
sea. Finally, the military base presence on the islands around Hon Mun MPA
influences development activities there.
The two stories of Trao Reef, and Hon Mun Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)
in Khanh Hoa Province, Vietnam are conflicts between rural coastal peoples and
their determination to improve their livelihoods through access, use and control
over nearby marine resources while conserving and managing those resources for
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future use. IMA-V facilitates the Trao Reef Marine Reserve project, while IUCN
directs the Hon Mun MPA project. Coral reefs are what drew IMA-V and IUCN to
these two respective sites. Coral reefs are the fundamental environmental feature
that drives IMA-V’s work, while IUCN has recently begun venturing into marine
conservation after decades long work on other land-based species issues. Coral
reefs have become emblematic of the global marine environmental crisis and a
rallying point for rehabilitating and conserving marine resources (ICLARM, 2004;
IMA, 2004). As marine resources have declined, marine scientists and ecologists
have pointed to coral reefs as ecosystems to sustain present and future marine
resource biodiversity. The starting point for this analysis, therefore, begins with
coral reefs, the natural features that attracted the NGOs, fishers and tourists to
Khanh Hoa Province, and the foundation for environmental learning and research
in the two projects.
Natural Features: Coral reefs draw environmental NGOs to Vietnam
Trao Reef and Hon Mun have special environmental features for Vietnam.
Khanh Hoa Province includes some of the best remaining coral reef ecosystems in
Vietnam. The Map below places these two project sites. Coral reef ecosystems
represent some of the greatest biodiversity on earth, representing just 0.25% of all
habitats yet yielding 25% of the earth’s total species. Furthermore, healthy coral
reefs can yield up to 37 tons/km2 of consumable marine species per year, while
dead reefs yield just 5 tons (RUBEC, 1998, cited in IUCN, 2000). In a country,
such as Vietnam, which is dependent upon the sea for 40% of its protein needs,
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conserving such biodiversity is critical to future socio-economic needs (IUCN,
2000a). Coral reefs, therefore, drew both NGOs to projects and learning about
coral reef biodiversity became a key component of non-formal and informal learning
programs and activities throughout the two projects. The maps below identify the
geographical location of the two projects/research sites.
Map 1: Vietnam’s Regions Map 2: Research Site - Khanh Hoa
Province
l i
UJCK
Hor*
MPA
MW
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Vietnam Tourism (2003) Vietnam Tourism (2003)
IMA-V’s Coral Reefs
IMA-V’s project takes place in Van Ninh District, Van Hung commune along
the southwestern zone of Van Phong Bay. The commune is home to about 15,000
people with about 80% of those depending on the sea for all or part of their income.
“Trao Reef is the centerpiece of Vietnam's first locally managed marine reserve
located about three kilometers off shore,” stated one IMA-V staff. The coral there is
known by locals as “a gift from god." The bay is home to not only to fringe reefs—
reefs that fringe the immediate shoreline, but also sea grass and mangroves.
There are 13 reefs in the bay and two, Trao Reef and Tuong Reef, are part of the
commune’s locally protected marine reserve. These complementary ecosystems
have sustained the coastal villages with abundant sea life until recently (IMA-V,
2001a), and the reefs offer protection against rough seas (IMA-Vietnam, 2001a;
WWF, 2000). Reef Tuong is a seasonal protected area and is close to the
shoreline. Trao Reef (or Ran Trao in the local dialect) is the core zone of IMA’s
initiated marine reserve. The core zone is the no-take zone, where no marine
species may be extracted. It encompasses about 40 hectares, 27 of which are its
core zone of significantly vibrant coral communites. Trao Reef located about two
kilometers due east of Xuan Ha village, and three kilometers east-southeast of
Xuan Tu village. It is about 750 meters long and also, 300-400 meters wide. Ran
Trao is dominated by scleractina corals including porites and diploastrea corals that
form patch reefs. These are generally slow growing corals, averaging
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approximately 1 cm/year according to local marine scientists from NIO. While the
reef has been home to numerous benthic species—sea urchins, sea cucumbers
and giant clams, there numbers have decreased dramatically since a previous
study in 1994. Coral reef fish present include damselfish (pomacentridae) and
wrasse (labridae). Other commercially prominent species—grouper, snapper and
sweetlips—are rarely if ever seen (IMA-V, 2001). In Van Hung commune, 60% of
the residents rely on the sea for a significant portion of their livelihood—most work
in aquaculture, farming lobster. Learning how to conserve and enhance these
resources, therefore, is a concern.
Hon Mun’ Coral Reefs
lUCN’s Hon Mun Pilot Project also evolves around coral reefs. However,
Hon Mun’s reefs are truly more remarkable, and economically and environmentally
more significant than Trao Reefs’. Located in Vinh Nguyen commune, which
bridges the city of Nha Trang to these military and tourist islands to its east, the
island of Hon Mun has the best coral reef in the MPA, and perhaps some of the
best in Vietnam (IUCN, 2000a). Preserving these reefs is as much an international
venture to “save a representative sample of coral reef ecosystems around the
world” (IUCN, 2000a), as it is to conserve and improve regional fisheries (Bo Thuy
San, 2003). The coral reefs of Hon Mun have been designated as such a site with
the most significant remaining coral reefs in Vietnam. “The coral is amazing...for
Vietnam,” said a foreign diver who just de-boarded his dive boat. “Most people
don’t come to Vietnam to dive,” said a local dive instructor, “but divers who come
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here are in for some nice diving.” The MPA encompasses nine islands immediately
off-shore from Nha Trang City, one of Vietnam’s major beach holiday destinations
in addition to being an area that has been known for rich fish and marine resources.
The project is named after Hon Mun Island—a non-populated island fringed
by some of Vietnam’s best remaining coral reefs according to IUCN surveys. The
Hon Mun MPA, Vietnam’s first nationally recognized marine protected area (MPA),
covers 130 km2. Coral reefs fringe each of the nine islands that are part of the
MPA. Hon Mun Island represents the core zone has some of the better coral in the
MPA and has become a favorite site of internationally run scuba diving companies.
However some of the more diverse reefs are located to the north and east of Hon
Tre. Other islands adjacent to the MPA, Hon Mieu, Hon Mot and Hon Tam, for
example, also have significantly diverse coral reefs in good condition that are not
part of the core zone. According to a recent study completed by NIO, these reefs
have been havens for 350 species of reef building scleractinian corals representing
about 40% of coral species world wide. 220 species of demersal fishes, 18 species
of echinoderms and 62 species of algae including sea grass are also present.
Experts from the NIO explained that “these species compose four distinct coral reef
ecosystem communities dependent upon prevailing environmental conditions.” This
represents one of Vietnam’s most diverse marine eco-systems.
However, numerous commercial species, such as grouper, snapper and
other edible mollusks have been fished almost to extinction in this area. Some Hon
Mun fishers added, “We recognize that fish stocks have decreased about 50% in
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the last eight years.” Community members, therefore, have learned about
environmental conditions from their experiences on the sea.
The Reefs, Community Participation and Learning
For both projects, the coral reefs are the foundation for their overall
activities to facilitate community learning and participation in the protection and
enhancement of these marine resources. In the case of IMA and the Van Hung
communities, the coral reefs and the marine reserve are understood as worth
rehabilitating and conserving to improve fisheries and to protect and enhance
livelihoods. The main non-formal and informal learning activities of the project
aimed to protect and rehabilitate this ecosystem. Specifically, both projects’ marine
biodiversity learning programs and ongoing marine research draw from this context.
Some of the research involves community members’ participation and leaning,
such as in monitoring underwater changes and in piloting mariculture.
Nonetheless, their experiences of having to work harder and longer to catch fish
have yet to result in critical or transformative practices. Most believe that the
resources are there to be exploited, given access to better technology.
In the case of IUCN, the project’s aims center on protecting a representative
sample of coral reef biodiversity within this MPA. The project involved the
communities in the MPA, as well as the general public from the surrounding area in
awareness-raising and marine biodiversity learning programs publicize the variety
and extent of this unique ecosystem in Vietnam’s waters. A main task of the
project is to enforce a “no take zone” around Hon Mun, where the best corals are
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located. A no take zone should restore fish species and allow the coral that has
been damaged to regenerate. From the project's perspective, the MPA
communities were to learn and participate in the project as the project prescribed
and planned.
The coral reefs are home to one species that has made quite a few people
in both Van Hung and the Hon Mun MPA wealthy, by Vietnamese standards. That
one species is lobster. The next section explains why villagers joined a market
driven foray to capture and cultivate wild lobster and other mariculture species such
as tiger shrimp without a regard for coral and mangrove ecosystems.
Economic Influences
The next section introduces the principle economic influences on
participation and learning in the two projects. First, the lifting of the United States'
embargo in 1995 opened Vietnamese access to multilateral finance and credit
resources that they did not have access to before. Furthermore, it allowed
Vietnamese additional access to international markets that they had begun to trade
with in the late 1980’s after the policy of ‘doi-moi’ or economic renovation. Access
to global capital and trade facilitated the development of lobster and shrimp
farming, which has contributed to the near decimation of coral reefs and mangrove
forests in the in Khanh Hoa province. Hon Mun’s reefs are the only reefs that
remain outstanding. Hon Mun’s reefs, in particular, and the coastal scenic beauty
in the province, in general, have also drawn an increasing number of tourists.
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These economic influences also affect villagers’ interests in participation, and in
what they want to learn in the two projects.
1995: The United States’ Embargo Ends
The lifting of the United State’s trade and finance embargo, which had been
enforced for all of Vietnam since its reunification in 1975 and continuing until 1995,
contributed to the growth of aquaculture, on one hand, and the destruction of coral
reefs and associated ecosystems such as mangroves and sea grass, on the other
hand. At the time of Vietnam’s reunification in 1975, the United States initiated a
trade and financial embargo on Vietnam that only ended in 1994. This limited some
bilateral and most multilateral aid. Multilateral financial organizations such as the
World Bank and the Asian Development Bank did not get involved in Vietnam’s
development until 1995, when then United States’ President Clinton, authorized
the end of the economic embargo. During that time, economies in Southeast Asia,
Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong, in particular, were
flourishing and grew at consistently high rates of well-over 6%/annum (World Bank,
2000). As bilateral and multilateral aid began flowing into Vietnam, money became
available for those already with some capital to invest in export related business.
This well-served the state’s doi moi policy that encouraged households to pursue
market oriented production activities and export related income generating
activities. Beginning in the mid-1990s, with the state gaining access to a larger
diversity and quantity of international funds, it approved a variety of credit programs
funded through the state by the Bank for the Poor and the Bank for Agriculture and
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Rural Development. Households, as the basic economic unit in Vietnam (Kerkvliet,
1995b) have had access to loans ranging from less than $100 USD to close to
$700 USD/year. Property (typically in the name of males) gives households access
to loan with their property as collateral. This also increased income for the Ministry
of Agriculture and Rural Development, which manages on of the banks with lending
programs in rural area, as well as for the Ministry of Fisheries, which has seen its
sector of the economy expand with increasing profits from aquaculture (Bo Thuy
San, 2003).
Two marine activities that thrived were lobster and shrimp farming for
export. These activities found a home in Van Ninh District. Sited by Van Phong
Bay, shrimp and lobster were indigenous to the area and well suited for
exploitation. As first banks, and then villagers, found newly available funds to
access, villagers informally and incidentally learned about the profits of lobster and
shrimp farming, and their coastal communities and coastal environment began a
seemingly irreversible change. Poor rice farmers became rich within a year of
harvesting and selling shrimp and lobster. The reason for the job change was that
shrimp farming and lobster culturing became incredibly profitable vis-a-vis rice
farming. Those nearby countries that were the so-called economic tigers of East
and Southeast Asia in the 1980s through the mid-1990s were the markets for
Vietnamese exports of tiger shrimp and lobster.
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Lobster Farming
Wherever one goes in Khanh Hoa province, one is never far from the sea
and some of the most productive aquaculture grounds in Vietnam. Khanh Hoa
province is the leading cultivators of spiny lobster and one of the leaders in shrimp
due to its coral reef, sea grass and mangrove ecosystems. These days, lobster is
king. Lobster culturing began in the province in 1992 and Van Ninh has some of
the highest percentages of lobster raised per household in Vietnam. According to
recent scientific studies by the Nha Trang Institute of Oceanography (NIO), there
are over 12,000 lobster cages in Khanh Hoa province with most in Cam Ranh
district and Van Ninh District. Van Ninh is the site of IMA-V’s project. The numbers
are also increasing in the Hon Mun MPA (lUCN’s project). The reef ecosystems
that support lobsters are under threat from the lack of regulation of these economic
activities (IMA-V, 2001b), yet it is precisely these ecosystems that are contributing
to both individuals’ and communities’ growing prosperity. IMA-V, in fact suggests
that “...if the coral resources are well managed and protected...then lobster and
other cage culture will grow hand in hand with maintaining the fisheries in the area,
the socio-economic situation and peoples living conditions will be enhanced...”
(IMA-V, 2001a). Thus, establishing the marine reserve is designed to have a direct
relationship with improving the economic conditions.
At both project sites, farming lobster is a key economic activity—more so in
Van Hung, but increasingly so in the Hon Mun area. In Van Hung, about 60% of
the villagers are involved in some way in farming lobster. In Hon Mun, it is about
30%. This includes catching lobster fingerlings, which can bring in 75,000
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VND$/fry, as well as raising lobsters in cages to market size, where profit averages
close to 1,500 USD$ year, a significant income in rural Vietnam. Some have only
two cages, but others have up to one hundred. The average is six per household.
Lobsters, in fact, thrive precisely in the coral reefs, sea grass and mangrove
habitats that are part of Trao Reef and Hon Mun MPAs (Phuong Giang Hai, 2002).
From an environmental perspective, lobster culturing, therefore, depends on
healthy and sustainable coral reef ecosystems. Lobster culturing is not only
popular with those who live within the MPAs, but also with those who live nearby,
have the necessary capital, and are willing to travel by automobile and boat to
reach their lobster farming cages. In fact, close to 50% of the cages are owned by
people outside of the villages in the respective projects. Almost every household
would like to be growing lobsters because of the profit. Even so, only people with
access to at least 20 million VND$ (about $13,000 USD) can make an initial
investment that is economically worthwhile, according to NIO scientists and IMA-V
staff. A lobster’s growing cycle is 18 months to two years, making additional IG
activities necessary, for the first several years, until harvesting can be spaced over
time. Most lobsters are sold to middle-men, who make additional profit, before
being sold to restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City or further abroad to Taiwan, Hong
Kong and China (IMA-V, 2001a).
increasing aquaculture, such as lobster farming, may temporarily address
economic and social issues for many who used to depend on fishing to make a
living, but it also increases demands on the environment. Some NIO scientists
reported that lobster fingerlings (juvenile lobsters) cannot be raised in nurseries, so
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ail are taken from the wild. This disrupts natural ecosystems that both projects are
trying to protect. When raised in cages, females are separated from males further
limiting natural procreation. Second, lobsters are fed with so called trash fish—fish
that is not usually sold for human consumption. This includes many species,
including reef fish, mollusks and crustaceans that are continually being exploited for
4-5000 VND/kilo. This is primarily the work of poor fishers and women to use
whatever methods—often illegal and environmentally harmful ones. Some
fishermen have practiced cyanide and dynamite fishing that damages the coral
ecosystem for decades if not longer (IMA-V, 2001a). Other fishermen use 3-
layered nets that are impervious to anything escaping from its enclosure, and still
others use strong light at night to catch fish that previously was of no economic
value. The strong light attracts fish making it easier to catch. It should be noted
that these techniques are also used to catch commercially valuable fish. Thirdly,
because the lobsters are fed with trash fish, these fish are being removed from the
ecosystem and the food chain. In addition, much of the uneaten debris from shells
and waste add to sediment beneath the lobster cages. This pollutes the water and
raises the floor of the sea causing changes in the substrate contributing to the
temporary destruction of benthic species (mollusks) in the cage area (IMA-V,
2002a).
“People want to grow lobsters and will do so any way they can,” explained
a local official. He himself was running out to check on his lobster cages the
morning I spoke with him. Perhaps the best incidental learning resulted from a
large lobster kill-off in Van Hung in 2001, when the shrimp farmers unwittingly
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released chemically-laden shrimp pond water into the bay killing approximately
6000 lobster. This set the context for a struggle between lobster and shrimp
farmers. Lobster farming proved more economically viable so the lobster farmers
have won this struggle. Shrimp farming has been successful in the past, however,
and it still persists, contributing both to IG activities for some, while causing further
environmental problems because, according to IMA-V staff, “Growers do not raise
shrimp in an environmentally friendly way.” The most obvious environmental
problems are the loss of mangrove forests.
Mangroves Loss
The mangrove lined shoreline and coastal shoreline of Van Ninh District, in
general and the shores of Van Hung, in particular has provided excellent habitat for
shrimp farming, until recently. Black Tiger shrimp aquaculture began in the north of
Vietnam around 1973 with Japanese assistance. Through the 1970’s and 80’s this
was further assisted through UNDP and FAO projects in shrimp hatcheries.
Though original trials failed, the technology was adapted on a smaller scale and
proved successful (IMA, 2001b). In the 1990’s Black Tiger shrimp culture explode,
mostly in the Mekong, but also in areas rich in indigenous lobster and shrimp such
as Khanh Hoa Province. At that time approximately 70,000 tons were harvested.
Like other coastal communities in Vietnam, Van Hung joined this shrimp
industry on a household by household basis. “We first took shrimp from the wild,
but now we buy hatchery shrimp and raising them in above tidal areas i.e. -
mangrove areas just above coastal areas,” said a Van Hung villager. “By 2001,
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shrimp culturing was one of the most attractive coastal enterprises for raising
juveniles and then selling them for further fattening, 155,000 tons were marketed,”
according to IMA-V staff. Poorer households raise wild shrimp in tidal areas, while
wealthier households had the financial ability to develop mangrove areas, pump
water and use chemical feeds and disease killers. The model of the richer
households dominates in Vietnam but because of high capital investment of close
to 2000 USD$, residents in rural coastal villages are unlikely to have the capital or
be able to secure the financing. Nevertheless, despite investment, prices for
shrimp, on average, have declined from 160,000 VND$/kilo to about 80,000d-
90,000 VND$/kilo (equivalent to less than $6 USD/kilo)
Furthermore, most Black Tiger shrimp farmers over-reliance on chemicals
to combat diseases has incidentally affected nearby coastal waters. Unawares of
the effects of the chemicals, most shrimp farmers have released water from the
ponds directly into the sea. This has killed over 6000 lobsters in Van Hung
Commune, recently. In addition, people, generally, “women, unawares of the
chemical entering the water, gather shellfish in areas where chemicals have been
released and have suffered acute illnesses as a result, according to the Van Hung
Women’s Union. The conflicts between the lobster culturists and shrimp farmers
have caused social conflicts in the communities.
As a result of declining markets and a community struggle of lobster vis-a-
vis shrimp farming, shrimp farming has largely disappeared from the Van Hung
area. Shrimp farmers have tended to decimate coastal mangroves—the natural
nurseries of numerous coastal species and barriers against monsoons. According
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to recent provincial reports, the result has been continued loss of wild coastal
species and increased salinity and storm damage further inland. Areas adjacent to
Trao Reef felt the brunt of recent typhoon to the tune of 1 billion VND$ according to
local media sources. There are efforts to improve this enterprise however. A
Swedish NGO has begun promoting ecologically friendly shrimp farming and its
shrimp are getting a higher price in the markets (IMA-V, 2002a). However, what
was once touted as a wealth-maker has steadily declined in Van Hung, as market
prices have declined and as disease issues have increase. People’s experience
shrimp farming, through success and failure, through self-interest and conflict, has
provided a wealth of learning. “Few [Van Hung residents] now grow shrimp and
those that do, are using appropriate technology and limiting chemical inputs,”
stated a Van Hung official.
The coastal villages in the Hon Mun MPA do not have a suitable
environment for such shrimp-raising in general, but a few villagers do participate in
raising shrimp directly in tidal waters in cages, similar to lobsters. They catch
shrimp juveniles directly from the sea. “...after 18 months of MPA regulation
enforcement, there has been an abundance of shrimp in the Bich Dam and Dam
Bay areas...we’re raising shrimp in the cages just like the lobsters, several villagers
reported.
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Tourism
While the resources of the sea are the main interest of local villagers in Van
Hung and around Hon Mun that depend on those resources for their livelihood, for
others, mostly from outside the fishing villages, tourism is the main reason to
protect the coral ecosystems. It too brings both dollars and damage. There is little
of interest for tourists in Van Hung, yet IMA-V and the local community is working
on some community-based tourism ideas, “to experience life in a fishing village,” a
villager said. Van Hung’s tourist potential remains to be seen. In contrast, a major
factor in the Hon Mun MPA Project is tourism. Tourism is big in the Hon Mun
Island MPA—its tropical waters and coral reefs are a draw for Vietnamese and
foreign tourists. Last year, the Department of Tourism in Nha Trang reported that
close to 350,000 tourists visited Nha Trang and many also visited the islands on a
day long tour, which is a common tourist activity. Summer months of June, July
and August are popular with Vietnamese tourists, who make up about 65% of the
total at this time. Foreign tourists come year round with a prevalence of
backpackers, low budget tourists and divers, who can extend stays in Vietnam
living for as little as $5 to $10 USD/day. Nha Trang’s Department of Tourism
reports these as primarily Europeans and Australians.
The government hopes to increase luxury and international tourist numbers
in Nha Trang and environs to three million within the next ten years. New hotels
are being built—a four star resort just opened on Hon Tre, which caused a village
of several hundred people, Bai Tru on Hon Tre’s North West, to be relocated to
another part of the island. Many villagers had hoped to work for the tourist resort
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but, “we need educated staff,” asserted the resort’s operation manages. “Some
villagers were employed as laborers during the projects constructions phase, and
we found them unreliable,” he added. A Russian funded resort is also scheduled to
open in late 2004. However, neither of these developments has reached out to
involve fishing villagers in their development process or plans.
Many from the island communities like the tourists, but the villages receive
little or no benefit yet. “We would like to have tourism here,” said many residents in
the outer villages. However, there is not a real tourist draw to the villages
themselves. A staff member said, “The villages are fairly dirty and not all that
interesting places to hang out. There are no specific cultural activities outside of
one or two Whale Festivals, no historically interesting sites, and very few villagers
have experience in offering hospitality or tourism services. Walking the shores and
pathways in each village, plastic bags, papers and occasional scraps of food can
be seen in various quantities. Dogs and chickens also run freely. In the meantime,
the MPA Authority, which works with the Project, has proposed its own tourist
activities that compete with other private and state tourism operators.
In addition to resort tourism, dive tourism is a big business in Nha Trang. “It
is the best dive center in Vietnam,” claimed several ex-pat dive center operators.
There are six dive centers with five being co-owned and run by foreigners. “We are
totally in favor of the MPA being set up and having a user fee,” said one of the dive
operators. “When the coral is good and the fish return to the reefs, our business
should be even better,” he added. The waters around Hon Mun, where divers and
snorkelers go, are crystal clear to depths of 15 meters or more much of the year,
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which makes Hon Mun a diving paradise. “A problem is with the new divers we
train...many can’t move too well...they’re beginners...and they often step on and
break the coral...some even try to take home souvenirs,” a dive staff explained.
“We try to educate and monitor the divers, but we can’t watch and help everybody
all the time,” he added. In places with longer histories of coral reef conservation,
excessive diving and tourism has been an issue. Locals are usually the last to
benefit from any tourist development (La Vina, 2001), and this seems to be the
present and future scenario in the Hon Mun Project.
Economic Influences on Community Participation and Learning
As Vietnam opened itself to international markets and globalized finance, it
is evident that the coastal environment in these two communities suffered;
however, at the same time some community members and their households
prospered, increasing incomes began to drive a domestic tourist industry.
Vietnam’s commercial opening also coincided with diplomatic openings that have
served to increase tourist interest as well. However, many have not benefited,
such as simple fishers, who were dependent on unfettered access to coastal
resources. Many have been excluded from participation in the economic changes
because they lack access to information, decision-making and capital. Those that
have participated in the new economy already had several years experience
accessing and benefiting from credit programs and in producing lobster and shrimp
for the market economy. With access to credit, many community members at both
project sites said that “We are better off today.”
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However, economic gains have been at the expense of the environment.
Community members have lacked training in environmentally-friendiy mariculture
techniques, and market incentives encourage intensive and excessive lobster
farming. Furthermore, most community members have only learned basic
techniques, informally, from each other. It has been crises that have caused the
most learning. Economically-caused environmental dilemmas, such as shrimp
farmers releasing chemicals into the bay, and lobster farmers overcrowding their
lobster cages that have contributed to lobster kill-offs and increasing disease
respectively. Furthermore, global shrimp prices have declined significantly as
corporations have gained further control of the market, making it marginally
profitable for small community growers.
While fishing communities have continued to rely on coastal resources for
their economic wealth, others, such as Vietnamese with more access to information
and decision-making in the principal provincial town of Nha Trang or Ho Chi Minh
City, and international individuals and corporations have begun to exploit Khanh
Hoa’s aesthetic environmental wealth for tourism. Local communities have almost
been totally excluded from information and policy-making on tourism, and therefore,
have not benefited from tourism economic activities. Participating in the fisheries
economy seems like the only available option for fishing communities and their
non-formal, informal and incidental learning has revolved around this economic
activity, even as this resource seems to be in rapid decline.
This completes a section on natural and market influences on coastal
resources in Khanh Hoa Province. The coral reef ecosystem has provided
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resources for fishing and aquaculture in addition to species to be researched.
Furthermore, its beauty is a draw for tourism. These factors attracted the two
projects to the area, and the non-formal and informal learning programs that will be
discussed in Chapter 5, explain and analyze this relationship. The next section
looks at the influences of culture, gender and knowledge on first, who participates
in coastal resource management, and second, on how people participate in earning
in the project
Cultural Influences
This section explains the cultural influences on participation and learning in
the project. In Vietnam, there is a dominant culture of male hierarchy that has been
created through ideologies and practices of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Ancestor
Worship. While there are arguments about culture vis-a-vis environmental ethic, for
example, is Confucianism or Buddhism a more or less environmentally friendly?
This research did not identify anything credible along this line during participant
observations or interviews. The cultural affects are more in how the projects are
run by the Vietnamese and how the NGOs, participation and learning are seen by
the villagers. Furthermore, these affects pervade who participates—men or
women, older people or younger people, the participants’ access to information and
learning, how they participate and how they learn, and to what extent their agency
remains the same or changes.
A Culture of Hierarchy: Confucianism, Buddhism, and Ancestor Worship
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Culturally, Confucianism has more than 2000 year history in Vietnam and
has a strong influence on maintaining paternalistic and male oriented hierarchical
relationships that are particularly identifiable in family relationships in Vietnam
(O’Harrow, 1995), but which are also evident in State-village relationships with the
state acting as a kind of “supra father figure” (Jamieson, 1995, p. 243). This is
complemented by Buddhist hierarchy, which has an even longer history in Vietnam
than Confucianism, but which was subsumed under Confucianism as, first the
Chinese colonizers, and later, individual Vietnamese emperors, used Confucianism
to create political and social order (Jamieson, 1993). Buddhism is embedded in
institutional structures -i.e.—Buddhism is supported by a hierarchy of priests.
These two hierarchical systems, Confucianism and Buddhism, support current state
dominated planning that is still pervasive in Vietnam’s one political party system
(O’Harrow, 1995). Ancestor worship is a separate sphere of Vietnamese spiritual
life, and is more in tune with nature’s cycles and is based in the family and spiritual
world. However, it also maintains a hierarchy in that ancestors are more revered
and honored than present generations, and it also typically honors the male over
the female. Therefore, such hierarchical practices suggest that the state, experts
and the NGOs would dominate over the local communities, limiting participation of
villagers overall, and women in particular.
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Cultural Practices and Gender Influences
The cultural practices of Confucianism and ancestor worship also have an
effect on gender roles in the project. Gender plays a differentiating role in both
communities. Despite influences from various indigenous, as well as western and
communist philosophies that aimed to create equality between men and women,
millennia old Confucian traditions also have an influence on gendered roles in
coastal resource exploitation and management (Desai, 2000; ADB, 2002). This
affects who participates and controls resources within the project, and causes
gender imbalances that favor men over women.
In all but the higher levels of Vietnamese society, men and women have
worked side by side. The agricultural basis of society demanded it for centuries.
Traditional village society also provided many opportunities for women to get
together in clubs and associations based on similar interests. These were
“generally egalitarian, emphasizing cooperation and solidarity” (Jamieson, 1993, p.
33). However, because of dominating Confucian influences, women have generally
been considered less then men. Boys went to school; girls stayed home. A girl
would marry off into another family and thus, was worth less. These influences
persist today (ADB, 2002; Fahey, 1998; Jamieson, 1993). Perhaps it is the
Confucian traditions that make women’s access to health and education facilities,
credit, land and formal employment opportunities less equal than men’s (ADB,
2002). Men, largely own property and are the heads of households making men
eligible for credit and the buying and selling of property. How policy is practiced on
a daily basis still limits women’s opportunities to exercise this power. Some widows
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own property, for example, but if they have a son, tradition may require the property
be put in his name (ADB, 2002). This tends to be stronger in rural areas where the
two projects took place.
Officially, Vietnam does have a high percentage of women in its National
Assembly (26%); however fewer are in important positions in the Communist Party,
such as the Politburo, where there is one women member, and the Central
Committee, and none head ministries that control economic resources (ADB,
2002). At the institutional level, women’s issues are restricted, to a large degree, to
a voice through the Women’s Union (Fahey, 1998), and research on women’s
issues falls mainly to an under funded Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences,
Institute for Family and Gender Studies (ADB, 2002). This has implications for
women taking leadership roles in both projects.
In Vietnam, the household is thought of as one important foundation of the
society (Fahey, 1998). This is where gender roles show equity, if not equality.
However, it is also the basis of Confucian culture where men rule over women and
children (Jamieson, 1993). Traditionally, men ruled public affairs, while women
managed the family’s resources (O’Harrow, 1995). in learning, the teacher (usually
male, but not always) is supposed to have a high level of knowledge—and is
respected as such. Confucianism stresses the knowledge of men, elders and
experts, almost always a mutually exclusive group (ADB, 2002). Therefore, women
tend to have homebound duties and supplement men’s work, while men work
outside in the community and away from home. Women are supposed to
“conserve and use wisely the household resources, being thrifty and industrious”
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(Jamieson, 1993, p. 27). Some say that women rule at home by controlling the
household pocketbook and by negotiating with her husband; however, few
anecdotal or empirical studies support that this location of gender equity transfers
over into the public arena (ADB, 2002). “Even though we talk about how to spend
our resources, my husband has the final say,” added one middle-aged woman
villager, and other agreed at a recent gender workshop in the IMA project.
Decisions on public goods, such as coastal resources get made by men,
who control access and get direct benefits from these resources. Development
and conservation are mostly public sphere activities, and therefore, men’s activities
according to Confucian practices. In rural areas where these projects take place,
gender disparities tend to be greater because of intense competition for access and
control over diminishing natural resources. Coastal resource exploitation and
management, therefore, is something that men experience directly, and seek to
control and benefit from directly. “Women play a supporting role—assisting men in
their coastal resource exploitation and management, and perhaps offering
occasional advice or differing points of view,” a women participant in the gender
workshop at Trao Reef explained. There are, also, taboos against women going to
sea, for example, during their menstrual periods it is suppose to bring bad luck
(Fahey, 1998). Coastal resource management, thus, also affirms men’s
advantages over women in participating and decision-making on coastal resources.
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Cultural Influences and Nature
Cultural influences also suggest that people and nature have a
complementary relationship, though, this relationship favors humankind in a
hierarchy vis-a-vis other beings. An example is illustrated through a practice of
ancestor worship during Vietnamese New Year, Tet. One household ritual revolves
around saving the live of a fish, but it has the purpose of “communicating with one’s
ancestors” (Nguyen Van Huy, Nguyen Anh Ngoc, Nguyen Huy Hong & Nguyen
Trung Dung, 2003, p.82). On the 23rd day of the 12th lunar month, a family buys
three live fish from the market. A villager from Van Hung explained, “We bring the
fish home and place it on the altar. We put other things on the family alter too in
groups of threes. My dad then tells the ancestors about our family’s year. We burn
incense and then we bring the carp out to the sea and set them free.” The fish
represent the family’s messengers as it swims to [water] heaven to tell the family’s
ancestors about how life has improved over the past year—so that the ancestors
will be happy. Such practices hint at environmental ethics, but represented as
human or social ecology rather than deep ecology. People are at the center of
environmental relationships in social ecology whereas deep ecology stresses the
symbiotic relationship of all life (Bullis, 1996).
However, Buddhism and ancestor worship also were cultural practices that
facilitated the creation of village level social organizations that maintained social
order and that encouraged mutual assistance neighborhood associations and
networks (Jamieson, 1993). This is exemplified in the local whale festivals that
have Buddhist and Ancestor Worship traits. In the two projects, some indication of
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spiritual relationship to natural resource can be seen in the whale festivals, which
honor whales that beached on the villages shore or became entangled in its fishers’
nets. The whale represents a god-like status of the villager’s ancestors. Sighting a
whale is known to bring good luck, since a whale was reported to have saved
Emperor Gia Long in the early 1800’s. The villages “...care for these whales as
they would a person, giving the dead whale human burial rites” (Nguyen Van Huy,
2003, p. 229). When the whale dies, the community builds a small altar for the
whale with three bays, the central one holding the whale’s bones and spirit. Only
men can enter it. “Men do the fishing so men should honor the whales,” a fisher
explained. In the area around the whale alter, we cannot cut down the trees or
leave any trash,” explained one of the village youth. These festivals are common in
the central region of Vietnam as people have depended upon the bounty of the sea,
more than the land, to sustain them. During the festival the whale’s spirit is prayed
to so that the village may have peace and prosperity (prosperous fishing) for the
villagers. Groups of men and women also sing songs, called Cheo, to comfort the
soul of the whale and fishermen lost at sea (Hon Mun MPA Newsletter, 2003).
“Many of us light incense to the whale before setting out at night to fish on the sea,”
added a village fisher. I was able to participate in one of these festivals at Hon Mot
in the Hon Mun MPA in June, 2003. Honoring the deceased whale as an ancestor
is supposed to bring good fishing to the villagers. People, then, can have a
relationship with the environment that is mutually beneficial, when they care for that
relationship. However, nature is seen as serving people and not visa-versa.
Furthermore, men are the medium of contact with nature, in this case.
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Cultural Influences: Limitations on participation and learning
Despite the Buddhist and Ancestor Worship practices that indicate the
social associations and affinity for the environment that also include more equitable
gender relationships, most cultural practice reinforce hierarchy, male dominance
and the prescriptive order of social life. While the three identified ideologies
compete and complement each other in social interactions, Confucian values
based on male hierarchy seem to have the most influence on state-village, men-
women relations. The rural location, distant from the centers of institutional power,
and gender, therefore are limiting factors, not only for the general community, but
moreover, for women participating in coastal resource management projects and
programs. Participation, learning and agency in ICD projects, thus has to confront
these initial cultural factors that emphasize institutional control, men over women,
prescriptive learning and limited change. Confucianism impacts learning, decision
making and agency even though there are other considerations on how
Vietnamese traditions affect social-environmental interactions.
While the men, to a large extent, shape and transform their marine
environments, women are understood to play a supporting role. While legal
practices and some Buddhist traditions favor gender equity, if not outright equality,
day-to-day social and cultural practices limit women’s ownership over property and
production and access to and control over knowledge, information and decision
making. Women attend school significantly fewer years than men, and have less
access to non-formal training programs (ADB, 2002). Furthermore, cultural taboos
persist in limiting women’s participation in working on the sea. Women are more
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likely to be part of the informal economy and have some access to informal and
incidental learning, while the men have more access to both non-formal and
learning. Men, thus have access to learning what is considered normative
knowledge, while women do not. These are significant factors when planning a
non-formal or informal learning program that is to include women as equally as
men.
These ideologies affect village-state relationships and people’s perceptions
of their capacity to interact with their local government, and moreover, limit women.
However, Buddhism and ancestor worship also were cultural practices that had
facilitated the creation of village level social organizations that maintained social
order and that encouraged mutual assistance neighborhood associations and
networks, some of which indicated gender equity (Jamieson, 1993). Such village
associations may indicate a more gender equitable community-based alternative to
Confucianism. Furthermore, specific cultural practices that honor aquatic life during
the Tet celebrations and at whale festivals indicate a complementary relationship
between some cultural practices an nature. There are, then, alternative cultural
influences that support not only local authority, and gender equitable community
decision-making, but also harmonious development. These alternatives are
cultural features that ICD projects can adapt and adopt to contest the institutional
and hierarchical nature of economic practices and knowledge creation in Vietnam.
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Institutions and Knowledge Creation
This section discusses the impact of local marine focused institutions, the
National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), the University of Fisheries (UoF) and the
Research in Aquaculture Station #3 (RIA3). These three institutions contribute
research, and conduct training programs as part of the two projects. Furthermore,
the scientific and technical knowledge that these institutions create is seen as
primary to how the two projects make program decisions about protecting the
marine environment. In addition, in IMA-V’s project, some staff are on loan to the
project from the Institute of Fisheries and Economic Planning (IFEP). Their
institutional background and economic focus influence some of the approaches
they suggest in the project. Overall, these institutional influences affect the
creation, access and application of knowledge and how that knowledge is used in
making decisions in the two projects.
Marine Institutions
The National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), the University of Fisheries
(UoF) and the Research in Aquaculture Station #3 (RIA3) contribute to both
projects’ agendas, in particular, through marine species monitoring and
aquaculture. Each is involved in training and research in both projects. All three
are agencies within the Ministry of Fisheries further indicating that ministry’s
influence on the two projects.
The NIO conducts studies mainly in Khanh Hoa and the south-central
Vietnam region, but also in other parts of Vietnam. According to one of its
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directors, “The Institute has an interest in several types of research, but mostly on
systems issues such as global warming and climate change these
days...previously, it conducted research on aquaculture, but that is mostly done by
the RIA’s (Research Institutes on Aquaculture).” The NIO has provided
researchers for the two projects, and has collaborated on scientific surveys. Their
scientists have presented lectures and organized workshops for officials, staff and
community members, and they have offered in-kind support. Some of their major
contributions to the two projects were investigating and publishing results of
underwater surveys for the two projects.
The two projects also benefit from relationships with the University of
Fisheries. Several instructors from the University have or do work for lUCN’s Hon
Mun Project. Some of the graduate students have also been asked to participate in
research on IMA-V’s Trao Reef Project. The University is one of two in the country
that specializes in fisheries and marine issues, and on aquaculture, in particular.
Their curriculum is now expanding into marine biodiversity.
A third institution is the Research institute for Aquaculture (RIA) #3, which is
located in the province. This institute further specializes in aquaculture, not in the
scientific research sense, as NIO does, but for economic results. New species are
piloted and evaluated, but the focus is usually not on environmental concerns, but
on economic ones. For example, over the past few years, sweet snails had proved
to be an economically viable species for aquaculture and RIA #3 promoted them.
However, like the lobster, raising these snails has had detrimental environmental
effects as feeding the snails and its refuse further pollutes the water.
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An example of RIA #3’s influence on the villages was evident at a recent
extension program. “Villagers tend to look towards these institutes as places of
expertise and expect they will gain knowledge by listening to these scientists,”
explained aquaculture workshop participants in Van Hung. At the training session,
RIA staff revealed finding of a recent study that indicated the environmental
damage of sweet snails. “We know that sweet snail isn’t good any more,” said a
Van Hung villager. “We won’t grow them anymore...but lobster is still OK. The
economic impact of lobster is definitely more significant than for sweet snail. This
may be another reason for teaching villagers to cease raising sweet snail and focus
on lobster instead.
These science and research institutes are important not only for the two
projects but also for the villagers. Each provides scientific research based
knowledge from which the two projects and villagers can make informed decisions.
Despite learning from these experts, villages also ignore some of the institutes’
findings and recommendations. For example, the institutes have suggested
decreasing lobster farming. The response from villagers has been “We know that
lobster farming is not sustainable, but how else can we make money right now.”
Outside consultants suggest that the research institutes are not necessarily
interested in a research agenda focusing on marine ecology or ecological
aquaculture. Staff at the institutes indicated that their research was partially driven
by funding, “just like in your country,” they said.
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Knowledge Creation
In both projects, it was evident that institutions and scientific knowledge,
and especially scientific knowledge that promotes production, is favored over local,
experiential knowledge. The project’s and villagers’ understanding of knowledge
draws not only from Confucian ethic, but also from Soviet communist ideology,
which has also had influence on how knowledge is created and viewed in Vietnam.
The people were taught to respect the words of the mandarin’s (Jamieson, 1993;
Kerkviiet, 1995b). In more contemporary times, state documents pertinent for this
study, the Law of Environmental Protection (1993), the Biodiversity Action Plan
(1995), and IMA-V’s (2001a) and lUCN’s (2000a) main project documents indicate
the principle position of science and technology in finding solutions to social
problems. Some documents specifically refer to Marxism and the Soviet Union’s
prior approaches to scientific and technological achievement. Scientific knowledge
is viewed as at the top of the hierarchy while local, experiential knowledge is
viewed as “backward”. Formal education and a scientific education are most
valued,” explained several staff.
Overall, this is similar to most states around the world. The Vietnamese
government has a strong belief that science and technology can resolve any
problem, including environmental problems. The Law on Environmental
Protection—1993 confers much of the environmental protection responsibilities to
the Ministry of Science and Technology. It further states that environmental
problems can be solved through the application of “science and technological
advances, scientific research and clean technology (Articles 4, 5, 11) (Law on
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Environmental Protection, 1993). IMA-V’s organizational documents also refer to
“conservation based on good science” (IMA-V, 2001a). IUCN and its government
collaborators, the Ministry of Fisheries and the province’s Department of Fisheries,
also emphasize the central role of expert-led science in protecting endangered
ecosystems (IUCN, 2000).
Institutions and Knowledge Creation Affect Participation and Learning
The NIO, UoF, RIA #3 in addition to IFEP, largely control the production of
what is considered knowledge in both projects vis-a-vis community experiential
knowledge. This limited community access to creating knowledge and decision
making. Since knowledge is considered what expert, scientific epistemological
community create, community members further learn that expert knowledge has
more weight than their own experiences. Much of the learning that community
members do in the project, therefore, is at the conceptual level and adds little
capacity for transformative learning or agency. Out at the project sites, the favoring
of expert knowledge over indigenous experience can be observed on an almost
daily basis. Project staff, hired institutional researchers and ex-patriot consultants
arrive on site. They led, directed and often made immediate decisions on what was
to be done. Villagers, even with their own contradictory experiential knowledge—
with their own experiential success aquaculture or fishing—generally waited for the
research and technical specialists to give them information, believing expert
knowledge to be better than their own learning experiences, before proceeding on
a new aquaculture activity.
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The next section introduces the policies that affect villagers’ economic
activities and their right to participate in making decisions on local coastal resource
issues. This is where the hierarchy of institutionally constructed and decreed
policies meets the reality of economic and policy implementation on a day-to-day
basis at the local level. First fishing regulations will be explained. A presentation of
the General Democracy Decree/1998 follows.
Policies: Fishing Regulations and the General Democracy Decree/1998
Government policies, such as the fishing regulations, the commune
democracy law, and environmental laws have an affect on Vietnam’s coastal
environment and on how citizens can participate in that policy development,
implementation and practice. These policies target the local levels of the state—
the communes and villages. However, because local authority and responsibility
for regulating natural resources has been centralized by the Vietnamese
Communist Party, neither local representatives of the state nor local communities
have much experience or initiative in participating in community regulation of
coastal resources. These new participatory policies potentially provide people,
communities and organizations the chance to participate in the protection and
management of their immediate environment and economic resources. Through
collectively enacting these policies, community participants may learn how to
implement these policies on a day-to-day basis, since, currently, these policies face
implementation challenges. The learning programs, practices and outcomes of
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both projects are attempts to facilitate community involvement in developing and
implementing these regulations and policies in the immediate future.
Fishing Regulations
According to the Ministry of Fisheries, fisheries are to be one of the sectors
that “spear-heads the economy” (NORAD, 2002). The fisheries are still controlled
by fisheries ordinance based on Prime Minister’s Decision No 130 CT, April 20,
1991, and the Fisheries Minister’s Decision NO 187-QD/TS, and inspection
Decision No 415TTg, August, 10, 1994. However, these policies have not kept up-
to-date with other natural resource policies, such as the Land Law and Natural
Resource policies (NORAD, 2002). Therefore, fishing policies and practices are a
major problem in any coastal socio-economic or environmental change.
Furthermore, according to Fisheries officials involved in the two projects, agencies
charged with conserving marine resources such as the Ministry and Departments of
Fisheries and related offices, have had a higher interest in earning income from
resources they control and manage than in creating sustainable approaches to
using the resources both for today and tomorrow. Part of the Ministry’s income is
based on the capacity of fishers and aquaculturists to harvest marine and aquatic
resources to strengthen the Ministry’s financial foundation, according to MoFi
officials involved with the Hon Mun Project.
In spite of the state’s history of environmental regimes previously identified,
“the marine environment wasn’t even on the government’s agenda until
multilaterals, such as the ADB, bilateral agencies, such as NO RAD and DAN I DA,
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and NGOs, such as IMA-V put it there," said a Hanoi-based environmental NGO
staff. In a recent World Bank document (World Bank, 2000), Vietnam targets the
establishment of 15 MPAs, 64 protected wetland areas and reduction in mangrove
loss by10%, the implementation of ICZM (Integrated Coastal Zoning and
Management) and the support for off-shore fishing programs. Furthermore, the
government intends to promote community organizations and environmental
NGOs, outside of the state structure, in conducting environmental awareness
raising and environmental science research. IMA-V and lUCN’s projects follow
such guidelines.
Fisheries present numerous conservation and management issues. While
the overall fishing plans remain centralized, the new fishing plan for 2001-2010
focuses on improving food security (40% of Vietnamese’ protein intake is from sea
products) and on increasing aquaculture output to 2 million tons/year—to
accomplish this decentralization of fisheries management is one approach that the
state is taking (Bo Thuy San, 2003). In Khanh Hoa Province, for example, at least
63,000 hectares are being used by aquaculture, in many areas, coastal rice
paddies have been converted into shrimp farms for export markets. Over the last
year, output was close to 1.8 billion US in exports, with shrimp making up about
40% of that total according to the Khanh Hoa Department of Fisheries. However,
the seas persist as open access regimes with little central control or knowledge of
what is being exploited and to what extent.
‘‘The seas are open access...and if we have bigger boats and better nets,
we’ll catch more fish...[so] it’s OK if there are more fishers,” said several Hon Mun
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villagers at a recent meeting, “This may be changing in near shore coastal waters
where aquaculture is feasible and ICZM can be implemented,” said an IMA-V
officer. There is some precedent for zoning coastal areas in Vietnam and for
community involvement and ownership of that process. Lagoons and estuaries
have a somewhat different access regime that is much more like land based
regimes (Truong Van Tuyen, 2001; Ton That Phap, 2001) and may be a model for
ICZM. However, until that happens, anyone (who is Vietnamese and has enough
capital) can fish or aquaculture appropriate species anywhere, and productive
village coastal waters such as near Trao Reef and adjacent to the villages in the
Hon Mun MPA are fished as much by outsiders as insiders according to staff from
the respective projects.
Trao Reefs Marine Reserve and Hon Mun’s MPA are one approach to
regulating fisheries that is being promoted by various bilateral agencies, such as
the World Bank, and international organizations, such as iUCN, proposes the
creation of numerous marine protected areas to begin to manage fisheries, with
community participation as part of the process of management, for economic as
well as environmental needs. However, this does not address specific production
issues, such as quantities of species to be raised or fished. Furthermore, these
MPA’s do not address adjacent development issues, but instead exemplify a park
like approach to marine resource protection. lUCN’s plan, supported by the World
Bank, calls for a world system of representative coral reef ecosystems (IUCN,
2000a). According to the lUCN/Hon Mun project, this approach also complements
Vietnam’s Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP, 1995) and its follow-up plan completed in
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1998, which, however, has few specific details on conserving and rehabilitating
marine biodiversity. It focused almost completely on land biodiversity. lUCN's and
IMA’s projects are two approaches to implementing a complex plan of regulating
fisheries, enhancing biodiversity and increasing citizen participation in managing
coastal environments. This is all the more important, as similar to other coastal
nations, migration towards the coasts has increased as the uplands and mountains
become more overcrowded and less productive, thus increasing pressure on
coastal waters to meet more of Vietnam’s socio-economic needs (NORAD, 2002).
Citizen participation, in particular, is highlighted in the General Democracy
Decree/1998 discussed next.
The General [Commune] Democracy Decree of 1998
The commune democracy policy has proposed that socio-economic and
environmental planning and management decisions be devolved to the commune
level, if the commune chooses to exercise this right and responsibility.
Furthermore, it provides guidelines for villages to exercise democratic rights in
making local policy decisions, in line with state law. In these policies,
decentralization has not meant transferring decision-making horizontally—to a
wider group of participants—it has meant transferring authority vertically
downwards, so that now, district or commune officials have the authority, but not
necessarily the financial means to make decisions regarding allocation, lease and
use of land. This is how decentralization is currently practiced in Vietnam (Wescott,
2002). This has been a big change for a country run by the 2.5 million members of
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its communist party (out of a population of 80 million), which has, until very
recently, demanded central control over all decisions. “A problem was that
decisions have been made in Hanoi, but never carried out at the local level,”
explained a project participant. The Commune Democracy Decree gives an
opportunity for villagers to be accountable for their actions.
The General “Commune” Democracy Decree/1998 (GDD) has a few
specific Articles that are relevant to popular decision-making on conservation and
development issues such as those presented in IMA and lUCN’s projects. These
are identified in Box 2.
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Box 2 - Vietnam National Assembly, Decree 29/1998/ND-CP, Selected Articles
Article 6. Villages can make regulations on their own social, economic and
environmental affairs in agreement with State law.
Article 9. The people should be consulted for a discussion of development
projects before the commune People’s Councils and/or People’s
Committees makes development decisions (or submitted to the competent
level for discussion). The people should participate in issues involving long
range socio-economic planning, resource use management and issues of
health, clean water and environmental hygiene.
Article 10. Based on Decree No. 10, the local Party Committees and the
commune People’s Committees and the commune People’s Councils, the
commune People’s Committees shall draft documents, plans, options and
coordinate with the commune Fatherland Front Committees and mass
organizations in organizing the collection of public opinions on commune
issues.
Article 12. Modes of implementing work to be supervised and inspected by
the people: The people shall supervise the activities and conducts of
members of the People's Councils and the People's Committees
Article 13. Though villages or hamlets do not constitute a level of
administration, they are the places where the communities live and where
democracy is exercised in a direct and broad manner so as to address
internal affairs of the communities, ensure solidarity, maintain social order
and safety and preserve environmental hygiene; build a new life; render
mutual assistance in production and life; preserve and bring into full play the
community’s fine traditions, customs and practices to well implement the
Party's undertakings, the State's laws; well exercise citizens' rights and fulfill
citizens' obligations as well as the tasks assigned by the higher levels.
Article 17. Villages or hamlets may establish conciliation boards, security
boards, production protection teams and construction boards. These
organisations shall be elected by the people, managed and directed by the
village or hamlet chiefs in co-ordination with the Fatherland Front's working
board.
Article 19. Regular attention must be paid to the building of a contingent of
grassroots officials. There must be plans on training and re-training to raise
their educational levels, professional skills, political theory and methods of
work, enabling them to satisfy the requirements of their tasks in the
requirements of their tasks in the new revolutionary stage_______________
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The selected articles above emphasize “work to be done and decided on
directly by the people” (Vietnam National Assembly, Decree 29/1998/ND-CP,
1998). Projects, such as IMA-V’s and lUCN’s can facilitate communes’
involvement in developing specific policies and regulations to take ownership of
Articles 9 and 10. However, as stated, control still lay in the community party in a
hierarchical fashion. In Vietnam, this is decentralization through hierarchical
devolution (Wescott, 2002). The People’s Committees and People's Councils at
the commune and district level are ultimately responsible for making and
implementing policy at the local level in accordance with state guidelines. The
amount of participatory or deliberative democracy within the local decision-making
process ultimately rests with the Commune People’s Councils and the District
People’s Committee.
However, Articles 6, 9, 13 and 17 seem to support the creation of people’s
organizations that would have responsibility and authority for managing local
resources. These articles indicate that villages and hamlets, the smallest political
units of a commune, have authority to make decisions on numerous issues, social
as well as environmental issues. Article 17 proposes and lays the legal
groundwork for community organizations, such as the Core Group in IMA’s project
and the Village MPA Committees in the Hon Mun Project to be created and to
oversee affairs, such as environmental and development affairs of interest to the
community. However, as the decree indicates, these organizations would not be
part of the political system, but part of the social system under the Fatherland Front
which is an umbrella organization of all of Vietnam’s mass social organizations
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such as the WU and YU. These groups, however, are quite distinct from mass
organizations in that they work in particular policy arenas and are more similar to
scientific, research and technical associations, yet, in the case of the Core Group,
in particular, they have specific public duties to carry out. Professional associations
have no such duties. Finally, Article 19 indicates the desirability for non-formal and
informal education programs, such as those delivered by IMA-V and IUCN.
In addition, as part of this law, communes have the right to establish certain
social, cultural and environmental regulations. These are established on a village
by village basis and involve each household measuring up and agreeing to the
regulations listed. This is related to Article 6. The regulations express certain
general interests in the village. They could also state how we should conserve or
exploit the environment,” said one of the project participants.
Fishing Regulations and General Democracy Decree: Opportunities for
participating and learning in policy making
Presently, the state is devolving environmental and development
management issues to localities through the GDD and a new fisheries law, which is
being proposed that gives localities more responsibility and authority to conserve
and manage marine resources (NORAD, 2002). These two recent policy
developments suggest that people can participate in policy development,
implementation and regulation enforcement through institutionally regulated
programs. The importance of community participation in resource policy making
and enforcement is evident in a recent UNDP/MPI study, which reports that coastal
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and marine laws are rarely understood or enforced at the provincial level (UNDP,
2002b). Laws are made, but there have been no awareness raising programs to
inform people of how the laws should be enforced.
Informally, communities have learned that marine regulations are not
enforced. Incidentally, they have learned that they should exploit whatever
resources they can for as long as they can before the state does intervene. While
institutions, such as the Communist Party and the MoFI limit participation and
access to decision-making, local communities are doing pretty much what they
want with natural resources. It is up to the local provincial and commune level
authorities, who have the task of enforcing national mandates. It is provincial
institutions and agencies, not national agencies that employ the local staff to
enforce these regulations.
Since localities have had little formal say in how natural resources should
be managed, the new policy-making space created by the GDD, and the proposed
fishing regulations, is open to contestation. It is a space that may allow
participants, moreover, community members to try out different processes of
participation and interaction, contesting previous practices. These new policies
allow the potential for more participation, deliberation and contestation of policy at
the local level. Furthermore, this policy making space provides informal and
incidental learning opportunities. Such actual practices, which are components of
IMA-V’s and lUCN’s projects, could have positive affects on coastal environments
and coastal communities in the near future.
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As indicated in this section, social organizations have a role to play in
supporting and monitoring local policy. Social organizations are key organizational
features in Vietnamese society today. The next section explains the role of social
organizations, such as the Women’s Union, the Youth Union, and the Veterans
Association in organizing, participating and leading in the two projects. The key
social organization is the Fatherland Front, which is the lead mass organization and
most closely associated with the Community Party.
Social Organizations: Non-format, informal, and incidental learning
Mass organizations, Vietnam’s social organizations, such as the Fatherland
Front, Women’s Union, Youth Union, War Veterans and others play a role in who
participates in projects. Vietnamese social life and political life is influenced by
mass organizations that have played a role in (communist) party policy making and
implementation since the 1930s. The organizations have been effective ways for
the party to organize different groups of people around central themes. These
organizations have an influence of people’s actions,” explained several staff
members from both projects. The principal mass organization is the Fatherland
Front, which is closely related to the communist party and has a role of monitoring
the government in addition to general social and culture issues. The Front is not
involved in either of these projects. However, organizations such as the Women’s
and Youth Union, which operate under the umbrella of the Front, were highly
targeted for non-formal learning and activism in the two projects.
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The role of mass organizations was especially evident in learning and
advocacy in the IMA-V project, involving the Women’s Union, the Youth Union, the
Older People’s Association, the Farmers Association and the War Veteran’s. These
organizations were both targets of non-formal learning programs and potential
advocates of informal learning programs out in the community. For example,
project staff commented, “In order to reach women, we should work with the
Women's Union... [and]... women were targeted as participants because they
influence their husbands...the household.”
The Women’s Union has some control over women’s issues in being the
sole organization representing women in Vietnam in social and political affairs. It
extends through all levels of Vietnamese society from the smallest village to the
national level. The organization has advisory status to the National Assembly
(Vietnam Women’s Union, 1998). During the past decade, the Women’s Union
(WU) has become a favorite channel for donors to distribute credit funds, and the
WU at several levels now manages small credit funds—usually a few hundreds of
dollars/year per woman. WU power resides in its ability to limit access to micro
financing based on membership in the WU. These dues are smalt and sometimes
waved for the poorest women (Vietnam’s Women’s Union, 1998). Despite this
capacity, its strength at the national level does not necessarily transfer to local
levels.
“The WU is a strong organization,” claimed a staff at Hon Mun; while at Trao
Reef, male villagers felt that the WU in Vinh Nguyen was stronger than the WU in
Van Hung because of more educational opportunities in Nha Trang City which
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encompasses Vinh Nguyen commune and the island villages in the MPA. Talks
with women often revolved around women’s issues, such as abusive husbands, or
about reproductive health. As a result of the project, WU staff also began to learn
more about marine issues. Marine and gender issues are gaining a place on each
project’s agenda, and in the case of IUCN, women’s issues of unemployment are
being addressed.
Social organizations are, moreover, significant organizers of non-formal and
informal learning opportunities. Non-formal and informal learning are especially
important due to a decrease in school attendance after completing the primary
years. The average amount of schooling for the adult population has been
approximately five years for men and three years for women in both projects (IMA-
Vietnam, 2001; Hon Mun MPA Pilot Project, 2002a). This indicates the fact that
forma! education plays little role in the day-to-day life of adults in fishing villages.
Education levels remain low; moreover in rural and more remote areas such as the
Hon Mun MPA islands. “If ‘boys’ [emphasis] can make a good living diving for
lobster fingerlings or raising lobster, they leave secondary school to work for their
families,” explain an IMA staff. In the Hon Mun villages, parents explained that it
was both difficult and expensive to send their children to secondary school.
Recently, the City of Nha Trang expanded educational programs on the island to
include both 6th and 7th grades. However, beyond that, parents have to have
enough money to send their children to school daily, on a boat or to have them
board in Nha Trang during the week. According some parents, “It costs close to
5,000,000 VND$/child per year ($300 USD). Only rich families raising hundreds or
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thousands of lobsters can afford to keep their children in school.” This is changing
with the present generation, as a result of increasing household and government
incomes allowing for more teachers to be paid and more students to be supported.
However, until institutional changes can make a difference, rural communities look
towards social organizations to keep them informed. Social organizations, such as
the Women’s Union and the Farmer’s Union offer programs, activities and
associations with others an informal approach to learning.
Social Organizations: Participation in social life, non-formal, informal and
incidental learning
Social organizations have an important role to play in organizing
participation and learning in rural communities. They especially have an influence
on adults in rural areas. From the state’s perspective, these organizations manage
society and control how people participate in social activities. This may be helpful
to NGOs. These social organizations can gather people and facilitate participation
with the state’s acceptance, which is an important feature to social activities in
Vietnam. Furthermore, these organizations offer informal collective learning
networks. Because formal education levels are low, these organizations often
provide non-formal learning and informal learning programs that is valuable for rural
folks to participate in credit programs and to learn new income generation
techniques to improve their lives. In the two projects, education levels in both
communities are low. In fact, many adult women remain illiterate. According to the
Hon Mun Pilot Project, about 30% of the adult women in project villages are
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illiterate. This presents challenges when Agriculture and Health Extension
programs or NGO projects come to the villagers. Often materials are not set up for
illiterate participants. In several of IMA programs, for example, advocacy training,
illiterate people were not permitted to participate. This represents a problem, as
well, since women are more likely to be illiterate than men, thus further limiting
women’s participation in extension education.
I had my own interesting experiences with illiterate villagers. Several times,
for example, I was asked by village women to write down my ideas in Vietnamese
so that they could give my message to their husbands, who knew how to read. [It
was a good opportunity for me to practice Vietnamese writing nonetheless.] Often
times my Vietnamese writing was full of errors, but somehow I got my message
across. Therefore, social organizations have a large role to play in non-formal and
informal learning, with literacy being one component in addition to IG and family
issues. They organize their members and provide opportunities for social and
cultural exchanges. Furthermore, they play leadership roles in environmental
issues, at least in the case of IMA-V’s project. The next section moves on to issues
related to Vietnam’s reunification as one state in 1975.
Summary: Natural, Cultural, Social and Policy Influences
These factors explained above contribute to both communities’ present
environmental narrative and influence how the community and project interact.
Clearly, the dominating factor for the two NGOs is environmental. The projects
came to these two sites because of the environmental and economic value of coral
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reefs. For the communities involved in these projects, the reefs have been viewed
economically. The two communities' participation in fishing, lobster and shrimp
farming, which has been mostly produced for export, has had damaging effects on
the environment. While community members have participated in credit programs
and the global market of shrimp and lobster farming, their knowledge of those
issues remains restricted both due to institutional control over access to
information, to a large degree, and also because of communities’ reliance on expert
knowledge about technology for fishing and aquaculture. Reliance on expert
knowledge also relates to cultural practices where Confucianism is emphasized.
Cultural practices, Confucianism and related issues of hierarchy, not only
limit access to learning, but also affects who may participate, and how and what
participants learn in projects, programs and activities. For example, credit and
knowledge about new aquaculture practices is not accessible to poorer less literate
individuals. This discriminates against approximately 35% of the population, who
are classified as poor. Moreover this is a gender issue. Women are less likely to
be literate, which restricts their participation in non-formal education programs, and
are less likely to have property, which prohibits them from participating in regular
credit programs. These are Confucian based cultural practices. Participation and
learning in the two projects should also address these limitations.
Social organizations, such as the Women’s Union and others may provide
context for informal learning that can challenge these cultural practices. However,
the social organizations are still a part of that engendered, hierarchical system.
Learning programs need to consider these issues when creating programs to
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initiate changes in the environment and policy making. Community participation
and learning, whether encouraged by social organizations or facilitated by NGOs,
seems most interested interest in accessing credit and knowledge to increase
incomes based on their coastal resources. Thus, as projects initiate programs and
activities, most communities seem most receptive to participation and learning that
does little to challenge their present actions, except that such participation and
learning should increase income opportunities.
However, both state policy and the IUCN and IMA-V projects provide
opportunities to challenge how communities participate and leam to address their
own development issues. Both the proposed fishing policy and the GDD suggest
that communities can and should take local control over their immediate coastal
resources. However, these are new decentralizing policy making arrangements
that are just being tried out at the local level. These policies provide space for
contesting central control over local environmental and social policies, where
communities have the potential to learn, informally and incidentally, through
struggling through the process—learning how to participate and learning how to
make empowered decisions based on their collective experiences and knowledge
both within and outside of the involvement in the two projects. The two NGO
projects provide a context where communities and their commune level
governments can develop and apply these policies as they create new
mechanisms, such as co-management. Community created and implemented
policies may lead to increase local control over the resource base on which most
Vietnamese communities still depend. Community participation in such a process
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may also increase democratic participation in local natural resource and economic
policy development.
Finally, and briefly, additional factors such as the country’s reunification in
1975 and functioning military bases play a role in project. However, these have not
been discussed in detail because they only indirectly affect participation and
learning in the two projects. After reunification, state policy encouraged emigration
from the north and war ravaged areas in the central regions to the south. Some of
these emigrants, without any experience living off of the sea, moved into the
coastal areas one generation ago. Their knowledge about farming vis-a-vis fishing
has some influence on the economic practices of aquaculture. This factor does not
directly affect participation and learning, but it does indicate the experiential
learning background of some of the villagers. Many coastal residents only recently
started working on the sea as lobster or shrimp farmers. Previously, even though
they lived by the sea, they farmed rice or harvested timber in the nearby mountains
as they had learned to do previously. Furthermore, despite reunification, the state
maintains several military bases in the area. Some of these bases directly affect
access to islands in the Hon Mun MPA. Some areas are off limits to anyone except
the military, and the military maintains control over development, which by the looks
of scarred hillsides, is not typically environmentally friendly development.
This concludes the presentation, findings and analysis on natural,
economic, cultural, political and social influences on learning and participation in
the two projects. These influences will be further analyzed in the discussion
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section. The next section presents the findings and analysis on the non-formal and
informal learning activities in the two projects.
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Chapter 5: Case Studies
Overview
The next section moves into the presentation and analysis of the two
projects’ non-formal and informal learning activities. First, I will present a few
preliminary thoughts on general issues in the two projects, IMA-V/Trao Reef and
the lUCN/Hon Mun. IMA-V’s case is presented first, followed by lUCN’s case. For
each case, I begin by presenting specific organizational features and the NGOs
general approach to facilitating and implementing participation and learning.
Findings are then presented by theme and sub-theme followed by an analysis for
each respective theme and sub-theme. The themes center on participation and
learning as identified in the conceptual framework and evinced through the field
research and analysis.
Each organization, IMA-V and IUCN, had specific policy objectives that they
wished to carry out in Vietnam and found such a context in these two projects.
Principally, both projects are committed to protecting coral reefs and coral reef
species. So, the coral species identified in Chapter 4 is what brought the two
projects to Khanh Hoa Province. Their initial emphasis has been to stop coral
damaging fishing practices—dynamite and cyanide fishing, anchoring on reefs,
trawling and fishing with strong light (strong light is so powerful that it attracts
excessive amounts of fish during night fishing). Each organization identifies and
pursues scientific research to inform both government authorities and communities
about threats to coastal resources and approaches to conserving them. IMA-V has
been an organization that was founded on rehabilitating and protecting coral reefs
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and in educating communities about alternative livelihoods based on the reefs.
IUCN has only recently become involved in marine issues. For over 50 years, it
has been involved in land based and species preservation issues. It is, perhaps,
best known for its Redbook of endangered species based on scientific research.
The Redbook identifies threatened and endangered species that are in need of
protection. Furthermore, it focuses conservation funding. IUCN has worked
closely with multilateral organizations throughout its history, partnering with the UN
and UNDP, and organizing international ‘parks’ conferences. It is a well
institutionalized.
Now, I present the first of the two case studies, IMA-V’s Trao Reef Project.
First, I discuss the project’s roots in its parent organization IMA, which was founded
in the Philippines in the 1980s. Then, I explain IMA-Vs specific organizational
features and its general approach to facilitating and implementing participation and
learning in this project. Following this, I present findings by theme and sub-theme
followed by an analysis focusing on the concepts and practices of participation and
learning as identified in the conceptual framework and evinced through the field
research and analysis. Themes in IMA-V’s case include the following categories:
Learning through environmental action and problematization, reflecting on coastal
resource experiences, participating in and deliberating environmental issues,
advocating for the environment, and contesting project practices. Each thematic
section concludes with a summary. The next section begins with a brief overview
of the International Marinelife Alliance (IMA), IMA-V’s parent organization.
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A Family NGO founded on Coral Reefs: The International Marinelife Alliance
(IMA)
IMA began as a family NGO in the Philippines in the mid 1980’s. Started by
a couple, Vaughn Pratt and his wife, they focused on protecting and rehabilitating
the coral reefs that they loved in the Philippines. Its vision is “A healthy and
productive coastal ecosystems, sustaining a biologically diverse marine
environment and in return being sustained by a new generation of informed,
empowered and prosperous resource users, who live and work in harmony with
their natural surroundings.” (IMA, 2004). Their education and awareness activities
have focused on the affects of cyanide and dynamite fishing and training in
alternative, sustainable, artisanal fishing practices. Their philosophy of working
with communities directly pairs well with ICM, CBCRM and co-management
approaches. IMA believes in collaboration across sectors with an emphasis on
empowering communities so that they can participate and benefit equitably. IMA
has been funded by small donors, but its main funding has come from EAPEi (East
Asian and Pacific Environmental Initiative), which is an agency of USAID that
sponsors projects on marine issues. IMA also has separate national offices in
Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Fiji—all states with significant coral reef ecosystems.
IMA’s Vietnam office works with few strings attached. “We receive modest support
from the IMA office,” explained IMA-Vietnam’s staff.
These environmental values, fundamental to IMA, were not necessarily
innate or known by IMA-Vietnam staff at the beginning of the project, but “we
learned the complexity of conservation issues as we were involved with IMA staff in
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the Philippines and on their initial visits here,” explained one IMA-V staff. One staff
said, “I didn’t think much more about the environment besides trash and pollution
until I got involved in this project.” The director previously worked on a social
forestry project in the upland areas in the north of Vietnam, and so was experience
in community involvement in environmental and development issues, but was not
aware of specific marine issues. Some other principal staff members are borrowed
from the Institute of Fisheries and Economic Planning (IFEP). This is a way for the
state to have some direct involvement in NGO activities, while the staff members
keep their state job, which they can return to when the NGO project ends. IFEP
staffers bring with them a reliance on expertise and objectives of marine economic
development. This was evident in IMA-V activities, where staff pursued marine
resource exploitation and technical solutions vis-a-vis locally derived or non-marine
based solutions. Such knowledge was continually contested both within IMA-V and
by the Van Hung villagers throughout the project.
IMA-V is still contesting top-down vis-a-vis bottom up facilitation in its work.
But, the staffers are gradually learning IMA philosophy through experience with
villagers who can, and do, make a difference given the opportunity, authority, and
responsibility to make deliberate decisions and take action for the marine
environment. IMA-V has been more organic signaling relative equality among the
staff. Its staff often perform a variety of tasks both in the office and out in the field,
despite having specific titles such as Community Development Officer, Training
Officer, and Chief Scientist. While each activity has a lead facilitator or trainer, all
IMA-V field staff participate in the activities, sometimes presenting scientific or
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technical information, other times listening to villagers’ experiences, facilitating
group dialogues or transporting supplies from shops on the road to the worksite at
the shore. The relatively equality between the staff and the sharing of responsibility
and authority and IMA-V’s project is evident in most of IMA-V’s work. Furthermore,
this organic mode of operation was evident in IMA-V’s meetings were held in its
general office space where all organizational staff participated, including
administrative staff. While the director did facilitate the meetings, each staff
member took the lead for different meetings depending on the contact. These
meetings were filled with plenty of dialogue, interaction, and a contestation of ideas.
“To an outsider, these meetings might look confusing, but I want to encourage all
staff to share ideas and for us to think out a good plan before we take any action,”
said the director.
IMA-V staff suggested that “environmental issues are social issues that
require social solutions...being social issues, they require collaboration and
involvement from the community and the local government.” Furthermore, they
stressed the need for solutions to come from the people—the community
members—rather than decrees from the government, which is the precedent in
Vietnam. IMA-V set out a path to raise awareness of environmental issues hand in
hand with livelihood issues that could complement environmental concerns. This
approach was also evident in its parent organization’s work in the Philippines. IMA-
V believes that the poor are most vulnerable to livelihoods that are dependent on
coastal resources, and therefore, these groups, often fishers and women, must be
given special attention in the development of sustainable livelihood programs. IMA-
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V’s capacity to facilitate such learning activities throughout its project will be
discussed here.
The Community
The community participating in IMA-V’s project is composed of five villages
of Van Hung Commune, the southernmost commune in Van Ninh District, Khanh
Hoa Province. The commune is one of five in Van Ninh District, which
encompasses Van Phong Bay, its coral reefs and, up to now, productive lobster
farming areas. The commune is approximately 60 kilometers from Nha Trang, the
main city in the province. It is connected to other parts of the country by Highway
#1, Vietnam’s main highway, in addition to the national rails system.
Communication and transportation is, therefore, convenient. All of the villages are
on the state’s electricity grid. Four of the villages are coastal villages, and a fifth is
inland. According to IMA-V’s PRA, the total population is close to 15,000. Women
make up close to 51% of the population with men at about 49%. Approximately
50% of the population is under 25 years of age.
The project centers on the two villages closest to Trao Reef with a
population of about 10,000. According to IMA-Vietnam (2001a), about 80% of the
villagers there earn income by exploiting coastal resources through fishing,
aquaculture and mariculture. Some farm and fish, as about 60% of the land in the
commune is used to grow rice and other crops. Lobster and shrimp farmers are the
wealthiest, while those who only farm or only fish are the poorest. The wealthiest
households earn incomes comparable to wealthy households in Ho Chi Minh City
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or Hanoi, earning about $1,350 USD/year. About 25% of the households in the
commune are officially classified as poor, and those are predominantly farming or
fishing-only households. Schooling in the commune is improving; however, most
adults have only finished primary or lower secondary school, with the average
years of schooling at five years for women and seven years for men. When
children reach there teens, there is often incentive for them to support the family by
working. For boys, in particular, fishing related jobs can offer significant additional
income to families.
Case Study: IMA-Vietnam. The Trao Reef Project 2001- 2004
introduction: The Project
The following section identifies findings and presents an analysis of the non-
formal and informal learning activities and incidental learning contexts in the IMA-V
project, which seemed to have the most impact on villagers’ knowledge and actions
on ICD issues from March of 2001 - March of 2004, the approximate dates of the
project’s beginning and end. The analysis, overall, suggests that villagers’
transformational learning and actions in the Trao Reef project were mainly the
result of experiential learning through informal programs where participants
conserved, rehabilitated, or advocated for the environment. Villagers, in general,
participated in informal learning activities such as ICCs, Opening Ceremonies, and
Music and Poetry Competitions that raised their awareness on environmental
issues. Two new organizations, the Core Group and the Advocates participated in
the non-formal activities—marine biodiversity education, fishing regulations and
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communications skills training, in addition to the informal activities to physically
mark, protect and rehabilitate Trao Reef Marine Reserve. These two groups
participated in most of the project’s activities and not only learned about the marine
conservation, protection, rehabilitation, and advocacy, they also did it. They
learned and acted for the environment. Through these experiences, participants,
collectively, were able to expand their capacity—their knowledge, agency and
participation in the decision-making process—to contest previous notions of coastal
resources as exploitable resources only.
The process was also aided by the fact that the community, in Van Hung
commune had suffered a sever decline in fisheries’ resources and were eager for
changes. Coastal fishing resources had been declining rapidly since 1995,
according to the local fishermen, and this was confirmed by researchers from the
local marine research institutes—NIO for example. “Many of us felt a need to
change, but weren’t sure how...and then there was the huge lobster kill off from the
chemicals released by the shrimp farmers...we realized we needed a new way to
manage our coastal resources,” project participants said. IMA-V made contact and
established relations with the community as this scenario was unfolding. IMA-V
offered a specific learning and action plan that led in that direction, and the local
villagers and authorities were, largely, eager to learn and participate. Very few
villagers reported a dislike for this project. While beyond the scope of this
research, it is likely that outsiders—those not living in Van Hung Commune—
disliked the project and its results because their fishing area too, was placed under
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limits, but since they lived outside of the commune, they did not have a direct
influence on the emerging local coastal regulations.
Location of Learning Activities
IMA-V’s offices are located in Hanoi while its project site is in Van Ninh, a
two-hour plane ride or a 24-hour train ride away to the south. (See Maps 1 and 2,
this study, page, 122). IMA-V conducted fund raising and prepared programs and
activities in Hanoi. The project had an office in Van Ninh, but no permanent staff
there. Instead, it liaised on an irregular basis with one member from the Project
Management Board and one or two member from the Core Group. When funding
was received or schedules in both Van Hung and Hanoi were compatible, IMA-V
conducted field work. It implemented most of its non-formal programs in Van Gia,
the seat of District People’s Committee offices, and facilitated most of its action-
oriented experiential activities in Van Hung Commune, and at the reserve itself,
which was a three kilometers boat ride from the villages. The guardhouse was a
principal site of informal and incidental learning for the Core Group and others that
the group and the advocates brought out to the reserve. Several participants’
homes became non-formal, informal and incidental learning sites during the course
of the project and participants frequented these homes to informally meet, discuss
and incidentally share their learning.
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Project Funding
IMA-V’s Trao Reef Project has been mainly funded through EAPEI (the East
Asian and Pacific Environmental Initiative, part of USAID and NOAA—the United
States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which funds research on
ocean issues such as coral reefs. The funding was channeled from IMA to IMA-V
for this three year project with a total budget of $330,000 USD. Project
documentation suggests that this reserve, unlike top-down programs, would be
cooperatively and collaborative managed by non-governmental stakeholders—the
villagers—in addition to local and state government entities that had legal and
technical responsibility to coastal resources. The state government entities include
the provincial, district and local People’s Committees, the local People’s Councils,
the Provincial Department of Fisheries, the Fisheries Resources Protection
Department and the Border Patrol. The project sponsors do ask for formative and
summative reports on the project’s progress. However, they have no control over
the day-to-day facilitation of programs and activities.
In addition to this funding, IMA-V sought out and received additional
complementary funds that supported its work inclusive of issues such as gender
and community based coastal resource management. Some of the sponsors have
been SNV (Netherlands International Aid for Vietnam), SWIF-CIDA ( Canadian
International Development Assistance Supporting Women’s Initiative’s Fund)
Rufford Small Grants (One of Whitley’s Conservation Funds from Great Britain),
Keidaren Nature Conservation Fund (A foundation that focuses on community
conservation activities), and CBCRM Learn ( A research program from the CBCRM
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Research Institute in the Philippines). A community focus, rather than a marine
science focus has emerged as IMA-V’s supplementary funding base.
Learning Programs’ Organization
IMA-V conducted non-formal and informal learning activities for the
community in Van Ninh District and Van Hung Commune, periodically, during the
three years of the project, from February 2001 through March 2004. These
activities focused on the community participating in direct environmental action to
improve coastal resources. Prior to this, from 1999 to 2000, IMA-V established
professional relationships with state offices at the province, district and commune
levels, and conducted coastal clean ups (ICCs) and a PRA, in cooperation with
local marine science institutions to introduce their work to the province and local
communities. (The ICCs, which were held four times, are discussed further below.)
The PRA took place prior to the project’s implementation and was not a major
community learning activity, according to IMA-V staff, so it is not analyzed in this
study). When the Provincial and District People’s Committee approved the project
in the spring of 2001, IMA-V began to plan its activities that included non-formal
training programs on marine issues and regulations, reef rehabilitation and
monitoring as well as informal activities, such as clean ups, media publicity, and
entertainment.
IMA-V aimed to set up a co-management administrative system to manage
the project and to take over marine reserve management responsibilities when the
project ended. “Most of the non-formal and informal learning activities contributed
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to increasing local officials and villagers' capacity to co-manage,” explained IMA-V
staff. This involved IMA-V as the catalyst that organized non-formal and informal
learning programs. However, even during the project, much of the ongoing and
follow up work was left to the local officials and community to complete on their
own. This approach also lent itself to the strategies of running the project. “We
wanted to become less and less involved as a facilitator as the project went on, and
become more like a consultant,” IMA-V staff said.
The co-management approach centered-on, "...the villagers implementing
and the authorities supporting...” according to IMA-V. Management components
included two organizations created specifically to participate and learn within the
project:: the Project Management Board (PMB), who were members of the District
People’s Committee selected to work with IMA-V, and the Core Group, who were
community members that the villagers elected to represent them in the direct
management and protection of the coastal resources. These two groups were the
targets of most of the non-formal learning programs. IMA-V further explained, “The
PMB would make policy decisions and support their implementation for the local
marine reserve.. .while the Core Group would implement and seek official
assistance in enforcing the policy.” Other state agencies also involved in the
project’s implementation were the Border Patrol and the Fisheries Protection
Department, which had state authority to enforce coastal regulations, locally or
nationally decreed.
IMA-V developed and initiated almost all of the non-formal learning
programs and the informal programs. Donors were not involved in controlling this
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process in any way. IMA-V, did, however continue to learn from its IMA parent
organization. IMA-V organized meetings, and trained state officials and villagers in
coastal marine science and policy issues. “All of these activities focused on giving
people knowledge and experience to participate in the co-management process,”
said IMA-V staff. Once on site, they also often informally coordinated and
facilitated cross stakeholder communication and action at stakeholders’ requests.
Target Project Participants and Learners
Generally, those who were destroying the coral ecosystem, the cyanide and
dynamite fishers and the three-layered net fishers were the initial target learning
groups, and hundreds of community members, many of who were fishermen,
participated in informal learning. Community-wide, many women and men also
participated in the informal clean ups and occasional work parties. However, much
of the learning in the project was informal, involving primarily marine reserve tasks
carried out by the PMB and moreover, the Core Group. Of thei 3 participants, only
one was a woman. The Core Group and several associated family members and
friends made up the group that participated in most of environmental action
programs. The one daily informal learning activity was guarding the reserve and
this was the Core Group’s primary responsibility. They were also the majority of
participants in the rehabilitation and research activities. The advocates, primarily
from the social organizations, such as the War Veterans and Women’s Union made
up an additional group of regular participants. “Learning for the Core Group, the
advocates and the PMB should be a foundation for training others about changing
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their coastal resource practices,” IMA-V staff said. These groups did bring others
out to the reef and conducted additional advocacy sessions with commune social
organizations. Hundreds of additional commune residents participated in these
community initiated advocacy programs.
General Learning Objectives and Procedures
In the project, IMA-V had a specific project agenda that was compatible with
its organizational goals. This was an agenda was stated as the following:
...to utilize the establishment of the first locally managed marine reserve in
Vietnam, to enable the local community and government to demonstrate
their true capacities in effectively understanding, developing and
implementing their own coastal co-management plans, contributing to
resources rehabilitation, livelihood and enhancement (IMA, 2001a).
IMA-V’s activities were based on these project goals. Furthermore, IMA-V
suggested that the community had two options: (1) to continue to fish and conduct
mariculture as they had, and to continue to deplete coastal resources until their
coastal resources had no reproductive and rehabilitative capacity or (2) to change
their fishing and aquaculture activities to more environmentally friendly economic
practices based both on both market and ecological concerns.
Initiatives for learning programs throughout the three years of the project
came from IMA-V, yet local officials and villagers requested that programs be
repeated and the villagers, themselves, created an advocacy program. IMA-V staff
conducted field activities, on the average of four times a year during the span of the
project. These activities included technical project meetings with officials and
scientific research in addition to the specific non-formal and informal learning
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activities that included community members. All of these programs were directed
toward reaching the objective stated above. This suggested that significant
learning for change needed to take place.
Overall, IMA-V’s approach to learning was participatory and experiential.
Very few segments of training programs or activities outside of the marine
biodiversity program and fishing regulations presentation were only at the
conceptual level or conducted through disseminations or lectures. The project
provided extensive opportunities for participants to learn with and from each other.
In other words, there were extensive informal and incidental learning opportunities.
Each activity that the project implemented was experiential and goal oriented, i.e. -
“we will build and install an artificial reef...we will station two people at the
guardhouse and protect the reserve 24 hours a day.”
Both the informal and the incidental learning that happened throughout
these collective actions, however, was not planned or assessed by the project. “We
learned by doing it,” suggested several participants. The project did not set out
specific techniques or strategies to create such learning—they evolved incidentally
to the process. In collective action, villagers were creating new knowledge about
conservation and participation and transformative learning experiences were
integrated and assimilated throughout the process. These learning experiences
are detailed and analyzed below.
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Non-formal, Informal and Incidental Learning in the Trao Reef Project
Introduction
IMA-V began its work in Van Ninh District, Khanh Hoa Province, in the
spring of 2000. Its awareness raising strategies in Van Hung commune changed a
community of marine resource exploiters into a community of coastal resource
protectors. Prior to project approval, early activities revolved around official
meetings with the provincial and the district People’s Committee. Marine science
institutions were also involved in conducting area natural resource surveys and
other local officials and institutional experts gathered socio-economic data. After
these talks and resource surveys, IMA-V identified communities and a coral reef
site to anchor their project. Van Hung Commune and Trao Reef became the
targets for action and the People’s Committee of Van Ninh District invited IMA-V to
begin its project in late 2000.
The first community-wide activity that IMA-V set up was a coastal clean-up,
known as an ICC (International Coastal Clean up). This informal learning program
helped IMA-V to build acquaintances with several key provincial leaders in addition
to local government officials and key village leaders. The ICC was the first of many
participatory and action oriented programs that contributed to both authorities and
villagers learning about conserving and rehabilitating the environment through
direct action. Rather than continue with their exploitative practices, they learned
that they too could care for their marine resources. It was an event for popular
participation, and therefore, reached outside of state circles and was more
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participatory than the initial official meetings and surveys. Four additional ICC’s
have been run since the first one.
According to IMA-V, “The first ICC introduced us as an action oriented
organization and that we would do with the people and not for the people.” IMA-V
would be a collaborator and facilitator and not a top-down style organization.
Provincial officials commented, “IMA-V provided a program for us to work together
on a common issue that no one in particular was working on.” IMA-V staff added,
“We also used the ICC as an advocacy platform for cleaning up the environment.
Advocacy was an additional approach we wanted to initiate in the community.” For
the ever-growing groups of villagers, who most actively participated, programs such
as these likely contributed to their increasing involvement in directly participating
and deliberating policy on coastal resource management issues. Much of this
participation and deliberation was in the context of informal learning activities. The
next section explains and analyzes how IMA-V’s learning through environmental
action approach contributed to changing coastal resource practices from
exploitation to conservation.
Learning through Environmental Action
This section introduces findings that suggest that IMA-V’s principal
approach for changing a community’s environmental practices was to have people
participating in actions to deliberately preserve, rehabilitate and protect their coastal
resources. This development narrative began with the ICC, briefly described above
and continued to the “Opening” of the “Locally Managed Trao Reef Reserve” as it
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had been named, which was the project’s first community-wide activity. Learning
through environmental action was also evident in building the guard house and
guarding the reserve, which were protection activities, in constructing artificial reefs,
coral farming and seaweed growing, which were rehabilitation activities, and in
monitoring and advocacy study tours for the reef, which created knowledge to
encourage community preservation of the coral reefs.
Acting against E xp lo ita tio n : The Birth of Trao Reef lo c a lly m anaged reserve.
In opening the IMA-V project, the community collectively participated in
creating and installing the protection and preservation structures at Trao Reef in
addition to guarding the reef. The first community-wide activity indicated the action
and advocacy activities that IMA-V would pursue, facilitate and support during the
three years of the project. The first collective informal learning activity
contextualized much about the approach IMA-V took and the action and advocacy
oriented informal learning that the community would become involved with. It
further suggests that IMA-V, unlike other state, bilateral or development
organizations, was community-oriented and favored participatory approaches. The
opening ceremonies and activities, more than any other, initiated the community in
hands-on activities for learning about and acting for the protection of their coastal
resources. Through these experiences the Core Group, in particular, and large
numbers of community members, in general, could be said to have assimilated
learning about marine environmental conservation and rehabilitation, not only
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through concrete, collective environmental actions, but also through participation in
advocacy.
Collectively Opening the Reserve
The reserve’s birth, in March 2002, was introduced with the fanfare of
speeches, locally created poetry, music, and skits performed by community
members, young and old, men and women, and a procession of villagers’ fishing
boats parading marker buoys and flags out to Vietnam’s first locally managed
marine reserve, Trao Reef. This was the first community-wide involvement in the
project through the launching of the marine reserve. IMA-V along with community
leaders from the Veteran’s Association, the Elderly Committee, the Women’s and
Youth Unions organized an action-oriented festival that involved several hundreds
of community members in inaugurating the marine reserve. With ‘Tuong’
(traditional Central Vietnamese) music serenading, hundreds of community
members boarded their boats, brightly painted blue with red trim and two eyes
painted on the bow to ward off evil. The red Vietnamese flag with its single golden
star flew off the stern of each boat. A group from the Youth Union sang two
songs—one about Khanh Hoa Province and, a newly created one about Trao Reef.
The song was sung:
Hay den que toi tham xu Tram Huong...Hay den que toi xu Van yeu
thuong...xa khoi menh mong tham vinh Van Phong...Dung chan vui
buoc den tham Ran Trao... (Let’s go to my home and visit the Tram
Huong...Let’s go to my home forever filled with love...and dream
about visiting Van Phong Bay...and visit Trao Reef).
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Perhaps the atmosphere created a feeling of excitement and change. Two
officials wrote and gave speeches about the new marine reserve, and although
they had not yet acted for the reserve, their words were expressions of advocacy,
filling the air with thoughts of a wonderful community and the beauty of coral. One
of the speakers said, “Our community cares about the environment, the shore, the
sea...the coral and the fish in the reefs are not only ours now...but also for future
generations...” This was followed by a skit, also from the Youth Union, aimed to
show how the youth cared for the environment. The two young men cleaned up
trash around a tree, and the two young women planted and watered flowers. “This
is what we know about protecting the environment,” the youth said.
A few meters away from the festivities, groups of villagers were busy
preparing marker buoys. ”We have been painting recycled six-liter plastic jugs for
the past three days, and today, we are stringing the buoys together with cable,"
said one of the volunteers. Work proceeded steadily, mostly quietly as the lines
were strung out. These were the reserve’s marker buoys. Soon, the procession
was ready to disembark for the reef. It was a three-kilometer trip out to the reef,
which was partially exposed during low tide. For some, this was their first trip to the
reef. For others, mostly fishermen, they knew the reef well. On the way out to the
reserve, one of the villagers reported:
Up until a few hours before the reserves’ official opening and
establishment, other fishers increased their efforts to exploit the
remaining fish...we saw dynamite blasts...the previous night there
was a frenzy of strong light and push net fishers...I’m sure we lost
more coral and fish that night than we knew. Before we planned for
the reserve, I was sure that soon there would be no more fish in the
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bay. All of us were out to grab as much fish as possible. We didn’t
really know any other way.
The opening day, and the impressive community involvement (more than a
120 boats) in setting out the first marker buoys to designate the reef was the first
concrete environmental action for most fishers. “The opening was very exciting...it
was our first trip out to see the reef and it was so beautiful out there. The water
was so clear and the clean...we hope the reserve is a success and brings back lots
of fish...” commented several women visiting the reef that day. These conservation
experiences continued. “In the following months we built the guard house, installed
the reef markers, and began guarding the reserve,” added a group of men.
These were collective experiences that increased participating villagers’
understanding of the coral reef environment, and how they could rehabilitate and
protect it. It was dear that the villagers were inaugurating this reserve. Their boats
brought out the mooring buoys. Their boats would protect the reef. They would
spend days and nights watching its environment change—though mostly, this was
for men. It could be seen as an initial step in building solidarity among the
community members that were targets for marine protection. Furthermore, it was a
fun social event that was an initial step in redefining the communities’ relationship
to it nearby marine environment
It was evident from the mood of the day and the participants’ comments that
they were gaining some awareness about a marine reserve, but their
understanding of the need to act was still very much a symbolic learning action. .
However, many fishers still held thoughts of getting as much fish as they could
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before the marine reserve was established and fishing was off limits in that specific
areas. Most were not ready to change their economic activities. Nevertheless, this
was only the first collective and awareness-raising activity for many. Many villagers
created the opening ceremony and put together the reserve’s marker buoys.
These actions laid a foundation for future awareness building activities to directly
protect and rehabilitate the coastal resources. They were beginning to participate
in activities where they would assimilate environmental practices that would contest
their past relationships with their coastal environment, and perhaps transform their
way of thinking and actions toward their coastal resources. “This is how we wanted
changes to occur,” said IMA-V staff.
Learning to Guard the Marine Environment
Guarding the reef was an informal and incidental learning activity that
involved the Core Group and a few other village men. Through this activity, the
guards became protectors of resources at Trao Reef that they used to exploit. It
was the only daily activity that began during the project and would continue after
the end of funding support. This activity incrementally transformed the Core Group
from fishermen to passive guards to activists that learned new ways to implement
their protection activities.
Several villagers said, “Prior to the project, we thought only about exploiting
the coastal areas...we fished, we cultured lobster, snails and crabs, and dug for
mollusks ... We knew that the resources were decreasing but most of us were
getting by.” According to local residents and confirmed by NIO and University of
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Fisheries research, the marine resources were decreasing rapidly—ranging from
50% to 90%, depending on the species, in the last decade. The IMA-V project and
its reserve creation and monitoring activities gave many community residents, but
the Core Group of nine men, in particular, hands-on experiences protecting and
caring for the marine environment. One member said:
At first, we just knew we were building something...everyday we came
here [to one of the Core Group members’ homes] and talked...and
learned. After the district had agreed to establish the marine reserve, we
had a lot of work to do. The first few weeks were extremely difficult.. .the
area was marked with plastic marker buoys that we had painted red. But
many people still didn’t know about the reserve so they would come by at
night and let out their long lines and catch the buoys as well as fish.
Others, not from our community, had faster boats...we couldn’t catch
them...At first, we didn’t have guard house. We had to build that later.
Every night we worked in pairs and we went out in our boats. We strapped
our boats together and anchored away from the reef...IMA told us
that...One of us would try to sleep, but we couldn’t sleep at all., .it was very
difficult. We couldn’t sleep or rest and the sea was often rough. After Tet
Nguyen Dan (the Vietnamese New Year in early February of 2002), we
had the reserve’s opening and we were ready to begin guarding.
In June (2002), three months after the opening and 10 months after the
initiation of the project, IMA-V facilitated the next phase in this program to build the
guardhouse. Acting to guard the reef involved not only learning the purpose and
the legal foundation for guarding, but also, perhaps more significantly, creating a
place to integrate, assimilate and to enact that knowledge. The place to enact this
knowledge was the reserve’s guardhouse. It was built over several nights in June
by taking advantage of the low tide at that time when the reef was partially
exposed. This part of the reef is made up of dead coral. Mostly men, but also a
couple of women (wives) volunteered to pour the cement and set the frame to mark
the protected area. Some of the men said, “We went at night for two reasons...it
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was June already and it was too hot during the day time. Also, we needed to go
when the water was low, exposing the reef.” The men, between mixing cement,
smoked cigarettes and drank tea. Two of the women stoked a small fire to heat
water for tea. “We mixed the rock and sand, and made the cement. On the first
night we installed the reef marker—a 4-meter high metal marker topped with a
reflective red triangle. We were all tired and weary after the first night...and we
were all proud that we could accomplish this task together,” several guard house
builders commented.
It was a true collective effort and the participants shared knowledge and
learned how to initiate a marine reserve at the same time. Some knew more about
mixing cement. Others knew more about the tides. Each participant contributed
something to the effort and this contributed to creating a collective consciousness
about the environment. Some participants commented, ‘We didn’t realize it
then...but it was the beginning for us...to think about how to protect this small area
from destructive fishing practices...we had each other...and we felt stronger
because it was our village...our friends.” The next night, they poured cement and
set posts for their first guardhouse in the reserve. Back on shore, others cut the
soft coconut boards into three-meter lengths and prepared the roofing boards and
log staircase.
When construction was finally completed, after three nights, the men were
eager to move in. Courtesy of funding from IMA-V, they equipped the house with a
small charcoal cooking stove, mats for sleeping, and a battery powered TV for
diversion on the long nights at the reserve, three kilometers out into the sea.
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Guard duties had a new home and the dozens of villagers who participated had a
sense of collective accomplishment. Some Core Group members said:
We got to build the guard house with our materials and our hands...it wasn’t
the Department of Fisheries or some company...we felt it was ours to
protect. We had pride in our work and each day on the job, we saw the
benefit...there were more fish...it really didn’t happen right away...but after
some months, we could see the differences. Vietnamese villagers have a
history of taking care of their community property...usually on land, but now
on the sea. This was hard...we didn’t know how to guard...we had never
done it...now it was our experience to learn.
During the beginning phases of guarding the reef, the Core Group,
protecting the reserve, could have given up, but they did not. They were gaining
first hand experiences of establishing and guarding a protected area. They
learned and they enacted that learning. They continued to learn through building,
piloting, monitoring and sharing their experiences with other villagers.
Learning Marine Resource Protection: Science, Laws and Communication
One of the main non-formal and informal learning activities for the Core
Group in IMA-V’s project was training to guard the marine reserve. They learned
how to guard by guarding, confronting resource exploiters with charm and a small
book of regulations explaining the rules of the reserve. Once the advocacy group
had helped to raise community awareness about the impeding marine reserve
regulations and the Commune and District’s People’s Committee had approved
them, the guards had stronger legal foundation to protect the reserve. The reserve
actually opened in March 2002, but the official regulations were not approved by
the District’s People’s Committee until June, and that was when the guardhouse
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was built. “We had to communicate our ideas about the reserve and our
intentions...it was difficult...we had some regulations...we showed these to fishers
and divers...they were in the reserve...and we educated them about the
regulations,” explained one Core Group member.
However, before guarding began, IMA-V’s conducted a training program for
The Core Group, some officials and some advocates, participated in a series of
non-formal education workshops. IMA-V’s approach to raising awareness about
marine protection issues was to provide a foundation of scientific knowledge about
coral reefs, and legal knowledge about the fishing regulations and communication
strategies. “It was all new for me,” said many of the participants. One continued, “I
was a farmer and charcoal maker...but I heard that lobster farming would make me
rich so I saved every bit of money and borrowed some to raise lobsters...I didn’t
know about the resources under the sea...I didn’t know about any regulations.”
Several of the officials said...”We didn’t go out on the sea much...we didn’t think
about what affected the resources there...most of us know nothing about what is
under the sea.”
IMA-V explained, “We facilitated workshops that had a lot of group activities,
discussions and time for participants to explain what they know and understand
about coastal resources.” These were non-formal learning approaches designed to
increase villagers’ awareness about marine biodiversity, fishing regulations and
communication skills. Several participants commented, “We learned about what
corals do...how they provide resources for the fingerlings (lobster and shrimp) and
how they protect the shoreline...we learned how to talk to other people about this.”
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Group activities, where the participants brainstormed ideas about how to talk to
someone breaking the regulations, gave each participant some ways of sharing,
comparing and testing communication strategies in the comfort of friends in the
workshop. “It was not easy for me to explain why to protect the fish...the corals...”
said one Core Group member. Another added, “I had done cyanide diving before
and it was illegal...and now I would be stopping people from doing that...but IMA
changed how I thought about my livelihood...” Several others had similar opinions.
As they began to guard days and nights, they had new experiences as protectors of
marine resources rather than exploiters.
The original issues to regulate were fishing with cyanide and dynamite, and
anchoring on the reef, activities that immediately damage the coral reef. An IMA-V
staff reported “When we first went out to view the reefs in 2000, dynamite fishing
was going on around us.. .we also met divers who reluctantly admitted that ‘some’
used cyanide to catch fish.” These concerns largely disappeared as the reserve
was opened, so the secondary concerns of exploitative fishing in the reefs became
the main issue. No fishing was allowed in the core zone of 25 hectares, where the
best coral had survived and where the guardhouse was now stationed. A Core
Group member explained:
In the past, marine regulations were based on state fishing policy that
mostly was not enforced...now we needed to enforce our community
regulations. Some of us...sure...we didn’t follow the regulations...no one
would do it...now we had to do it [follow and enforce the regulations]. The
advocates and others talked with the fishermen in the commune and asked
for inputs into the regulations...there was not much change from the
original ideas but we had the community confirming their agreement by
signing the regulations.
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A variety of state and social actors also played significant roles in
developing the policy and in monitoring it. However, the Core Group did not have
the authority to fine regulation violators, so all they could do was talk with individual
fishing boats. When they caught any violators, they reported boat license numbers
to the Department of Fisheries and the Border Patrol, who were responsible for
enforcing fishing laws.
The Trao Reef Reserve Core Group learned to protect their marine reserve
through specific policy and enforcement actions that they enacted. So often, at 3 or
4:00 a.m., a pair of Core Group guards rustled themselves off their sleeping mats,
started up their small diesel motor on their guard boat and went out to meet their
duty—informally educating the fishing violators about the marine reserve and its
regulations. A Core Group guard said:
Many nights were difficult,” said a CG guard. “At first, we saw violators,
but we couldn’t catch them. By the time we got into our boat, they were
gone. Also, lobster farmers kept on bringing their cages closer and closer
to the reserve. They wouldn’t move them. Sometime, we went out and
talked to the fishing violators. They often used long lines. There boats
were outside of the reserve, but their fishing lines were inside. Many
times, they would claim that they didn’t know the rules...because they
weren’t from our village...they were from neighboring villages. They would
usually leave and the next night might come back again. We learned that
we had to be more active. We had to [leave the guard house and] get out
in our boats almost every night.
Furthermore, the Core Group had to learn to communicate with the local
Border Military, which had responsibility for actually enforcing the community-
developed regulations for Trao Reef Marine Reserve. During the first several
months, the Core Group hesitated to interact with the Border Military. IMA-V
facilitated the two groups cooperation and collaboration by inviting Border Military
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staff to dialogue with the Core Group through visits to various fishers who were
violating the reserve’s regulations. After a couple of collaborative enforcement
activities with the Border Military, our relationships became better [and] they [the
Border Patrol] now come and enforce regulations and issue fines right away,”
expressed one of the CG members. In Vietnam this has been a challenging
process of changing who and how regulations are enforced “because it is very
hierarchical,” said several villagers involved with this project. So, the villagers took
incremental steps to increase their role in protecting the reef by communication
both with IMA-V and the Border Patrol. Over the past two years, the Core Group
and the Border Patrol have become more effective collaborators. “No one has
lobster cages close to the reserve any anymore and there haven’t been any more
fishing violations...the Border Patrol work very well with us now and takes care of
any violations right away,” said one of the Core Group members.
The Core Group’s actions showed their persistence to learn together and
to actually protect the reef. Their common experiences built solidarity among the
group and increased their empowerment to communicate with state authorities and
to enact policies that they could take ownership over—the policies of protecting the
reef from illegal fishing and encroachment of aquaculture. Incrementally, the Core
Group was gaining further experiences in acting for the environment. Guarding
was not an easy job. There were fish out there that could easily be caught and
brought to market. But instead of exploiting the reserve, the Core Group protected
the marine ecosystem.
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Learning to guard was a process-oriented activity. The People’s Committee
approved these regulations as a part of the district level fishing laws. Liaising with
the authorities in order to enforce the regulations, the Core Group contested
hierarchical relationships with the state Border Patrol authorities. Through
experiences, they assimilated a variety of communication strategies—dialogues,
and facilitated meetings, for example—to enact the regulations. Their actual
guarding practices gave meaning to participatory nature of the co-management
approach, where the community and locally based officials worked together to
protect the marine resources. IMA-V acted as a catalyst to bring together state
actors and villagers, and the organization’s intervention provided more liaison
experiences for the villagers, and enhanced the villagers’ access to policy makers
and impiementers.
Reef Rehabilitation and Coral Farming
This was another informal, learning in environmental action activity. The
Core Group was not only protecting the coral and marine species that were still in
the reserve, they, along with other villagers, were also involved in actively
rehabilitating the marine environments, so hopefully, the marine resources would
improve and increase. This added to their experiences of hands on activities to
protect the environment. Learning was largely informal and incidental allowing
additional experiences for participants to assimilate additional conservation ideas
and practices of rehabilitating coral reefs and coral farming. According to IMA’s
experiences in the Philippines, one way to rehabilitate a reef is to create an artificial
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reef that serves to attract new coral polyps and to transplant coral for coral farming.
This activity mainly involved the Core Group and some divers.
During two separate occasions, once during the opening and later, during
the last year of the project, IMA-V initiated an artificial reef and coral farming
program. The second occasion also included building a research and work raft to
transport the cement, artificial reef cylinders to the reef. The Core Group and a few
other men from the community built each cement cylinder and the entire raft. This
involved a process of mixing the concrete, learning where to put holes for water
and fish to pass through and how to design the raft so that it could support the
weight of the concrete cylinders. As in the creation of the guardhouse and marine
reserve marker, all of the villagers involved could put their construction skills to
work on this program. While the IMA-V staff facilitated, the villagers discussed the
designs and materials they would use. After a few days of community members,
mostly from the Core
Group, mixing cement and creating molds, over 40 cylinders were ready to be laid.
The morning arrived to lay the reef. The raft, supported by large one
hundred liter plastic drums, and also constructed by the Core Group, floated on the
rising tide. The coconut wood boards were soft and smooth. Laying planks of the
wood from the raft to the shore, the men rolled the cylinders on to the raft and
prepared to set sail. Two small boats pulled the raft out to the reserve. One of the
villagers, the oldest fisherman in the group, had his eye out for the boundary areas.
The previous marker buoys had been cut or had been washed away in storms.
Upon reaching the reserve’s northern boundary, the old fisherman indicated that it
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was the right place to lay the first of the artificial reefs. .they are for marker
buoys, mooring and for getting more substrate into the core zone,” explained one
Core Group member. Some of the men steadied the cylinders and lowered them.
Others, the divers with tubes in their mouths from the air pumping compressors,
lowered the cylinders into the water and secured the mooring and marker buoy
chains. “We easily laid one cylinder after another,” said one of the divers.
However, during the installation, some of the cylinders collapsed and pieces of the
raft broke off, but overall, the men prepared over 40 well-built cylinders and several
coral farming boxes to set up this rehabilitation program.
This step in the process continued for several days and soon the reserve
had a clear system of marker and mooring buoys and boxes for coral farming. The
next step also involved the divers. “Our job was to find the branching coral and to
break-off small pieces to establish a new coral area,” said one of the divers.
Similar to taking tree or plant cuttings, coral can also be cut and replanted. IMA
has practiced coral farming for rehabilitation purposes in the Philippines, and has
extensive experience, but would it work here? Some men dove for cuttings and
others stayed on the raft and tied cuttings to dead coral stones that had been
collected earlier. “Put the cutting into the holes,” said one of the men. Each cutting
was put into a hole in the dead coral or rock and tied with fishing line to secure it.
Then, the divers brought the pieces down to the artificial reef and coral farming
sites for transplantation.
This program indicated the participatory nature of IMA-V’s approach to
marine conservation activities. IMA-V let the villagers make the decisions and
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stood back as the pieces of the artificial reef work were put together. Moreover, the
villagers, mainly the Core Group shared their local knowledge, and at the same
time, created new experiences of establishing an artificial reef. IMA-V explained:
Much of the learning should come from the community...not us...we want
to be in the position of facilitation and not leading...the artificial reef showed
that the villagers know how to do this work once they have a model to work
with.
Several participants added:
Moreover, we saw that we could directly rehabilitate the
environment...and...after a few months, we could immediately see the
difference in the number of fish...there were many more that liked to swim
and stay in the artificial reefs and there were more [and] bigger fish too.
While the Core Group and a few community members were able to share
some of their experiential knowledge, they also had new learning experiences of
making and installing artificially reefs and in seeing the return of fish and the growth
of coral. By observing these changes that they helped to bring about, they learned
that their environmental actions could make a significant difference in improving the
ecology within the marine reserve. “We started to realize that we could make a
difference and that we could improve our marine resources,” said one Core Group
member.
Monitoring Environmental Changes: Divers as researchers
Dive monitoring was a non-formal program in basic underwater research
and dive safety. The project aimed to include divers as monitors who would protect
the reef rather than extract its resources. Changing the local divers’ perspective
and practices was an important objective of the project. According to IMA-V,
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“divers were some of the most persistent threats to the reef. These are not the
recreational divers, but those who dive to capture coral reef species, tropical fish,
mollusks and corals to sell at high prices.” Divers responded “We are poor...but I
can catch many lobster and shrimp fingerlings (the baby lobsters and shrimp) that
live in the coral reefs during the [fingerling] season...that can make me a rich man.”
The reserve was an area that was particularly well known for its quantity of lobster
fingerlings, however, now this area was off limits to any exploitation. “It was difficult
to lose this area explained another diver. But, IMA-V was hoping to get divers
involved in marine conservation through monitoring, awareness, and alternative
approaches to dive fishing. IMA-V collaborated with the nearby NIO research
scientists and conducted an underwater monitoring training program for local
divers, who learned to dive safely, conduct monitoring research, and protect the
native coral reefs. “If they dive safely, perhaps they will be healthier and live
longer,” explained one trainer.
NIO organized and conducted this non-formal training program. First, they
presented a lecture on dive safety followed by a practice session. Safety training is
important because the divers use what they can afford, which is compressed air fed
to them through long hoses. Sometimes the cheap hoses get pinched and the
divers have to surface for air rapidly. This system leaves them susceptible to
illness caused by rapid ascents. “We can only afford this...we have to be
careful...,” said one of the divers. While diving safely was one goal, another was to
persuade divers to become reef monitors.
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The second part of the program specifically focused on monitoring. The
divers learned the Manta Tow, monitoring technique. This empirical technique is
done in pairs with each pair swimming along a marked transect along the sea floor
while recording specific species data. With NIO instructing, modeling and
mentoring, the divers learned what to look for specifically, how to record data on
the underwater writable tablets, and how to perform spot checks. One of the newly
trained dives said, “We recorded fish, coral, mollusk and sea grass species.” The
process took a long time as transects were marked and mentors from the NIO
paired with the village divers and recorded data. “Marking transects and swimming
slowly so that we could get a precise count were the most important,” explained
one of the NIO researchers. Later on, some of the divers said, “We all saw that the
coral reef was recovering.. .and we are happy to see the success of the coral
growing...and the fish area coming back...there are so many fish swimming around
the artificial reefs.”
The monitoring created new participation opportunities for the divers. They
were asked to be involved in scientific research. This not only allowed them to learn
from experts, but also to share some of there situated knowledge of the reefs. At
the least, this was an awareness-raising experience for some of the divers. A
small coral growing on a stone as well as the increasing numbers of fish seemed to
inspire. A diver said:
Before, we just thought of the coral reef as a kind of exploitable
resource...now we see we can improve it...help more fish to come
back...help coral to grow. We could see [after some time] that the reserve
was working. We protected it and the fish came back and the coral grew.
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The divers did not keep this experientiaily learned knowledge to themselves
though. Over the next several months, they became regular participants in reef
monitoring and restoration activities. They also worked with the Core Group and
advocates during this process and invited other community members out to the
reserve for their own study tours. They talked about their work and showed other
their success. By sharing their experience with others, the divers gradually
contributed to a growing collective environmental ethic to care for the coral reef.
“We can change this place...we can rehabilitate it and help the fish come back,”
said some villagers. Their own experience in taking environmental action and in
observing their work through monitoring contributed to their growing care for the
marine environment through collective action. This growing care for the
environment also began to concretely involve other community issues.
Raising-awareness and Taking Action on Trash
Both the Youth Union and the Women’s Union of Van Hung Commune
participated in project environmental actions raising their awareness on trash
issues. But, both organizations also had concerns about trash. Both organizations
had planks in their organizational documents that showed their interest in a clean
and green environment and most of their previous environmental activities,
community cleanups and tree plantings had taken place on land. W e are
responsible for the village’s environmental hygiene,” said a Women’s Union
member. A Youth Union member explained, “We have responsibilities to
rehabilitate and protect the environment and make it green again.”
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Despite these organizational interests, Van Hung villagers did not seem to
pay too much attention to where they threw their plastic bags, tins and boxes, food
waste, and even human waste. IMA-V activities stimulated new community
dialogues and actions on this issue. IMA-V encouraged additional clean up
activities with ICC activities that increased community awareness on coastal trash
issues. “We didn’t really think too much about cleaning up the seashore...and we
threw a lot of waste into the sea...where we thought it disappeared...” said one
woman.
The ICC kicked off broader community awareness on trash, which could be
found in front of homes, along the shoreline of each village and in the market. It
was a real hazard,” continued the IMA-V staff. “We introduced the concept of ICC
to the People’s Committee and the advocates who immediately liked the idea. A
district official stated, “We [the government] don’t have money to collect all this
trash.. .and... IMA wants to do it with the people... is a great tradition.” The ICC was
not only informal and incidental learning about the cleaning up the environment.
IMA-V also had a non-formal learning component for the youth, in particular. “We
want the youth to be involved in the project because they can be the future
environmental leaders of this community,” and IMA-V staff said.
The evening prior to the clean up, we had a small program on marine
biodiversity education, that included songs and games. The Youth Union was
central in this. IMA-staff presented a short lecture on marine biodiversity in general
and on the benefits of coral reefs and the perils of environmental degradation, in
particular. They showed lots of pictures and gave explanations for each one. After
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a refreshment break, the youth formed groups and created short skits on protecting
the environment based on what they had learned. One group’s story showed how
killing coral would cause the fish to disappear. “It would make everyone poor,”
concluded one youth. Another explained what happens to the corals and the fish
when plastic bags cover the coral reef. “The coral and the fish that live there
would not get their nutrients,” said another youth. The meeting ended with a
rendition of Que Em Van Khuc Tinh Ca (My home village is full of love) composed
by Quoc Ton that expressed the villagers’ love for their village because of its
cheerful people and beautiful nature. Several youth (actually young adults around
18-23) said, “It’s fun to get together with the Youth Union...and learn something
too...IMA has been a great inspiration for us to keep our environment clean.”
The clean up began at 7:00 a.m. the following morning. The sun already
shone intensely in the eastern sky reflecting hues of orange and gold off the still
calm water of Van Phong Bay. Women’s Union, Veterans, and Youth Union
organizers had contacted their members and they congregated at locations, either
assigned by IMA-V or determined by the villagers, which needed to be cleaned up.
Each group, wearing hats, long sleeves, long pants, and bandanas to protect
against the now burning sun, got started raking up debris along one kilometer of
beach. The youth cleaned up in one section. Women worked in front of the village
meeting places, and a mixed group of men and women cleaned up their community
spaces. An additional group went out to their lobster cages to clean the nets.
Some villagers sang ballads from years ago as they worked. One was Tinh Que
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(My loving village), also composed by Quoc Ton that explains how two lovers return
to their home village and find love at the seashore, and in the fields and the forests.
As the clean up ended, the participants stood behind the piles of trash that
they had raked up and prepared to burn. IMA-V staff and leaders from the
Women’s Union, the Youth Union, the War Veterans and the Elderly Association
passed out IMA logo caps and educational booklets telling about the riches of the
coral reefs and the importance in protecting them. An effortful, hot morning had
ended, and hundreds of villagers had a collective experience directly improving
their communities’ coastal environmental conditions.
The ICC was not necessarily the most important learning event to protect or
rehabilitate the coral reef; however, it was a significant event in getting active,
community-wide participation in environmental issues. “The ICC was a major event
for us and the community experience brought about a lot of awareness,” said a WU
leader. The Women’s Union, the Youth Union, the War Veterans and other social
organizations that had large memberships throughout the commune all
participated. It pointed to the strength of the community’s social organizations in
contributing to community solidarity. “We are proud of our community and are glad
to mobilize to improve it,” explained one member of the War Veterans group. “In
our village, this is how we organize popular actions to improve and protect our
community,” he added. Furthermore, it was IMA-V’s first and its only ongoing
community-wide event, and it showed villagers IMA-V’s approach to environmental
issues. It was not talking approach. It was an action approach. The collective
nature of the activities and the ICC again seemed to be an important factor in the
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community’s learning about and in acting for the environment—in this case, acting
to keep their villages clean.
Women Problematize and Act on Community Trash
The ICC helped raise community awareness about trash. A group of
women, led by the commune’s Women’s Union, translated that awareness into
action. During the ICC, the volunteers raked up considerable amounts of debris
consisted of plastic bags, papers and organic trash, such as coconut palms. The
trash on land was piled up and burned. “It is easier to burn the trash than to take it
away,” explained one man who was coordinating the cleanup. However, some
people realized that trash burning was not environmentally sound. "It should be
collected and disposed of properly,” said a few others in the group. Several people,
notable women, dialogued on the issue and suggest that something more
permanent be put into action. ‘We should collect and dispose of the trash in a
suitable way,” said one woman.
After initial facilitation by IMA-V, the Women’s Union took responsibility for
this issue. Several members from the WU got together and decided the
organization should take more positive steps in solving their trash issue. They
explained:
Shortly after the ICC, “...we had meetings in one WU member’s home in
each village. We needed to have a more permanent response to our waste
issues,” said one women organizer. She added, “Women mostly have the
responsibility for household expenses, so first we talked with women and
sometimes with men who came too...but mostly with women. Most people
said that about 8000 VND$/month (50 cents US) was acceptable for a
trash fee. People said that the most important place was the market area.
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People cleaned up at their own homes...and usually burned the trash there
and recycled many things. We brought the information to the [commune’s]
People’s Committee and made a recommendation to charge every
household in the community a fee of 8000 VND$.
One Commune leader commented, “The villagers took the initiative and
have been able to achieve a self-supporting program.” Nine women are involved in
collecting the trash with a small monthly salary of 30,000 VND$, a poor wage
(about $20 USD). “We don’t do it for the money, we do it to keep our community
clean,” said one of the women. “IMA raised our awareness about trash... we had
thought about it for a long time, but hadn’t done anything,” said one woman. The
collective agency of the WU also seemed to be a factor in pushing people to
address trash. “All of the women felt it was really a problem for them and their
children’s hygiene,” said another women.
This process of being involved in collective actions for the environment, the
ICC, contributed to collective action on trash. In addition, a group of women
specifically problematized the issued, and developed and implemented a specific
action plan to clean up the community. The change, from being aware of
household trash to wanting to take actions on community trash, indicated
community changes in perspective on this issue. The community was constructing
a new symbolic social definition of how it viewed trash. Trash was becoming a
community social issue rather than an individual issue. Overall, this transformation
from trash as no one’s problem to trash as the community’s problem has indicated
how participation, deliberate action and decision-making along with direct
experiences to clean up the environment can bring about social and environmental
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changes. These changes were not only in community practices, but also changes
in who participates in initiating and implementing environmental actions and policy.
In this case, it was a group of women, through the WU, who initiated deliberate
community environmental change.
This, therefore, also illustrates how NGOs, such as IMA-V can create public
space for collective actions for the environment, where social actors’ roles may be
enhanced or changed, such as in the case of women in Van Hung. In this case,
ICC activities and women’s concerns meshed well. Under the organization of the
WU, women were empowered, problematizing and acting on the trash issue. As
this example shows, during the project, Van Hung villagers had numerous
opportunities to learn informally and incidentally through the project’s activities.
Some of this learning was empowering and changed how the community
participated and learned both within projects activities and apart from project
activities.
Summary: Learning through Environmental Action
The previous section of learning through environmental action began with
the opening of the marine reserve and included building the guard house, guarding
and communicating guarding needs, constructing and installing marker buoys and
an artificial reef, engaging in underwater monitoring, community cleanups, and its
new trash program. These were all examples of learning in environmental action.
The villagers participated in deliberate and direct actions through informal activities
to rehabilitate and protect the marine resources accessed by their community.
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Some of this learning had a non-formal foundation with specific learning objectives,
such as understanding marine biodiversity, fishing regulations, dive safety
practices, underwater monitoring criteria, and communication skills. Nevertheless,
much of the non-formal learning only became evident when the villagers
participated in informal experiential learning activities and acted. This was very
evident in the evolving guarding activities and in the community’s new trash
collection program implemented and managed by local women.
The participants, the Core Group members and the divers, acted to directly
protect the marine reserve, enforced the fishing regulations, communicated policies
and monitored changes under the sea. Over the course of these non-formal and
informal learning experiences, the participants assimilated experiences, knowledge
and practices that could contribute to transforming their understanding, and agency
in coastal resource management. Learning through action, therefore, increased
learning directly through environmental experiences. The informal learning
contexts seemed to increase collective participation and learning, leading to more
solidarity, empowerment, and critical praxis. Villagers, who had not considered the
need to conserve, rehabilitate, or enhance their coastal resources, were now doing
so, not because some state agency told them to, but because they had
accumulated and integrated numerous experiences doing so. They saw and felt
that their work made a difference in improving their coastal resource base. While a
few outstanding issues remained, those who participated in these activities
changed from being exploiters to protectors and nurturers of coral reef life. The
next section looks at learning from other communities.
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Learning and Reflecting on Others’ Coastal Resource Experiences
This section presents findings and an analysis on villagers’ learning about
MPA management and AIG activities through study tours. This was an important
part of the process for villagers to gain awareness and to dialogue with other
communities that were involved in similar coastal resource issues of conservation
and development. IMA-V set up these informal learning contexts where villagers
could incidentally learn from other marine reserve projects and other villagers’ trials
with environmentally friendly aquaculture. Through visiting and talking with other
communities, Van Hung villagers had new knowledge and experience to reflect on
their own situation with Trao Reef. The study tours, thus, provided additional space
to be more critical about and contest their community and their project’s
environmental practices.
Consciousness-raising Study Tours
IMA-V organized several study tours for local residents to leam about how
other villagers were involved with managing their local MPA, and how to pilot
environmentally friendly livelihoods. One of the study tours was to the Hon Mun
Pilot project. IMA-V staff said, “We learned from study tours to the Philippines and
we felt that the community members could learn from others too.” Villagers from
Van Hung were involved in informal learning through activities to see others’ MPA
and AIG activities, as well as through dialogues with each other, where they shared
experiences. IMA-V villagers reflected on these experiences vis-a-vis their own
and realized some of the strengths and weaknesses of their community.
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A Van Hung villager explained, “After a 90-minute dusty bus ride on
National Highway 1 south from Van Hung to Nha Trang, we arrived at the Hon Mun
Project offices in Nha Trang, where the staff there gave us a brief introduction to
the project...It is a very big MPA with lots of staff and money,” commented one
participant as we sat in an air-conditioned room and watched a Power Point
presentation. The presentation introduced everyone to the environmental, social
and policy context. “It looks very organized,” said a participant. Everyone was
given a Hon Mun Project notebook and pen, the project’s awareness raising tools
before leaving for the islands several miles away.
“We learned about the magnificent corals, composting toilets, seaweed jelly
making and seaweed farming...Hon Mun corals are magnificent and so many
divers come to see them...Ran Trao (Trao Reef}...is not as beautiful,” commented
many participants. The Hon Mun coral reefs, island fringe coral, are some of the
best remaining reef structures in Vietnam with 80-90% coverage remaining in the
core zone around Hon Mun (IUCN, 2001), while the reefs around Trao Reef are
patch corals and not any where near as extensive or beautiful. Some villagers still
indicated belief in some kind of tourism in their own villages though, “we cannot
have the same tourism as Hon Mun,” they said.
In addition to visiting the coral reef, the participants learned about
seaweed—both growing it and eating it. One participant explained:
We saw how seaweed is strung out on long lines and tied and it looks very
easy to take care of...but Hon Mun is different and the water [current] is a
lot stronger there...our bay is mostly calm and has a lot of rabbit fish that
eat seaweed and sea grass.. .so we can’t grow it like this.
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They also met with villagers in two Hon Mun project villages and learned about
seaweed jelly making. “It is a tasty product and easy to grow and make...we could
try it too,” explained one woman in between eating small spoonfuls of ginger jelly.
However, they were not sure where they could sell it.
“The study tours showed us that we were doing some things well and how
we could improve,” said one of the participants. “Our reserve is more locally
managed than others [Hon Mun} and we have more influence on the regulations
and activities in the MPA,” another participant said. Some added, “We realized
...we had learned something and could have control over our resources ...but that
we shouldn’t grow seaweed because we don’t have the right conditions”. Others
expressed “we are happy that we have IMA-V leading us because they help us
learn our own way...and gives us some control over our project.”
The study tours provide new opportunities for project participants. For
many, the study tour was an opportunity for new experiences for many villagers
who only left home to visit family at the New Year. This presented a dilemma to
some, and especially for women, as many were not expected to be away from their
homes for an entire day. Men too had work or chores that required their daily
attention. So arrangement for learning had to be made with other family members.
Therefore, this became a significant commitment to taking power over one’s own
learning. Also significantly, participants learned directly from others experiences,
compared those experiences to their own situation, and added this knowledge to
their understanding of what an MPA could be. In other words, the study tours
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raised their consciousness, inviting their critical reflection on their environmental
situation.
Furthermore, this was a change from learning from experts only. During the
study tour, they learned informally and directly from other villagers such as
themselves. Many also did reflect on what they had learned in their project in
comparison to the Hon Mun Project. Van Hung villagers learned from others that
their project provided more opportunities for their control and benefit. The study
tour was also a change in perspective about the tourism and AIG potential of Trao
Reef. They learned that their resources were not as remarkable as those in Hon
Mun and that some AIG activities, though successful in nearby coastal
communities, might have difficulty in their community.
Summary: Learning and R eflecting on Others’ Experiences
Like other IMA-V programs, the study tour was also an activity where
participants had a collective learning experience. With this collective knowledge
of what the Hon Mun MPA villages were doing, participants in IMA-V’s project
increasingly contested project activities that they, generally, did not support, such
as growing seaweed, and proposed actions that they thought could enhance the
ecological and financial sustainability of their reserve. This experience, like other
informal learning experiences contributed to the villager’s incremental
transformation in the decision-making realm. IMA-V’s informal and participatory
learning approaches encouraged not only the villagers’ physical participation, but
their access to decision-making as well.
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Participating in and Deliberating Environmental Issues
This next section focuses not on direct environmental actions, but political
actions to raise awareness, advocate for and deliberately protect the environment.
These actions were rooted in project advocacy and policy shaping programs that
complemented a local environmental ethic evident in several individuals’ leadership
and mobilization of their social organizations such as the War Veterans and
Women’s Union. IMA-V shaped policy by facilitating the creation of two new
people’s organizations, the Core Group and the Advocates. These two new
organizations created transformative learning opportunities for those involved, and
led to changes in how the commune made and implemented coastal resource
policy. The nine-member Core Group was the result of a popular commune
election, approved of by the District’s People’s Committee. One member, though,
was appointed from the Border Patrol, which has regulatory authority in marine
issues. The Advocates emerged through IMA-V’s non-formal training of trainer’s
program in addition to a few community members’ initiative. These programs
contributed to an identifiable political transformation that saw many village residents
participate and deliberate in the coastal resource policy-making process for the first
time. IMA-V’s project contributed to creating this change.
Creating Democratic Practices
One of the initial activities set a participatory decision-making tone for the
project. Rather than appointing local project managers, as state guided projects
would, or hire them as staff, as other NGO projects, such as what lUCN’s had
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done, IMA-V proposed, and the local People’s Council and People’s Committee
implemented, an election of the Core Group, who would have the responsibility for
guarding and managing the reef on a fulltime, 24-hour a day basis. This was an
informal learning activity where and the core group experientially learned how to
participate in democratic and policy-making process.
Although the election slate had been approved by the People’s Committee,
12 villagers were listed and only eight could be elected. A few nights before the
opening ceremonies, 96% of the villagers voted and an eight men member Core
Group was elected. They represented the village, but they also had a participatory
role in implementing and assessing policy. ‘The men elected are very hard working
and knowledgeable about the sea.. .We were proud we could vote for the
participants in this project.. .the guards and take some control over our nearby
resources for the first time,” said several voters. The men that the villagers chose
represented village leaders whom the other villagers respected for their knowledge
and wisdom. Some of the men on the election list were also considered
economically poor and IMA-V asserted the need to have the poor fishermen
represented in the Core Group.
For the first time in this village, residents, outside of the government, had
some participatory role in implementing regulations. Some Core Group members
stated:
We never had a voice in policy development and our daily practice at the
reef [reserve] gave us some ideas of how to make policy better. We were
uncertain about all of this...the election gave us some responsibility...we
didn’t really realize this until now...we see we have the responsibility and
the authority to make change.
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Though the act of voting for membership to a community organization usually
produces a representative form of participation, this process, initiated by IMA-V,
also asserted the participatory nature of the project. “Villagers would vote, villagers
would discuss, villagers would decide, villagers would act,” explained one IMA-V
staff who quoted from the People’s Council Decree of 1992, “...the people know,
the people discuss, the people decide, the people act”. This election process made
those words more than thoughts on a piece of paper and put them into action.
Furthermore, this process complemented village democracy articles under the
General Democracy Decree, issued in 1998, stating that communes and villages
have the authority to control access to and benefit from local natural resources.
Despite having the law, it has been little practiced.
The creation and election of the Core Group fit into this evolving law. The
election and the Core Group’s involvement in natural resource management policy,
though, was only a small contribution to popular participation on these issues. A
non-elected group, the Advocates, a popularly organized group—perhaps a mini
social movement—in the district, organized community dialogues, raising
awareness and advocating for conservation of their locally managed marine
reserve. This group’s activities are presented next.
Learning Participatory Democracy through Advocacy
One of the most significant impacts of the project was facilitating the work of
the Advocates, many of whom had participated in non-formal training sessions, but
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moreover, individuals who were already interested in protecting the environment. A
group formed, the Advocates, provided the base for what could be identified as a
genuine small, localized social action group to protect Trao Reef and the
commune’s immediate coastal environment. A fisher turned advocate explained,
“The fishing resources have decreased so much over the past few years...we need
to do something to change this...there is no fish...[so] there is no money...we have
to find some other kind of work.” To begin with, IMA-V organized a Marine
Biodiversity, Fishing Regulation and Communication skills non-formal training
program to provide expert created knowledge for the advocates to learn.
Initially, the advocacy training was a part of a non-formal training of trainers
program. It was a program similar to the one that IMA-V had conducted for the
district and commune officials earlier, before the project was approved. All five
villages in the commune were involved over a three day period. Much of the
information presented at this workshop was the content on coral reef ecosystems
and the recent research by NIO that IMA-V had sponsored. This provided the
Advocates with the same information that the state officials have received—the
quantitative and technical information about coral reefs and fishing regulations.
IMA-V set up participatory activities as part of the non-formal learning
process. An IMA- V staff explained, “On the first day, we introduced the
participants to brainstorming ideas...focusing on the problems of the community.
This was a process of facilitating the participants’ problematization of issues. “We
introduced the participation concepts and did some of the activities together, so that
they could see the how it worked.” The participants wrote down their own ideas on
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index-type cards, and collaboratively grouped the cards into similar themes.
Afterwards, the participants analyzed the ideas on the cards and grouped them up
into categories such as regulations, resource protection, resource exploitation—
issues for advocates to learn about and dialogue about with others. A staff
commented, “This was important because in Vietnam, we are used to people telling
us what to do. ..and actually, the officials are a bit hard to change, but some of the
community members interact quite easily and they can have dialogues.”
Advocates also participated in a non-formal program on the fishing
regulations. This was similar to extension training. A state officer from the
Fisheries Protection Department presented the fisheries regulations and facilitated
community problematization of fishing issues. This process showed differences in
villager and officials’ concerns. For example, he asked the participants for reasons
to protect the coral reef. The official said it was to protect marine biodiversity.
Somewhat more explicitly, the villagers responded based on their experiences—
“there are many lobster and fish fingerlings there during the spring...the fish there
can feed lobsters.” This pointed out the villagers’ interest in protection was for their
economic benefit.
This activity offered a non-formal training program plus numerous informal
learning opportunities for the Advocates to develop and share their views about the
environment. The Advocates’ learning practices of problematization and dialogue
promoted a sense that they and the villagers could identify and respond to
community problems. Furthermore, they could learn from each other. Sometimes
the facilitator moderated; other times participants talked directly with others in the
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workshop. People shared their ideas about local environmental and socio
economic problems such as “water pollution”, “not enough fish”, “poverty”, “few jobs
for women”, lack of training opportunities and several others. As in other activities,
participants discussed examples and categorized them—this time into social,
environmental, economic and training issues. This was a process through which
villages developed their own conceptual framework to understand community
problems that they had brought up. Such learning suggests that the villagers were
projecting new learning approaches to resolve community problems. As the
training of trainers program continued, village participants also suggested that they
set up an advocacy program and that they (the Advocates} work within their
organizations and communities to create knowledge, awareness and interest in
community protection of Trao Reef. This process contributed to expanding
awareness and critical praxis opportunities for community members, some of whom
were already committed to the environment.
Participatory Democracy in Action: Advocates’ dialogues
After the advocacy training course ended, the newly formed group, the
Advocates, agreed to try to talk with at least 50 households in the commune. This
was an informal learning activity that the advocates shared with their neighbors,
members of their social organizations, and interested villagers. Some of the
advocacy activities were field trips to the marine reserve, others were meetings,
and still, others were visits to fishermen’s homes. Rather than seeing a piece of
policy on paper, individual advocates went out into the community to share their
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interest and knowledge about the marine reserve and to get feedback from others
in their villagers.
“We had to inform everyone, but especially the fishermen about the new
regulations...the reasons for protecting the coastal resources,” said one advocate.
‘When everyone knows that the reserve is our reserve...our commune’s, they will
feel proud,” suggested another advocate. For some advocates, it was their first
time speaking about marine resource issues with their neighbors and friends. “It
was difficult, but t had the knowledge and could talk about it,” said another
advocate. Of course, some advocates had difficulties and were less active in
awareness raising activities. However, many advocates did reach out into the
community and dialogued with many villagers. “If we want to change our
livelihoods. ..make them better...we have to do this...to get everyone to support a
rehabilitated marine environment,” said one advocate.
One of the first tasks of the Advocates was to inform villagers about the
proposed marine reserve’s regulations. IMA-V staff explained:
After opening the reserve and setting up the groundwork with the People’s
Committee, we worked with the Core Group and the Advocates to set up
the preliminary regulations. We facilitated dialogs among officials, the
Project Management Board, the Core Group and the community at large.
The preliminary regulations followed the guidelines proposed nationally as required
by national law; however, regulations are specific to marine species and activities in
implementation is a cooperative activity between the villagers, represented by the
CG and the Border Military and Fisheries Protection Division. “We were very
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interested in their [IMA-V’s] ideas about regulations and supported their ongoing
work in the community,” People’s Committee members added.
On some occasions, the advocates, by foot and bicycle, went out
throughout the community to get ideas and feedback. One day, I followed one of
the Advocates. We went from house to house, talking mostly with older fishermen
about the new proposed marine regulations. “We really want to protect the reef,”
said most villagers, “and we are very proud to have the first locally managed
marine reserve in Vietnam.” Others questioned the Advocates about the proposed
regulations saying, “Why can’t we use cyanide...How does that affect the fish and
the coral? ... I haven’t seen any effect.” In such a case the Advocates would
respond with what they had learned about cyanide fishing. “It not only stuns the
fish, it also kills much of the coral organisms...it is already illegal in Vietnam...even
before these regulations.” The Advocates asked all fishers in the community to
sign the regulations to show their agreement to abide by them. According to the
Core Group, “There has been close to 100% compliance”. The Advocates affirmed
that their publicizing the reserve and its regulations has given almost everyone
knowledge about the reserve. Advocacy activities were furthered through the use
of local television, radio, newspaper and billboards. “During the first year, we
recorded environmental information that was publicized on the local radio and
television station,” explained one of the advocates.
In addition to building community consensus on their marine reserve’s
regulations, the Advocates’ number one informal learning activity were field trips—
called study tours—to the marine reserve at Trao Reef. These were informal
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learning activities with general goals of increasing the villagers’ awareness about
the marine reserve. There, they used dialogues to create awareness about marine
issues and the regulations. An advocate explained, “We brought more than 400
villagers to visit Trao Reef and see what their community is protecting...and gave
them more information about the Trao Reef Marine Reserve, its operation, its role
and importance in livelihood and local economic development.” Talks were with the
Women’s Union, the Farmers’ Association, the Elderly Association, and directly
with the fishermen. On the three kilometers boat ride out to the reef they talked
and had everyone introduce him or herself and chat with others. When the group
arrived at the reserve area, everyone climbed up to the log ladder stairway into the
guardhouse where one of the advocates gave a presentation and continued the
dialogues, inviting the community participants to learn more about the reserve.
Some went swimming around the reef and saw the fish and the beauty of the coral
first-hand.
The advocates in IMA-V’s project were a consensual program created
through dialogues between village officials and leaders from various social
organizations. IMA-V staff did not plan for the actual advocacy program that
resulted. IMA-V’s idea was much more formal and situated in social organizations,
and their knowledge of similar activities in the Philippines where some communities
have advocacy groups to publicize the local marine reserve. The villagers’ strategy
was an organic strategy at awareness-raising based on their own ideas and
previous experiences. It was an additional forum to expand villagers’ learning for
action, in giving and sharing ideas, and in developing awareness raising strategies
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and programs. “It was a community-wide experience that all participants could
draw from to enhance their understanding and actions to conserve their coastal
environment,” explained an IMA-V staff.
The Advocates took knowledge from the advocacy workshop, assimilated it
with their life experiences of organizing in the community, and for many, fishing.
They proceeded to create participatory experiences in democracy and learning
about marine resources by reaching out into the community, dialoguing, and
opening community access to decision-making on environmental policy, such as
the marine reserve’s regulations. Their advocacy not only created community-wide
awareness and interest in coastal environmental issues, but also empowered a
substantial number of community members to organize collectively, as advocates,
to be proponents for better environmental conditions. These collective experiences
further empowered the Advocates to become active in environmental policy
making. The Advocates and the Core Group organized several public meetings,
debated policy-making strategies and initiated several decision-making forums
where not only they, but also other community members deliberately participated in
shaping their local coastal resource policy.
Deliberating Policy
One of the most significant indicators of the Core Group and Advocates’
assimilative learning of transformative participatory practices was at commune level
public meetings that they initiated to deliberate marine reserve policy. As the
funding from the project was coming to an end in late 2003, the Core Group,
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Advocates and commune officials talked about how their marine reserve could be
self-supporting and survive after IMA-V funding ceased in March 2004. The Core
Group—the reserve’s guards and field managers, and the Advocates, proposed
that the community discuss how to both manage and fund the reserve. One
proposal outlined a monitoring and research strategy that involved local divers, the
Core Group and the province’s Department of Science, Technology and the
Environment (DoSTE). Another proposal focused on a strategy for funding a
portion of their guarding and monitoring activities. Both proposals were brought up
at commune meetings, organized only to discuss these coastal resource issues.
At one of these commune meetings, Core Group members asserted, “We
should exploit the snails in the reserve since their populations were exploding. The
snails are going to die anyway, so we might as welt exploit them...and we can get
about a $300 profit...” While this proposal had not been scientifically verified, it
was a concept put forth for public dialogue. The commune’s president presided at
this public meeting of over 60 people, but only two women, and initiated public
comment and discussions. After three brief presentations favoring the exploitation
of the snails, the participants broke out into two groups in two different rooms and
discussed the benefits and drawbacks of this proposal and offered other
suggestions. Everyone offered his or her opinion. Some shared personal feelings.
“We should protect everything in the reserve because that is what the reserve
means,” said some. Others expressed reservations, such as, “We don’t know what
will happen when we disturb the sediment...it could be bad for the coral.” However,
most favored exploitation. After these talks, the two groups met up again. Their
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consensual decision, chaired by the commune’s president, was to exploit the snails
but only after checking with scientists from one of the local research institutes to
verify the environmental soundness of their plan. The minority opinion seemed to
have had an influence on this decision. Evidently, the Core Group had already
exploited the snails earlier in the year, “to pay for the gasoline for the reserve’s
boat,” said one member. So this approach was a change in opening up collective
practices to a general, public dialogue.
The fact that the commune had a public meeting was not surprising.
Communes and villages have public meetings often on community social
regulations and on other policies. However, public meetings have generally been
initiated from the state, not from the people. Institutionally directed public meetings
also tend to disseminate state policy that the public should know. In contrast, in
this meeting, the community was the initiator, which was an indication of their
increasing empowerment through the project. Furthermore, the Core Group and
Advocates proposed the meeting to discuss environmental issues. This was the
first time that the community had brought environmental issues to a public
discussion.
This suggests that the Core Group, the Advocates and others in the
community had integrated and assimilated their environmental and advocacy
experiences and were beginning to transform their roles as both protectors and
advocates for their coastal environment. In time, these experiences might lean
more towards more environmentally transformative policies and practices. In the
case of this meeting, the community’s participation in the decision-making process
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might be a pragmatic decision reflecting the need to finance their protection
activities while causing minimal change to the reserve’s environment and
community regulations that stated “no exploitation in the core zone”. Of course, it
could also be a decision that disrupts the present environmental balance. It is a
process of learning that has no assured positive outcomes. However, the informal
learning context encourages practices and decisions to be challenged and
assessed. The participants had experiential knowledge to share, yet they also
acknowledge that they wanted input from local experts to contribute to their
environmental decision-making process.
Community groups, taking the initiative to put environmental issues on the
public agenda, are a new phenomenon in Vietnam. It suggests that learning in an
NGO program that creates opportunities for environmental learning through direct
actions can transform participants in those programs. Such transformation is more
than communities only knowing about environmental issues. It is also about
communities actively working for environmental conservation practices.
Advocacy through the Arts
Advocacy was not only about deliberating policy and talking with villagers
and officials around the community. It also included artistic events where poetry
readings, songs and other performances extolled community members’ emotions
about the environment. Activities, which both engaged the community and
receptive audiences, revolved around poems, songs and stories that community
members wrote, performed and played. Van Hung (IMA-V) had a few men, in
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particular, who composed, played and sang music about the sea and the reefs.
These were popularly created materials. Women were also active participants in
these activities, performing songs and reading poems. In Van Hung, and Van Ninh
District, villages organized several cultural exchanges where they performed these
songs and created new ones. They also published a book of this music, which was
freely distributed.
In Van Hung the song and poem creators seemed to be the most affected
by what they had composed. “I felt a love for the reef, not only from composing the
song, but also from working out there,” said one composer. His lyrics followed:
Ran Trao que toi sang dep nhu mo...Ran Trao que toi sang chieu nen
tho...nhgieng nghieng soi bong nuoc khi chieu ve...O Ran Trao oi...mang
den niem vui cho que houng toi...(Our home, Ran Trao..in the morning as
beautiful as I dreamed, in the afternoon I feel life...I look at the reflection in
the water before returning home in the afternoon, ...dear Ran Trao, you
bring a joyful feeling to my village...)
The composer explained:
Going fishing out near Ran Trao, like many fisherman here do, is a beautiful
experience, even though fishing is very hard work, Ran Trao is a place of
beauty and life that can sustain us...both with its beauty and also with its
resources.
Van Hung and Van Ninh villagers organized and held several cultural
exchanges were they sang songs and read poems about their home village.
Villages from surrounding Districts and Provinces were invited to also share their
village’s experiences. “We feel very proud to write about and perform poems and
songs about the beauty of our village...and we should try to keep it beautiful,”
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explained several participants. Having a community run MPA may be a way to do
that.
The poems, songs and performances provided other venues for community
members to advocate for environmental issues. Thus, they were able to share
their aesthetic and poetic love for their villages and their marine environment as
seen through their eyes and experiences. The composers could be considered
among the community’s organic intellectuals, who drew from their own experiences
to enlighten others. The composers and creators shared their feelings in addition
to their situated knowledge about their coastal marine environment as a way to
raise other’s awareness about their environment as something that was not only an
economic resource but a source of spiritual life. “We could use our knowledge and
love of our village to make others aware too,” said one composer. “The songs can
make people remember...make people think about the natural beauty in their
community,” another said. The community’s creative advocacy, based on feelings
for the environment, lent another layer to community participation in protecting and
enhancing the environment.
Summary; Participating in and Deliberating Environmental Issues
The experiences in advocacy seemed to empower the most active
participants in the project. However, direct environmental action combined with
advocacy also had a large influence in enhancing the Core Group and Advocates’
access to and deliberation of environmental policy. Advocacy and direct action
seemed to have a reciprocal relationship on deliberate and active participation in
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the environmental policy decision-making process. The Advocates, who
crisscrossed their commune to raise awareness, and the Core Group, who
experienced, and then brought coastal environmental issues to the commune’s
policy agency, and the musical artists, who evinced the commune’s emotional
attachments to their coastlines all showed indications of learning that assimilates
transformative practices.
Whereas previously, few of these people had access to decision-making
meetings or participated in activities to protect their coastal environment, after three
years of non-formal, informal and incidental learning through the project, many
were involved in collective processes to do so. These were largely non-institutional
process that gradually became locally-initiated. This was an incremental
transformation that also led these groups to reflect on their experiences and to
contest project activities that they felt were not appropriate or beneficial to their
community. Having gained access to decision-making processes, they shared and
began to shape project activities and future coastal resource management
practices as they were transitioning from being part of a project to being their
community’s own organizations. An example of this emerging contestation is
explained next.
Contesting Environmentallv-frienctlv Livelihoods
Every activity that the project conducted was not received with open arms.
During the study tour, which occurred during the third year of the project, Van Hung
villagers were introduced to seaweed farming. IMA-V also promoted it since it was
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a well-known environmentally friendly livelihood practice (CBMCRM Learn, 2002).
One of the marked areas of contestation was at a recent seaweed—
environmentally friendly livelihood program. This non-formal program created
informal and incidental learning opportunities for the villagers to contest IMA-V’s
agenda. IMA-V saw seaweed as an environmentally friendly technical solution to
cleaning the water in the bay, which was polluted from the over-development of
lobster farming. It was also explained to the villagers as a potential AIG for women.
Neither of IMA-V seaweed plans worked out as planned.
Even though IMA-V received a tepid reception on this seaweed AIG, shared
experiences from IMA-Philippines gave the NGO and the villagers some ideas
about how to protect seaweed from rabbit fish. They created a program to design
and build netted bamboo seaweed rafts, similar to ones used in the Philippines, to
keep the rabbit fish out. In theory, this was possible. Protecting the seaweed from
the rabbit fish would be a complicated task—but a task that IMA-V would test
nonetheless. “After the weather cooled down, we put together the bamboo frames
and nets and brought them out to the reef area,” said one villager. This was
important because hot weather and water temperatures seemed to be an issue with
growing seaweed. The fall weather seemed an appropriate time for a new trial.
However, only a few Core Group members participated in this activity. A group of
women did participate in sewing up Styrofoam floats to float the nets; however they
did not go out to the sea to install the seaweed rafts.
After the poor participant showing, a few more men were persuaded by the
Advocates to show up for the ‘paid’ volunteer work, and the rafting work continued.
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One of the volunteers said, “We purchased 500 kilos of seaweed and spent a few
days stringing it out across the square bamboo netted frames that were suspended
by small square floats and held in place by small anchors. The wind and rough sea
made installation a bit difficult, but after two weeks, we had installed 12 rafts.” The
men did the work, the Core Group checked the rafts daily on their way to and from
guarding the reserve, and the seaweed grew.
A couple of months later, villagers’ disagreement with the project was
supported by the results of the pilot. Rabbit fish had eaten much of the seaweed
and storms had damaged other lines. One rainy and stormy day in later November,
a few villagers were hurriedly drying and bagging close to 225 kilos of seaweed.
While the 500 kilos should have increased exponentially, less than half of what was
originally planted was salvageable. “It was a pilot project, so it was a learning
experience,” said IMA-V staff, but according to one of the village participants, “It
was close to a total loss...seaweed cannot be grown here...IMA should take our
recommendation and not grow seaweed here...we won't grow it.”
This activity met with collective resistance because of villagers' previous
hands-on experiences growing seaweed. Because they had experience
problematizing coastal resource issues, many quickly saw the problems with IMA-
V’s seaweed approach. Local fishers explained:
Seaweed growing has been piloted a couple of times prior to IMA’s ‘new’
trial. There are numerous rabbit fish in the bay that eat the seaweed and
the sea grass... [and]... it is not worth much in the market. Other kinds of
aquaculture have more profit.
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Both men and women remained unconvinced that there was a stable and lucrative
market, similar to lobster markets. Furthermore, women’s role in actually raising
seaweed was not likely, so few women participated. As indicated, gender roles
restrict women from going out to sea. Therefore, they did not have any access to
decision-making or information on this issue to begin with. Later, IMA-V suggested
that women would dry the seaweed at home to be sold, or that it could be a
household activity to make seaweed jelly. Eventually, community dialogues
reached a consensus that seaweed growing and other so called “clean”
aquaculture could be combined and piloted on lobster rafts. The community, and
the Core Group and Advocates, representing the community’s emerging organic
intellectuals, in particular, therefore, were able to shape the coastal resources
decision-making agenda. They did this through their resistance, solidarity,
application of their local knowledge, and active role in decision-making during the
project.
Summary: Non-formal, Informal and Incidental Learning in the Trao Reef
Project
To conclude this section, findings indicate that IMA-V facilitated several
non-formal and informal learning activities, which were experiential and action-
oriented. These activities gave villagers direct experiences in knowing about the
environment and in taking action to protect, advocate for and rehabilitate it. It was
evident that community members’ collective environmental action, advocacy and
awareness-raising led to substantive changes. For example, a new Community-
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based co-management approach began to take shape through community
participation in non-formal, but moreover, informal learning activities and in
community deliberation of coastal resource policies. Through the action-oriented
activities, the Core Group and other villagers empowered themselves. They were
empowered by creating the marine reserve, building its guardhouse, guarding its
resources, and rehabilitating its reefs. These activities not only promoted collective
learning, they required collective solidarity to achieve a successful outcome.
Assimilating these experiences transformed the Core Group and some Advocates
from fishermen who exploited resources to fishermen who were beginning to wisely
manage their coastal resources, as these resources are now increasing. The
action-oriented experiences also raised awareness among other villagers about
coastal environmental issues. Village women, in particular, used momentum from
ICCs to start a village wide trash collection program. All of these experiences
contributed to incrementally transforming villagers’ overall social and environmental
relationships.
Using a dialogue approach, IMA-V facilitated discussions among and
between the state and the people’s organizations, such as the Core Group, and
social organizations, such as the War Veterans and Women’s Union. Dialogues
were conversations among people, less formal than presentations, and more open
to participants complementing, expanding or refuting ideas from others. Through
the range of activities, the villagers created a contemporary conceptual framework
based on collective action to conserve and enhance the marine environment rather
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than exploit it. This framework also included collective deliberative discussion,
advocacy and decision-making.
IMA-V’s project’s activities created and nourished a social context where
static resource management policies and practices that were leading to
unsustainable exploitation and destruction of marine resources could be contested
and transformed. Non-institutional groups were created, the Core Group and the
Advocates, with the Advocates being a locally initiated group, which drew on
organic experiences. These two groups along with other villagers not only
accessed decision-making processes, they became active participants in the
environmental policy making process, who sometimes contested project practices.
As the project drew to a close in March 2004, the community, led by the Core
Group, the Advocates, and increasingly convivial village and state collaborators,
was well on a path of self-reliance and mobilization to transform local
environmental policy making and resource use practices.
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Case of [SJCN/Hon Mun: The Hon Mun MPA Pilot Project 2001 - 2005
Overview
This section presents the second case study, lUCN’S Hon Mun Marine
Protected Area Pilot Project. Similar to the IMA-V case, first, lUCN’s foundation as
an organization is briefly discussed. Next, this section moves on to lUCN’s specific
approach to learning and participation this project. Then, it presents its features
for community members to participate in project activities and its non-formal and
informal learning programs. Similar to IMA-V’s case, findings are presented by
theme and sub-theme followed by an analysis on each. The themes in this study
evinced through the field research and analysis draw more on participation than on
learning. Themes in this case are slightly different from IMA-V’s case and include
the following categories: Learning and participating to raise awareness, accessing
other communities’ knowledge, learning to take action for the environment, and
learning through contestation. Each thematic section concludes with a summary.
The next section begins with a brief overview of lUCN’s position as an international
environmental institution.
An International Environmental Institution: IUCN
IUCN, officially known as the World Conservation Union, is currently
working on over 500 conservation projects across the globe with membership in
over 140 countries, “...it has worked with over 750 NGOs and 100 governmental
agencies. Over 10,000 internationally known scientists have participated in its
projects providing technical and policy advice on state Biodiversity Action Plans
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(BAPs), assessment of natural world heritage, monitoring of endangered ‘Redlist’
species with an aim to link empirical science research to international and local
environmental governance,” (IUCN, 2004). Its most current vision is “A just world
that values and conserves nature.” (IUCN, 2004). This change, with a focus on
people and their varying needs, contrasts with earlier missions of IUCN.
Historically, IUCN has targeted the protection of individual species and their
habitats (Wapner, 1994). In this project, in contrast, an objective is “...to enable
local island communities to improve their livelihoods and, in partnership with other
stakeholders, effectively protect and sustainably manage the marine biodiversity at
Hon Mun as a model for collaborative MPA management in Vietnam” (IUCN, 2000).
However, overall IUCN still has a very institutional narrative. Established as
the original global conservation NGO after World War I S by European aristocrats,
the organization’s mandate was to specifically preserve a variety of African species
for hunting; an activity that had gained popularity during colonization (Wapner,
1994). Most of its projects have been species and policy oriented and only in the
1990s did IUCN begin to pursue more participatory approaches when such
approaches became in vogue in the development field. IUCN founded WWF (The
World Wide Fund for nature) to raise funds, while it focused on conservation
science research. Today, the two are entirely separate conservation organizations,
though they do often work together on globally focused projects as evident by the
co-participation on numerous UNDP and UNEP sustainable development forums
and projects. A current IUCN partnership with the UNDP, the World Bank and
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bilateral aid agencies, involves coral reefs around the world. In Vietnam, the Hon
Mun Marine Protected Area Pilot Project (HMMPAPP) is one of these projects.
Institutions change slowly, and this IUCN facilitated projected is embedded
in institutional structures that direct this project. Therefore, there seemed little
chance that the IUCN project could be a one that “...enabled local island
communities to improve their livelihoods and in collaboration with other
stakeholders, to effectively protect and manage the marine biodiversity at Hon
Mun...” (IUCN, 2000). Because of lUCN’s institutional and expert-oriented
approach, how the island communities would work “...in collaboration with other
stakeholders...” remains a question to be addressed. However, international
consultants, hired through IUCN have made a gradual difference as they have
shared their more community-oriented experiences with project and MPA Authority
staff in addition to the villagers. These consultants and the Chief Technical Advisor
(CTA), also an international consultant, have been the key agents of change by
working with all stakeholders, exchanging information learned through such
exchanges, and creating and implementing non-formal and informal learning
opportunities where many stakeholders meet. In these informal learning contexts,
participants learn something from each other about policy, environmental
conditions, and social needs. These learning experiences are further discussed in
the next section.
With this organizational context, IUCN, in cooperation with Vietnam’s
Ministry of Fisheries, began its quest to involve island communities in the protection
and enhancement of their local marine environment. lUCN’s approach focused
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heavily on facilitating the community’s access to specific project activities. IUCN
has attempted to contest hierarchy over the first two years by facilitating villager
participation in project activities, in general, and by its creation of the Villager MPA
Committees, in particular. IUCN seemed to believe that through participation, the
community’s overall awareness on marine conservation and resource use issues
would increase, and furthermore, the community would have enhanced access to
the project’s and MPA’s decision-making process.
The Community
The community participating in lUCN’s project is composed of six villages
across three different islands in Nha Trang Bay. The villages are part of Vinh
Nguyen Commune, a part of greater Nha Trang city, which is home to one of
Vietnam’s coastal tourism centers, and caters to over 350,000 guests a year in
addition to a fishing industry of more than 10,000 boats. The island villages are
separated from Nha Trang, the provinces main city of 350,000 people, from two to
ten kilometers of sea. Boat transportation is the only way to and from the islands.
Only one of the villages is connected to the national electricity grid. The total
population is slightly over 5,000. Approximately 35% of the population is under 15
years of age, though the average household size is five.
According to IUCN, the main activity of 70-80% of the households is fishing,
with the remaining involved in aquaculture. Some households do both. There has
been a steady increase in lobster farming, and other aquaculture in all villages over
the past few years as fishing had become more difficult and costly, while the lobster
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farming market has remained profitable. Wealth in each village varies, yet most
consider themselves of average wealth, earning about $50 USD/month. Among all
of the villages, poverty ranges from 10% in one village to 50% in one of the more
remote villages. Schooling in the villages is also improving, as two new lower
secondary programs have opened this year (2003-2004). However, completing
secondary school is a challenge as families have to transport their children over to
Nha Trang and pay for additional transportation and boarding expenses. For
adults, schooling has typically meant primary school only, and for most women on
the islands, three years of formal schooling has been average.
Introduction: The Protect
This section presents an analysis of the Hon Mun Pilot Project project’s
non-formal and informal learning activities that emphasized learning for change
with the six island villages, Tri Nguyen, Vung Me, Vung Ngan, Hon Mot, Dam Bay
and Bich Dam during the past two years, from June of 2001 to December of 2003,
the dates that these project activities have take place thus far. The purpose of this
project is “...preserving a representative sample of coral reefs in selected regions
across the globe...” (HMMPAPP, 2002). Villagers participated in a variety of
activities, such as PRAs and general meetings; however, the most significant
participation was for a select group of villagers, the MAP Committee members, who
were involved in bi-monthly meetings and study tours. In these activities,
participants were introduced to different or new perspectives on the marine
environment, and furthermore, the participants were able to contest policy ideas
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and practices. The bi-monthly meetings challenged participants to become
involved in the policy-making process and to bring forth new ideas in shaping the
management of the newly created MPA. The study tours were similar challenges
of villagers’ perceptions of a MPA and how they could be involved in the
management process. In more community-wide activities, villagers participated
and interacted with project staff not only in preparing and holding project meetings,
but also in AIG and credit programs, and in overall day-to-day exchanges. Through
these activities, villagers gained increasing experiences of how to participate and
learn in the project.
The project itself was a disruptive, but also potentially transformative event
for the villagers. For many who relied on exploiting the resources now within the
MPA, its creation caused an immediate loss of income and the need to resort to
other ways of accessing and, if possible, controlling coastal resources for income.
“They [the project] took away our fishing grounds...and so unfairly,” said several
village fishermen. The effect was greatest on squid fishers, divers, and those who
used tremmel nets (fine three layered nets that catch everything in their path).
However, rather than creating positive changes, this event caused considerable
resistance to change.
The project and the creation of the MPA was an awareness raising event
signaling to communities that they were facing change, and that they were on the
losing side (economically), at least in the short term. This was evident in meetings
and get-togethers filled with complaints, in fishermen’s continual violations of MPA
regulations, and in actual fistfights between project enforcement staff and the
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villagers. “Why do outsiders get to benefit...tourists...but we lose fishing
resources,” said some villages. Some of these disagreements became evident
during the meetings especially, as moments of incidental learning that contested
villagers' capacity to respond. Even according to the project’s own informal
surveys, at least 50% of the villagers disliked the project. A few managed to
sabotage pilot studies on sustainable aquaculture. Some sold off the stock or
transferred it to other sites. However, these forms of resistance did not indicate
features of transformative learning. This kind of resistance has been well known
throughout Vietnam as an approach to contest that local villagers feel are unfair
state policies. ‘Why shouldn’t we sell or take what they give us...they are taking
away so much,” a villager commented.
As two years of the project have passed, less resistance is taking place.
Presently, more villagers are not only accepting the project, but also learning how
to change their involvement in it and benefit. According to project staff, “a
development project can be considered successful if it does no harm to 30% of the
people living at the project site...and we have only negatively affected about that
many.” In the meantime, the village MPA committees from each island village are
learning how to participate in the MPA process, and to some extent are
encouraging their neighbors to access the programs and activities that the project
may have to offer.
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Location of Learning Activities
The project offices are located in Nha Trang, a city of approximately
350,000 people. The project plans and reviews programs, and also conducts many
village-wide meetings and forums there. The project's core site is Hon Mun, a non
inhabited rocky island about eight kilometers from the city’s main tourist wharf.
This is the core site because it is where the most diverse coral reef ecosystem still
exists. The whole perimeter of the island is a no take zone where only recreational
activities can take place (HMMPAPP, 2003). The six villages that encompass the
projects’ target audience are located as close as two kilometers and as far as ten
kilometers from the wharf. The project has an enforcement presence on the waters
around Hon Mun and at the island itself. It also eventually established and staffed
an experimental aquaculture station near two of the villages, a few kilometers
away. Village MPA Committee members also live in each village and have been
knowledgeable informants and information disseminators about the project for their
neighbors. Furthermore, each day, project staff members make the trip from Nha
Trang by the project’s boat, to one or more of the villages, to conduct surveys,
reviews, or to facilitate programs.
Most of the project’s day-to-day activities, many of which could be
considered informal or incidental learning about aquaculture, credit or AIG, took
place with the villagers in their island villages. The non-formal activities, such as
the marine education, fishing regulations, and similar workshops took place either
in the project’s office or in official meeting sites in each of the villages. Some of the
village sites were small concrete government provided facilities; others were truly
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beautiful under the banyan tree or mango tree coastline spots or concrete-floor
village MPA committee members’ homes. All of these locations became the
project’s community learning sites.
Project Funding
The lUCN/Hon Mun Pilot Project is being funded through the General
Environmental Fund (GEF), which is disbursed by the World Bank, and DAN I DA.
The World Bank’s focus is on preserving the coral reef, while DAN I DA focuses on
credit for alternative livelihood activities (IUCN, 2000). The Vietnamese
Government, via the Ministry of Fisheries and the provincial Department of
Fisheries, also supports the project with staffing and in-kind contributions. The
project will be turned over to the newly created Hon Mun MPA Authority (referred to
as “The Authority”), which functions under the Department of Fisheries, at the end
of the project funding cycle (currently identified as June 2005). According to the
sponsors, the project is to “support preserving Vietnam’s biodiversity through its
Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP)...ensuring the conservation of a representative
example of internationally significant and threatened marine biodiversity.” The
project’s approach is to “enable communities to improve their livelihoods and in
partnership with other stakeholders, to effectively protect and manage the marine
biodiversity of Hon Mun as a model for collaborative MPA management in Vietnam”
(IUCN, 2000). Thus the goals and objectives of the project indicate first, the
importance of the marine ecosystem—the coral reefs at Hon Mun, in particular—
and second, the role of not only villagers, who live within the MPA, but also of other
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stakeholders, such as the state agencies, including the provincial, district and local
People’s Committees, the local People’s Councils, the Provincial Department of
Fisheries, the Fisheries Resources Protection Department and the Border Patrol,
the Department of Tourism and others with economic interests in the area. The
project suggests that somehow—through training and participation—that a
partnership between the villagers and every other stakeholder will be formed. This
indicates the importance of learning and participation through project programs that
aim to facilitate stakeholder collaboration.
Learning Programs’ Organization
Since the spring of 2002, the lUCN/Hon Mun Project has conducted
numerous activities in the six island villages, and at Vinh Nguyen Commune offices,
which is the commune where the villages are located, and in Nha Trang. Most of
these programs and activities can be identified as contexts for non-formal learning.
Just a few can be considered as informal learning contexts. The variety of
programs focused on marine biodiversity issues, alternative income generation
(AIG), aquaculture, and credit in addition to more general awareness raising
publicity on the MPA. Much of the communities’ learning has been incidental to the
ongoing project processes. The project initiated all of the non-formal learning
programs and informal learning activities for the villagers in the MPA.
Before beginning these programs, the project established a presence in
Nha Trang. It hired staff (Vietnamese) and held meetings with provincial and local
officials, and local marine research institutes to introduce project concepts.
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Vietnam’s National Assembly approved the project in 2000, and at that time,
lUCN’s country office in Hanoi began work on hiring international staff for the initial
start-up. During the first year, two Vietnamese co-directors were appointed from
the Ministry of Fisheries. One was a from the province’s Department of Fisheries.
By the end of 2001, most project staff had been hired. The international CTA and
the two Vietnamese directors drew up the project activity plans for four years
(2001-2005) in consultation with Khanh Hoa’s Provincial People’s Committee and
other official stakeholders. All projects must be approved by the People’s
Committee (an organ of the Vietnam’s Communist Party) at the relevant level.
Project work is divided by teams. Each project team runs its own programs
and is rarely asked to collaborate. While the CTA has encouraged breaking these
boundaries, staff show little movement and the influence of the state in the project
further encourages maintaining these divisions. “We can better organize work
responsibilities when people are organized into units,” said one of the directors.
The Community Development staff runs its surveys, credit and AIG programs. The
Aquaculture staff does pilot studies on various economically profitable species.
The Education and Awareness Unit (EAU) creates publicity, publishes brochures,
develops and implements primary and secondary school based MPA educational
activities for two schools in the MPA, and initiates edutainment (movies, poetry
readings, contests) community programs for additional awareness-raising. The
Enforcement section enforces the MPA’s regulations. The teams are also
supported by in-house training programs. There are about 40 employees in all.
With some being department experts hired exclusively for the tenure of the project,
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while others are permanent staff. Most of the permanent staff members have few,
if any experiences in the positions they now hold and many are directly related to
the Vietnamese Project Management Board officers. According to project directors,
the project was designed to train local staff and officials first, who would later
educate community members.
The project also aims to implement a co-management process. However,
presently the villagers do not have much more than a limited advisory role, sharing
their interests and concerns with project staff at meetings. The projects main,
regular informal learning activity, the bi-monthly meeting, has specific objectives of
facilitating stakeholder exchanges. The primary participants are the village MPA
committees along with state and local officials. However, other stakeholders, such
as the tourism operations, manufacturers, and other local institutional agencies are
not regular participants in these meetings.
Target Project Participants and Learners
The target learners for the project were the island villagers. Most of the five
thousand plus living in the communities in the MPA participated in the project in
some way or another in its non-formal or informal programs or by learning
incidentally through day-to-day interactions with the MPA. Nevertheless, lUCN’s
learning agenda over the past 24 months has primarily focused on the Village MPA
Committee members, of which 29 of the 36 members were men even though adult
women outnumber adult men in these villages. The Village MPA Committee
members participated in the bi-monthly meetings, in several training programs and
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had the responsibility for maintaining regular contact with the project. Credit
recipients and those involved in AIG programs also had intensive participation in
the project. Though these activities were not directly connected to the MPA’s
protection or enhancement, they did establish participation and learning
relationships between the project and the villagers. These activities targeted poor
households and more than half of the participants in these activities were women.
Project staff suggested that “building the capacity of the staff and the Village MPA
Committee members would contribute to conserving the marine resources and
involving the community members in the management process.”
General Learning Objectives and Procedures
lUCN’s agenda was stated as follows:
to conserve a representative sample of internationally significant and
threatened marine biodiversity [and] to enable local communities to improve
their livelihoods in partnership with local stakeholders to effectively protect
and sustainably manage the marine biodiversity at Hon Mun as a model for
collaborative MPA management in Vietnam (IUCN, 2000a).
The project’s activities emphasized “enforcement, economic opportunities and
education,” according to project documentation. “People needed to know and obey
the rules,” a director said. Another director said, “We also have to show them there
are economically viable alternatives...and make people aware of the environmental
issues.”
Education, was conceptualized and practiced by the project as “awareness-
raising” even though the project aimed for change in community fishing practices.
While the project had an Education and Awareness Unit (EAU), most of its activities
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were directed towards general publicity or to occasional non-formal learning
programs. “The people need to know.. .to have knowledge about the corals, the
fish, the MPA and the fishing regulations,” EAU staff said. However, the EAU
activities were not the catalysts for learning in the project. Most of these
participation and learning programs were conducted by the Community
Development team, the Aquaculture team or short-term international consultants.
The project’s programs were mostly non-formal (rather than informal) and
were run as lectures, presentations or training programs. Bi-monthly meetings,
marine biodiversity workshops, and underwater training were non-formal programs.
The Bi-Monthly Meetings program were a consistent program and had a significant
affect on increasing villager participation. “The Village MPA Committees and Bi-
Monthly Meetings program were our approach to getting villagers involved
[participating] in the MPA management process,” the staff said. For the committee
members, these informal learning activities had an overall awareness raising and
management focus so that this particular group gained experience participating in
programs, even if their role was limited to participation but not deliberate decision
making.
Other activities were mainly awareness-raising so that the villagers knew
the purpose of the MPA. For example, the project held one PRA in each village.
The PRAs were non-formal program with informal activities that introduced villages
to the project’s aims. Other programs such as AIG and credit began as non-formal
programs, which after a training period, consisted of more informal and incidental
learning further encouraging villager access to the project. The study tour and the
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ICC were basically informal learning activities, with the study tour having a
significant impact on consciousness-raising for the participants. These
experiences gave villagers, in general, knowledge and experiences that they began
to integrate and assimilate into their own conceptualization of a MPA. Some
individuals began to assimilate and integrate their interactions with the project and
the environment as a result. These learning experiences are detailed and analyzed
below,
Non-formal. Informal and Incidental Learning in the Hon Mun Project
Introduction
The lUCN/Hon Mun Project was initiated in 2000 and its first activities
focused on increasing the government’s and the general public’s awareness of the
Hon Mun MPA project. The first activities focused on gaining government approval
and in staffing the project. Numerous meetings were held in Hanoi, the seat of the
national government, and in Nha Trang, the project’s home. In addition to working
with the government, public awareness-raising was also a major project activity.
Prior to the project’s beginning any non-formal or informal activities in the villages,
the EAU developed and published a flurry of brochures and posters to publicize the
MPA. “We want the villagers and the community to know about the MPA first...and
get them coming...inquiring over here [at the office in Nha Trang] about it...and
some people did come by,” the staff added.
As a result of this publicity and government contacts, by the time the project
conducted its first informal learning activity, the PRA, which included villager
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participation, in March 2002, “most of the villagers we met knew about the MPA,”
said a Community Development staff. “The PRA was a tool for us to introduce
ourselves to the villagers and to extract the information we needed to develop
better regulations, credit and AIG programs,” continued the staff member. The
PRA set the tone for most of the activities that the project has conducted directly
with the villagers through the winter of 2003 (when field research for this study
ended). Getting the PRA implemented was an important step because the MPA
regulations were already being enforced by the enforcement staff and the first thing
that villagers learned from the project was that fishing around Hon Mun had been
closed down. Several villagers explained, “We knew about the project when we
saw the enforcement boat...the project was threatening our livelihood, and many of
us didn’t want it."
Yet, within this context of institutionally-driven learning, the project began to
create a public space for community members to contest ideas and share their
needs. Village MPA Committees were formed and members had access to the
project through bi-monthly meetings. At the meetings and incidentally through
village-project interactions, villagers spoke about access to credit, AIG and
enforcement policies were issues to be addressed. Yet, because the first thing that
many villagers learned about the project was that it controlled, and therefore
restricted, their access to fishing, many villagers resisted participating in any project
activity.
The challenges between project driven activities and programs vis-a-vis
villagers’ interests in the conservation of the MPA’s resources thus began with
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numerous cases of collective resistance and contestation. This context of
contestation indicates the potentially challenging and transformative nature of
learning in social action—social action not chosen by the villagers, but with the
implementation of the project and the establishment of the MPA, activities they
were invited to participate in. The following section explains and analyzes villager’s
learning in the project’s non-formal and informal activities that show potential for
creating changes in how communities participate and learn in protecting, enhancing
and managing the coastal resources that support their communities and livelihoods.
Learning to Participate in the Project
One of the main tasks of the project was encouraging and facilitating
villagers to participate in project programs. Many of project’s first activities provided
opportunities for villagers to raise their awareness about the project and to learn
how they could become involved in the project. This was an important process
because there were few opportunities for villagers to participate in any state driven
policy. “We are far from Nha Trang and don’t see officials often...it is not easy to
participate in organizations,” said a villager. Even though the villages were only a
few kilometers away, their small boats, and at times a rough sea, made the journey
a long and arduous one, especially for the more remote villages. The project’s first
contact with all villagers was through a PRA. It encouraged participation by asking
the villagers to share local social and environmental knowledge and experiences
through a variety of collective activities. “A PRA is a growing family of techniques to
enable local people to share, enhance and analyze their knowledge of life and
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conditions, to plan, act, monitor and evaluate...with extensive applications in
natural resource management and other social issues...” (Chambers, 1997, p. 102).
The project directed the activities, but rather than empirically investigate the
information by itself, the project used PRA tools (villager’s mapping, villager’s asset
analysis, and such) to elicit the needed information from the villagers. (For an
excellent reference on PRAs, see Chambers 1997).
From the PRA, the project and villager leaders identified and chose a more
select group of participants to become more actively involved in facilitating and
reporting on project-led activities in their respective villages. This new group, called
the Village MPA Committees, also shared information and experiences at project
founded bi-monthly MPA Village Committee meetings. Through these activities,
this select group of villagers, informally and incidentally, learned to participate in
conservation and development policy and planning. The next section explains and
analyzes how the villagers, in general, and the Village MPA Committee members,
in particular, learned to participate in project needs assessment and policymaking
activities.
Opening Access to Participation through PRAs
Sharing experiences among Vietnamese villagers was a common way to
increase one's knowledge about every day activities. However, it was not common
for Vietnamese villagers to share their household and livelihood experiences with
state officials. Officials usually do their own scientific surveys where they set the
entire agenda. The first PRA, conducted by the project changed that. In this PRA,
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villagers had opportunities to share their knowledge of their village and related
social, economic and environmental conditions with the project. This was a
consciousness-raising activity not only for the villagers to think about their social,
economic and environmental assets, but also to share knowledge and create
awareness about village issues among project staff.
The PRAs were the first opportunities many villagers had to participate in
the project. PRAs are common approaches in development work to establish some
social, economic and environmental base for project programs and activities and
they involve the villagers or project stakeholders in collecting and sharing
information that can inform development work. A project staff explained, “In this
project, we used the PRA to find out the villagers’ use of marine resources, their IG
activities, their relative wealth and other characteristics of their villages. It was as
much a learning program for us as it was for them.”
The Community Development staff conducted this activity from start to finish
over a period of three months. They first organized a non-formal training program in
Nha Trang and invited village leaders from each of the six MPA villages to attend.
A few weeks prior to the PRA, the project conducted a six hour training program for
the village leaders. During the workshop, the staff introduced the villagers to PRA
practices of Venn diagramming, village transects, wealth ranking, seasonal pattern
use of resources mapping, day-time analysis and problem ranking. “Doing these
should make villagers wake up to what are good and bad in their village,” a staff
added. Besides awareness-raising, the PRA involved action. “We wanted them
[the village leaders] to help us get villagers actively involved,” the staff said.
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The training program provided the village leaders with a learning model
about conducting PRAs. Despite the project’s intention to make the training
program participatory, the institutional control over participating and learning in the
project was evident. The PRA training course was too brief and many of the
activities were prescribed and explained rather than acted out. A staff member
said, “There are specific activities that the village leaders must know to participate
correctly...they should do what we ask.” Furthermore, participation was limited to
village leaders. This was the most common approach of initiating and expanding
villager participation. “The village leaders know people in their respective villages
and who can be active and help the project...we needed to prepare them to
participate in this program...it was something new to them,” the staff explained.
Even though the day was short and the participants were few, the project
staff expressed their satisfaction with the village leaders’ participation in the training
program. The participants agreed that, “This was new for us...it was exciting and
we were eager...we thought about the benefits of participating.” However access
to participation was also limited due to gender. Most of the participants at this
training program were the village leaders—largely men. According to the men, this
was because marine resource issues were men’s issues and not women’s and
women had many things to do at home. The notion that women’s role is in the
home and not in public service was confirmed and accepted by many others. The
staff, however, felt that they had provided an adequate learning experience. The
next section explains how the participatory process evolved during the PRA.
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Participating in the PRA to Raise-Awareness
Several weeks later, the project brought the PRA to each village to raise
people’s awareness about participating in the project. The PRA was the villagers’
first opportunity to learn to participate. For the staff, it was a learning opportunity
too. “For us [staff] we learned about the communities and PRA activities week-by-
week, so by the time we got to the last one...we had a smooth running PRA,” said
one staff. Each PRA lasted approximately three days in each of the six villages,
running for about six hours each day. After several weeks, the project had
completed a PRA in each village.
While participation did introduce the project to the villagers, the number of
participants was often low, representing less than 20% of the households in each
village. “We were disappointed with the PRA attendance,” stated one staff
member. People trickled over to the meeting sites slowly. “Sometimes we had
eight people, others times there were more than 30,” explained project staff. Most
of the participants were either village leaders, who had already been in the PRA
training, others who thought they could receive handouts, such as money from the
project, and individuals who were not happy with the project closing Hon Mun
Island to fishing. “We still got most of the information we needed and we saw some
of the village leaders and more active people, so we could better identify potential
MPA Committee members,” the staff said. That was one of the project’s immediate
goals.
During the first day of the PRA, the village leader or vice leader led the
village mapping and transect activity. Villagers were asked to work together on
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large rolls of paper and sketch out their village “...as if you were on the sea, on
your boat...and looking at the village...what you would see...that is what you
should draw...” A staff continued:
...we wanted to see where people lived, where they kept their boats...their
aquaculture...to get a general idea of what types of activities happened
where. We had discussions on seasonal resource use and historical
patterns, AIG, and social, economic and environmental issues, wealth,
daytime activities and stakeholders’ affect on the MPA. This was all to
raise-awareness and to get some information-sharing process going...
Over the next two days, these activities continued and led to more discussions
about fishing and fishing gear used.
An interesting activity showing how the villagers viewed their participation in
the project was the stakeholder analysis. Using Venn diagrams, the villagers
indicated that all the villagers were a negative influence on the MPA because of
their fishing practices and pollution, whereas all of the government organizations
were positive actors in the MPA. “We have to act differently to change the MPA,”
said several villagers. However, others suggested that the MPA villagers could
also be a positive force if they contributed to the protection, rehabilitation and
enhancement of the MPA. “We can participate as monitors and guard,” they said.
Villagers saw outsiders as threats, but didn’t see development from outsiders as a
threat. For example, hotel projects were identified positively. A project staff stated,
“Villagers felt they could be part of the solution to reverse the declining
environmental conditions in the MPA.” But they also indicated that many people
that weren’t present at the meetings, including those from villages outside of the
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MPA, also conducted many environmentally harmful activities such as dynamite
and cyanide fishing and used three-layered nets.
Villagers also learned to participate in assessing their assets. During the
PRA, they identified and explained their social, economic and environmental
conditions. In these activities, village leaders led group discussions and other
villagers or project staff wrote down ideas on large poster-size sheets of paper.
When asked about fishing resources, in particular, over the past 25-30 years—the
length of time most had lived in their villages— the villagers responded that fishing
resources had decreased significantly, “...more so in the last 10 years, when the
markets opened up,” said several fishermen. During this time, though “...fishing
boats had increased and income per kilo of fish caught and sold has decreased,”
they added. “But...there will never be an end to the fish in the sea...we only need
to find it,” a few others asserted. Some international project staff said, “This is a
common perception of fishermen around the world...ignoring the total collapse of
their own fisheries until they fish themselves out of work.”
Awareness of issues was raised from both the project and the villagers. A
project staff explained, “The main awareness issues that we wanted the villages to
understand were social, economic and environmental.” At the PRA activity the
project staff directed discussion toward these areas. “The main environmental
problem is the decreasing fish resources,” said numerous villagers. However, most
of the villagers saw everything in terms of income. “Less fish meant less money.
“That’s what we thought about, our poverty.. .we didn’t think about the benefit of the
fish to the ecosystem,” said a couple of the fishermen. During the PRA, the
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villagers raised the project’s awareness on issues they thought were most
problematic, such as having a sustainable livelihood.
Through the asset mapping and subsequent discussion, it was evident that
livelihood issues were front and center for the villagers. “We’ve seen fishing
decrease and we have to spend more and more time fishing,” said others.
Aquaculture has become one option for fishers who have been able to save
enough money for the initial investment. Others added, “Too many outsiders come
here to fish, set up aquaculture, and many have bigger boats and trawling nets that
catch our nets too.” A second issue identified was pollution. ‘We have no sewage
plan and tourist boats dumped sewage and garbage here,” claimed almost all
villagers. The major social issue identified by the villagers was joblessness,
especially for women. The villagers claimed that close to 90% of women were
unemployed (unemployed outside of the home). Other issues that the villages
brought up were electricity and freshwater. ‘Without electricity, we can’t be
productive at night, our children can’t study...not having water all year makes it
difficult to cook and wash,” said many of the women participants. So, the villagers
also informed the project about their most pressing problems.
During most of the PRA activities, village leaders or project staff led the
activities. This reinforced participation patterns that the Vietnamese commonly
practiced. Village leaders are almost always part of the communist party
infrastructure and eiders are de facto leaders led. Others, moreover women,
participated less actively. However, unlike many activities directed by state
organizations in Vietnam, here, other villagers were actually encouraged to speak,
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to lead, to sketch and write and be actively involved in creating knowledge. One
staff said, “We had to intervene often and encourage other villagers to
participate...much of the information had to be extracted because the villagers
were not sure or reticent to share. However, while participation was encouraged,
attendance was also low because as one villager said, “Many of us had heard of
the project and didn’t think we could do anything about it.. .we didn’t know about
this kind of participation. We thought it was [just] sitting and listening.”
Furthermore, the villagers perceived their role in the MPA as limited because they
identified that they needed to change and that others would help prescribe those
changes for them.
The PRA did begin to open community access to the project, its knowledge
and resources. However to some extent, the project and the village leaders limited
participation. Nevertheless, the PRA was a different authority-villager interaction
than community members had experienced before. “The project staff listened to
us...they had us draw, talk about our work, and organize things," said several
villagers. From the project’s perspective, villager participation enabled the project
to better know who to work with, and which issues were most pressing for the
community. Furthermore, the villagers were teaming how to participate with project
staff—a step towards the goal of coastal resource co-management.
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PRAs and Symbolic Learning
The project also used games and simulations as an approach to raising
villagers' awareness on project goals related to popular participation and marine
resource use. The games contested villagers’ current fishing practices and
interaction with local authorities, which tended to be adversarial rather than
collaborative. The project, moreover, needed the villagers to collaborate on the
MPAs protection and enhancement. These were not necessarily outcomes that the
villagers had thought of, but they were targets that the project wanted the villagers
to participate in achieving. The simulations and games, which were generally fun
and promoted participation and action, represented an instructional method to
reach the goals of the project. A project staff said, “The games represent project
goals...if the participants understand the games...then can make the environment
and villager life better.”
One PRA activity was the box game. “We introduced the game and asked
the participants to write down what they thought the MPA would do...and we asked
them to write down positive contributions.” Actually the staff had to guide the
activity because the villagers generally had negative ideas about the MPA.
Villagers, who could, wrote ideas about the MPA on small cards. The project staff
actually guided the villagers to write specific concepts. Then, these concepts were
put into the box. This set the tone for other activities where the villagers
symbolically learned about the project as an approach to raise their awareness and
channel their participation. In this case, the concepts were the symbols of what the
project wanted the participants to learn. Some women were present, but men
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dominated the game. “Men know better how to write and explain their ideas," said
one woman.
The purpose of the box game was to have participants recognize the
centrality of the project and its purpose “...to protect, rehabilitated and enhance.” In
addition to the cards, several items were in the box including the Project/MPA logo
that had been created through a competition for Nha Trang Arts College students.
After all the cards were put into the box, participants were grouped up. Each group
selected a card, and then, individuals offered explanations of what it meant. One of
the staff said:
In order to participate in the project, the villagers have to
understand the goals of the project. We can use games and
cooperative activities to raise awareness and to get feedback from
the villagers, rather than simple questions and answers...and it
created a ‘fun’ atmosphere... however we had a specific
objective...we wanted the villagers to put the logo and the concepts
of protection, rehabilitation and enhancement around the logo. Our
goal was to raise-awareness on how the villagers can help us and
improve their environment.
The logo symbolized project awareness-raising goals. With Hon Mun at its center,
representing the core zone, where no fishing was allowed, and with reef fish and
coral embraced by two encircling arms, the multi-colored orange, pink and blue
logo represented the image that the project was looking for. This was not
necessarily the image the villagers had for their backyard, so to speak, but an
image that the project was promoting. “The logo is not easy to
understand...though...it is pretty,” said several villagers. The logo and the concepts
of protect, rehabilitate and enhance met with some resistance. “The area is
beautiful, so why do we have to ‘enhance’ it,” said one participant. Another villager
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asked, “What about our livelihood?” A third said, “There is so much coral in the
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sea.
Similar learning patterns were seen in a couple of additional games
facilitated in the PRA. A second game showed participants how to change their
fishing practices. “The marble game, showed the affect of uncontrolled access to
natural resources,” said the staff. This game was supposed to raise awareness
about over-fishing. One by one, participants could scoop up as many marbles as
possible, using their hand, a spoon, and chopsticks. Each method represented a
different fishing technique. A staff explained, “Villagers were supposed to see that
if everyone used their hand—representing tremmel nets and trawling, soon no fish
would be left.” However some villagers said, “Wow...fishing with nets is more
effective.. .there will never be too little fish.. .fish will come and replace the ones we
caught...not like in the game...we can just use better technology...go out to sea
with big nets and catch more fish...” Project staff had to re-emphasize what over
fishing would do. Some villagers nodded in agreement, yet stated:
We should fish less, but I’m not convinced ...if everyone uses simpler
[fishing] techniques...it is fair...we don’t know though...we can’t trust
outsiders to fish fairly. We could try it...but everyone would have to
agree...everyone who fishes here, and outsiders...it would have to be
enforced fairly.
One of the final games, the string game, focused on cooperation. W e need
all stakeholders to cooperate—the MPA Authority, the tourist companies, the
Ministry of Fisheries, the Border Patrol, and you villagers—so that MPA can be
enhanced, rehabilitated and protected,” said the staff. Five participants (men again)
volunteered to play. Each lassoed himself to a strand of thick string. Each strand
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was joined together like a spoke on a bicycle wheel. In the center, a pencil dangled
on another smaller string. The objective for the game players was to drop the
pencil into a soft drink bottle. The men had to move back and forth, call instructions
to each other and watch. It required cooperation and collaboration.
“It was difficult but fun,” said one of the participants, and everyone seemed
to have a good laugh as the players often fell or could not quite get the stick into
the bottle. “Each player was told he represented a different organization—the
village, the Border Patrol, the project, and so forth.” Players made jokes such as,
“...the Border Patrol (player)...never cooperate...that’s why we couldn’t get it into
the bottle.” After the game, one of the staff commented “cooperation is difficult...as
you can see...we need to all cooperate to have a successful MPA.” Some villagers
were not so sure however. “We need to follow the regulations...but [again] they
must be fair.” Another villager added, “we give up something...it is like the
cooperatives before...they weren’t successful...I’m not sure about cooperation...”
Through all of these activities, the project emphasized the importance of the
villagers changing—changing their perception of the environment, transforming
their independence to more collaborative approaches, and changing their fishing
practices. The main strategy that the project offered for change was participation—
by participating in the project activities where ideas and practices could be
presented, and then contested, compared, enhanced, or refuted. Participating in
the project, however, was controlled by the project and village leaders. Thus,
participation was limited by the institutions and their representatives. Within this
participatory environment, the staff suggested that “The project should be seen as
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an entity here to help them change, and in giving them a forum to talk and enjoy a
good time...we are hoping we are promoting a good relationship.” Participants’
learning might have been fun, yet the project attempted to prescribe what the
participants needed to learn in order to participate in the project. Villagers
explained that “The games created a fun atmosphere, but most of us didn’t really
know what it was about [and] we learned that the project was going to affect our
lives very much and we didn't know what we could really do. It seemed, then, that
most of the participants were not empowered to actively participate.
Beginning with the PRA, the project aimed to contest this passive
participation. The games challenged the villagers’ conceptions of the project, and
their role in this newly created MPA. The projected suggested new ways of
interaction, such as cooperation and collaboration, and important rationale for
following the fishing regulations. The project attempted to have participants learn
the meaning of project’s concepts through the games. By participating in and
talking about the games, participants were involved in learning through symbolic
interaction. The participants were asked to understand the concepts as constructed
first by the project. Then, in the process of playing the game, the participants were
to interact in a way that they would understand the meaning of the concepts. This
was a proposed step in the process of learning to participate in the project.
However, the process was still led by the project and leaders and not by community
members.
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Participating and Learning in Policy Meetings: Initiating the Village MPA
Committees
Villagers participating and learning in policy meetings was a new policy
making process that created a dynamic for change in (1) how the project was run,
and (2) in how policies might be decided. This was one of the most potentially
transformative learning experiences that the project initiated. “Changing the policy
making process could change both state and villagers practices,” suggested project
staff. The project’s approach was to create a new organization, the Village MPA
Committees, which would have the right and responsibility to participate in
decision-making processes on the MPA. However, initially, state authorities were
reluctant to engage in this process. “State officials see their role as controlling
resource use for the whole country...and they don’t usually allow the provinces, the
communes, or the villagers to have a say anything,” said a director. However, the
project had a goal to facilitate a co-management system that included villagers in
the MPA as participants in the MPA’s management.
The commune appointed the original committee members in consultation
with the project, which identified potential committee members from each village
during the PRAs. By mid-2002, the project had set up a program of bi-monthly
meetings. The meetings provided a form of informal learning where committee
members and project staff, including state officials, participated in a set pattern of
presentations, responses and discussions. The committee members’ participation
in this policy forum began a process of information sharing and awareness-raising
about MPA issues where state officials, project staff and the villagers could
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participate in discussing, and at times deliberating, ongoing project programs and
policies.
lUCN’s response to facilitating community participation was to set up Village
MPA Committees. These were informal approaches to learning how to participate
in policy discussions, but with non-formal and incidental learning features as well.
These meetings began to provide leadership and public forums that empowered
individual village representatives, the village MPA committee members, to
participate in policy discussions. Each village had a committee of six members
(initially) and at least one member had to be a woman as agreed upon by the
project and the provincial People’s Committee when setting up and getting approval
for this new organization. Two village committees out of the six committees
included two women. In general, according to one project staff, “Only two or three
members on each committee were active in participating and presenting at
meetings.” However, those who that did participate gained experience in
presenting ideas, accessing the MPA decision-making process, and deliberating
MPA practices and policy. Each committee member was paid a small stipend for
participating.
Each meeting was held at a different location, for example, at the project
office, the Commune People’s Committee meeting hall, Hon Mun Island, or one of
the villages’ meeting halls. Except for the meeting at Hon Mun Island, and the
project office, all of the meetings had been held at official government sites.
Moving the meeting from one site to another has given different agencies,
organizations, and communities exposure to the meetings. For example when the
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meeting was held in one village, tens of other villagers milled around outside the
meeting hall, listened in, watched and talked with committee members as they were
coming or going. The villagers also saw the meeting process in the open and some
said, “We could hear that they [the project and the officials! were listening to our
experiences...our problems.”
The meetings began in the morning and included a lunch break and an
afternoon session. As the sun often beat down in this tropical region, meeting
places on the islands could get unbearable hot in the afternoons. A couple of
times, the project hosted lunch for all the participants. However, at most meetings,
participants were on their own for lunch. Villagers often talked with project staff or
officials during this break-time. In these villages, meeting spaces were small and
informal, neighbors and children often came by to listen to the meeting, which was
a major event in island villagers where few visitors ever stopped by. This meeting
space helped to break down hierarchical barriers that easily held up when meetings
were in Nha Trang offices, but which easily became pervious when they were
conducted out in the villages.
The meetings provided committee members with access to knowledge
about the project at one forum. This was often the only time committee members
were able to meet directly with some the project directors and even some of the
more office oriented staff. State officials often attended to discuss a recent issue,
such as aquaculture disease or fishing regulations. “What we hope, is that villagers
will learn how to voice their concerns so that when the project ends, there will be a
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process set up so that villagers are actively involved in the conservation and
development decisions that affect them,” said one IUCN staff.
Meetings generally started with a short talk by one of the project directors or
lead staff. Typical talks were about accomplishments, for example, 24 mooring
buoys had been installed, or about pending activities—i.e.—a team would be
coming to do an evaluation during the next week. If any committee member had a
question, s/he could ask at that time. One said, “ I was eager to ask a question
when they told us about the mooring buoys...my neighbors are not sure...what is a
mooring buoy and what is a marking buoy?” This topic provided the context for a
discussion that lasted several minutes. Project staff decided that they and the
committee member and a few villagers should take a trip out to Hon Mun to see the
differences for themselves. The committee member said, “It was the first time I
was able to get some authority (official person) to see my problem...our villagers’
problem so quickly.”
When Village MPA Committee members presented they had a format given
to them courtesy of the community development team. Each committee had a
chart formatted, which the committee members used for their presentations. A
committee member said:
We learned to participate using the chart. At first we didn’t know how to
talk about our experiences, but the CD (Community Development) staff
worked with us and gave us these charts to use. A day or so before each
meeting day, we [the village committee] met and wrote about the past two
months. It was the first time I prepared for a meeting.
Through the meetings, Vietnamese village committee members represented their
community. One member from each village’s committee presented on activities in
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its village during the prior two months with each of the projects teams. They talked
about three points: what was achieved, problems, and outstanding issues.
Outstanding issues focused on problems that had come up and what the project
needed to address in the next month or two. Though the villagers could come up
with solutions, they generally asked the project to respond. While the villagers
presented, project staff and any visiting officials listened. “It was the villagers’ time
to speak and our time to listen,” explained a project staff. After all of the villagers
presented the past two-month’s experiences, staff from each unit responded to the
issues presented.
Responses were sometimes well thought out; project staff would explain
specific procedures that they would follow and times they would meet in a village to
resolve the issue; other times they were more impromptu. But that was a part of the
learning process. “It was not a perfect way to exchange ideas, but at each
meeting, it got better and people talked and discussed more,” said a project staff.
After the project’s response, committee members often followed up with more
questions and a didactic process of presenting, and then later responding, turned
more into a dialogue or conversation as other committee member or staff joined in
to support, expand or contest ideas. Many problems needed immediate
deliberation. Most of the problems were not specifically related to marine
conservation. Many were with communication, or credit, yet some were with MPA
enforcement. This process evolved over several meetings with the villagers talking
more and the project staff being more willing to listen.
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Sometimes the responses were brief with a promise to take care of the
problem within the week. For example, one of the ongoing problems was with
electricity. In the case of one village, the project had to take some responsibility
because it had co-purchased a used generator. The generator supplied three
hours worth of power for the village, but it had broken down for the second time.
The villagers really wanted it repaired. “We will take care of the problem this
week,” responded one of the directors. Sure enough, later that week, several
project staff and a director held a meeting at that village. Tens of villagers, men
and women participated and deliberated over repairing, buying a new generator or
considering an alternative system. Collectively, the villagers worked through the
technical and economic factors and recommended the purchase of a new
generator. Several other deliberations on issues from enforcement to credit took
place through this approach.
Initially, the bi-monthly meetings were not set up to encourage dialogue or
discussion. The approach was formal. Villager presentations were followed by
project staff responses. When crisis occurred they overwhelmingly focused on the
negative—failed aquaculture, lack of electricity, or overbearing enforcement.
These were topics that not only contested villagers socio-economic needs, but also
their understanding of how to participate in a public discussion with authorities;
however, “we wanted to create that dynamic so we developed a set of procedures
that were more dialogical,” said program staff. They added:
It was glaringly obvious that the project and villagers had many problems to
talk about but it usually happened in a crisis situation...rather than in a
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discussion beforehand. The village MPA committees were planned to
create such a discussion forum.
Committee members had numerous opportunities to interact informal and
learn incidentally from each other during these sessions. They were also learning
how to participate in a public forum and with some project staff training, a few
village committee members gained presentation and discussion skills, and learned
how to contest and negotiate policy in public. However, the meetings were guided
and controlled by the project. The project set up the topics to speak on and the
format for speaking. When a serious issue arose, project staff preferred to deal with
it on a village by village basis. In such circumstanced, dialogue or discussions at
the meetings ended abruptly. This confirms a learning to learn approach. The
project and its experts, in this case, instructed the learners, who are the MPA
committee members, in appropriate participation techniques. Thus, during the
project, the village committee members learned to participate under the tutelage of
the project. When the project’s support ends, these committee members may have
the capacity to know how to participate appropriately to represent their respective
villages in technical and regulatory discussions with state agencies and officials.
This was a new kind of participatory approach to policy making in Vietnam
in this era, where in an authorized public forum, villagers could debate and contest
the state’s actions. The meetings and committees began to create some new
leadership skills and speaking capacity for villagers who have been previously
silenced vis-a-vis state development activities. For example, their capacity to give
a presentation, to tell a story, and to develop a persuasive argument, increased
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through these meetings. Much of this change in capacity was situated within
individuals, but it had the potential to be collective as the individual village
committees and the broader village MPA committee participated together in
meetings and study tours, where they contest practices and new MPA policy.
Several villagers indicated that they were happy to have direct access to knowing
about the project from the committee member. However, while the committee
members’ capacity to participate in public meetings may have been enhanced, their
access to power, information, and decision-making vis-a-vis the state was still
limited. The state agencies and project still made the final decisions. Furthermore,
this program did not focus specifically on what or how villagers, themselves, could
improve the marine environment. Direct protection and conservation was also still
the domain of the project. This process continues to evolve.
Summary: Learning to participate in the project
Community members learning to participate in the project was one of the
principal aims of the general awareness raising activities, and moreover, in he PRA
and Bi-monthly Meeting activities. Through these two programs, the project initiated
a process of participation and learning that provided villagers, in general, and MPA
committee members, in particular, access to project concepts, practices,
information, and decisions. However, much of the participation was limited vis-a-
vis the experts and officials running the project. The project determined and
prescribed much of the learning, while encouraging awareness raising that
resembled learning to learn or learning through symbolic interaction. Through
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these approaches, the project attempted to (1) provide training to a select group of
villagers, so they would know how to participate in future technical and regulatory
discussions about the project, and (2) promote the communities’ agreement on
specific project concepts and proposed practices. The project, did, however, also
facilitate collective participation and learning experiences through the PRA and Bi-
Monthly meetings. These experiences may have identified collective resistance to
the project, which was evident in the PRA games, and in Village Committee
members’ criticisms of the project. However, at this point in the project, community
members’ contestation of project policies was reactive rather than reflective, and
community environmental practices that contributed to damaging and decreasing
the nearby marine resources persisted.
Expanding Community Participation: AIG and Credit
Two of the more community-wide programs were AIG and credit. These
generally followed learning to learn approaches. Both programs aimed to increase
villagers’ experiences with income generating alternatives to fishing and extracting
marine resources. The project believed that increased experiences would give the
participating villagers better opportunities in the local labor force and market
economy. In turn, these experiences would make villagers more marketable and,
therefore, fit into the contract labor system that was taking place outside of the
fisheries industry.
AIG and credit programs began as non-formal training activities, and then,
as participants actually started to use their credit for a micro or small business
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activity, or for an AIG activity suggested by the project, learning became more
informal and incidental as villagers learned and taught each other. The Project
initiated several AIG programs, called “additional income generating” programs by
project directors, which introduced villagers to alternative ways of making a living.
These programs provided villagers with access to different ways of generating
income than they had available at the time. One of the project’s more innovative
AIG programs involved a few villagers in making, managing and marketing an
environmentally friendly edible seaweed jelly product. In more traditional IG
approaches, the project connected villagers to manufacturers of rattan baskets and
sport nets that needed labor to do piece-work to meet increasing demand. The
credit programs also promoted seaweed associated activities in addition to
traditional IG approaches. Most participants opted to raise chickens and rabbits or
invest in small trading. Others used the credit to upgrade their current fishing
practices.
For many, the IG and credit programs were new opportunities to participate
in community activities and greater awareness about other livelihood possibilities.
“We didn’t have access to training programs [before the project],” said some
women. Others said, “We could access credit for the first time and make decision
about how we wanted to work.” The next section includes an explanation of
participation and learning in the seaweed and more traditional AIG activities. This
is followed by a presentation and analysis of the credit program.
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Learning to Enterprise Seaweed Jeily
One of the project’s more innovative programs was a small pilot AIG, which
involved a few women in making and marketing seaweed jelly—an environmentally
friendly activity. It could be considered an experiential non-formal learning program
that paved the way for the participants to learn informally, once it got off the ground.
Seaweed jelly, as a consumable product, was not known in Vietnam, so it was “...a
totally new experience for the villagers from its production to its marketing and
consumption,” said the staff. “It was strange to us...we do have some foods like
jelly...we thought we could try it... [and it] ...is a tasty treat good on any hot day,”
explained one of the women entrepreneurs. The jelly is somewhat like gelatin.
Project staff explained:
. ..besides, growing and selling raw seaweed like any other
commodity, it can be made into other products, such as jelly to eat.
Our goal was to come up with a product that would be
environmentally friendly [and] the villagers could grow and market
themselves. In other countries, such as Taiwan, China and the
Philippines, seaweed jelly has become a popular food.. .if villagers
could produce it here.. .we might have more alternatives for them.
A few women in one village agreed to participate in the pilot. “Before I had no
steady income...I helped my husband or earned petty cash repairing fishing nets...I
thought 1 would try this jelly business,” one villager said. The project proposed that
women make seaweed jelly and sell it to the tourists at the nearby wharf. The
project coordinated a long process of creating a recipe, getting it approved for
hygienic purposes from the local health institute (Luis Pasteur Institute), obtaining
People’s Committee permission for a small sales stand at the tourist wharf, and
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promoting its sales at schools. As the project got the necessary approvals, they
worked side-by-side with the women to produce and market the product.
While the project worked on all aspects of seaweed jelly from growing the
resource to harvesting, drying and processing for jelly, a few women in one village
began experimenting and creating recipes. "The first few hundred batches were
too sweet,” said one of the sellers. One of the originators said, “We tried ginger
jelly and added color to make green, pink, orange and red...to make it more
interesting...” While waiting for their boat to take them out to the islands, many
tourists looked curiously at the new treat. “Is it cooling?” asked some. “What are
the flavors?” asked others. For as little as 500 VND$ (about three cents US) many
people were willing to try it.
“Over the summer season (2003) we had great sales and made more than
200,000 VND$ day (about 13 USD$),” said one of the women. Besides the
schools, some restaurants also bought the jellies. Some only wanted to buy the
dried seaweed, however, and produced their own jellies “to be sure of the hygienic
quality,” said one restaurant owner, and even with costs, the women entrepreneurs
were still netting close to 10 USD$/day. For several weeks at the height of the
summer tourist season, the women could not keep up with the demand and had to
look everywhere (outside of the growers in the MPA) to purchase seaweed to make
the jelly.
However environmental and consumer issues arose. Before the tourist
season ended, a disease, called “ice-ice”, affected the entire local and regional
crop. This disease “...took away the jelly-like properties of the seaweed,” a local
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scientist asserted. The women reported, “There was no seaweed to buy and soon
we were without work. We had to wait for the season to improve.” In addition, the
schools stopped buying, “...the children became bored with it...” the schools
reported. Also, with the advent of the rainy season, fewer tourists arrived in Nha
Trang and the seaweed jelly market literally dried up. The seaweed jelly makers
went out of business—at least temporarily.
The project led this learning activity from inception to the sales of seaweed
jelly. The project problematized the issue without community input, and, through a
non-formal expert-led learning process, mentored the villager learning about
seaweed jelly production and marketing concepts. Through this experience, a
handful of women participants have gained awareness, new knowledge and
participatory experiences to change how their individual households earn a living.
During the high season a group of three women were making over $10 USD/day,
which equates to $3 USD/day for each woman—a high salary for Vietnamese,
where the average daily wage is just $1 USD. “We were learning to create a
unique product for the market, we were learning to work with the local schools and
restaurants [and] we were learning to manage our product...” one woman said. In
learning through experience, they have begun a process of changing their IG
practices. However, how this group learns and proceeds from the challenges of
dried up markets and diseased seaweed will show if they have evaluated and
reflected upon their past actions. By December, 2003, the group was selling
seaweed jelly at the port again. Yet, its previous distribution to other market sites
had not been re-established.
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Learning Household-based AIG
The project also introduced the villagers to additional, non-marine oriented
AIG activities. These activities were part of the development component of the
projects. Whereas prior to the project, most women’s work was based on
household chores and tasks to support their husbands, the project piloted a variety
of IG activities that all villagers, but that women in particular, could learn. The
project piloted a sport net making and rattan basket weaving piecework labor
programs for villagers.
Community Development staff explained, “We liaised with DOLISA, and
local manufacturers, organized and coordinated two or three week training
programs with the manufacturer’s training staff and coordinating the transportation
of supplies and finished product.” Women have primarily taken advantage of these
programs learning to add to their household’s income. “It is a small amount of
money, but I feel very happy to be working,” said one woman. Several others at a
rattan basket training program agreed. “It is fun to learning something new...to
make something...and have some additional income,” added some participants in
the basket weaving training program. Unlike the seaweed jelly project, in which the
villagers have developed as their own product, the women making baskets and
sport nets worked by the piece for a nearby manufacturing operation. One, in
particular, is associated with the furniture enterprise IKEA.
To begin this program, small groups of as few as six and as many as 14
women participated in the training program directed by staff from the two respective
companies. They went through two or three weeks of hands on training where the
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trainers demonstrated, reviewed, monitored and checked the women’s work. The
women received small stipends from the project for participating. For the next few
months, the women were considered apprentices and their work was reviewed and
often redone when it arrived at the factory. They received about 50 cents US/day
during this time. By the third or fourth month, most of the women basket makers
and net weavers were receiving full pay ranging from 70 cents to $1 USD/day for
their labor.
These programs have added not only additional income, but also new
learning experiences for the women. A woman explained:
Before, many women used their free time to gamble and play
cards...now they use it to make baskets or weave nets...and at
home...it is very convenient. We also have more to talk about
now... we can share our basket work... ask each other for help. ..learn
better or quicker ways to do it working together.
Another said, “My husband is interested in learning this work too...during the low
season (off season for fishing), he has time to help me...we can learn together and
improve...” This suggests that these activities can be reasons for people to get
together, socialize, and learn collectively, both informally and incidentally.
This program has raised participants’ awareness about how they can
participate in the labor market and has given them new reasons to get together and
learn from each other. This is a first time experience for most of the participants.
Furthermore, they are learning new skills or adapting what they already know in
sewing and weaving to be applied to making sport nets and rattan baskets. The
collective experience also raised women’s awareness about other possible
designs. One woman explained,
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After working on the baskets for several months, we thought we
should do something new. We talked about it for several
days...and...when the project boat came to pick up the baskets
later that week, we asked them to start a new training program on a
new rattan product for us to make...and two weeks later, the
company began a new training program for us making larger
baskets...for more money.
Even if the manufactures were to leave the community today, these
villagers would have new skills that they could use in their own micro-enterprise.
The women have a good local model in a nearby MPA village, where villagers,
mostly women again, have had a seashell curtain micro-enterprise “for almost 20
years,” said one of the founders. Women there created designs, managed their
resources, and network with retailers to sell their curtains. “We make about $1
USD for the standard designs and $3 or $4 USD for the custom designs.” This
suggests that the villagers, in general, and that the women villagers, in particular,
have role models that may empower them in AIG areas.
How these activities contribute to protecting and enhancing the MPA are at
best indirect. Project staff suggested that increasing household income could
lessen pressures on fishing, but this was not evident during the project. “At least
they will like the MPA if we help their household earn more money,” some project
staff said. In addition, the project is subsidizing the transportation of the raw
materials and the finished products across the bay. This is really an in-kind
contribution right now, since the project boats go out to the islands on a daily basis,
but in the future, the villagers will have to create their own way to get the material to
their villages and return the finished products to the manufacturer.
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Accessing Credit Programs
Learning to access credit was a life changing experience for many villagers.
The project developed a special credit program to target the poorest villagers in
addition to those most affected by the creation of the MPA. This program did not
focus directly on improving the environment, but it was a project effort to provide
more villagers access to credit for micro-enterprise ideas. Therefore, it had a
development emphasis. About 30% of the villagers are considered poor, based on
state documentation and confirmed by the PRA. While there were several credit
programs available to villagers, in general, and to village poor, in particular through
the Agriculture and Rural Development Bank and the Bank for the Poor
respectively, these banks typically required property ownership titles. Many of the
poor did not have these titles, either because they did not actually own the land
where they lived or because of social (but not legal) practices that did not recognize
women’s ownership. What this indicated was that a large majority of the poor in
these villages were women.
The project’s credit program, put together over a period of one year, offered
this select group of poor villagers, who were mostly women, a process to learn how
to access and use credit within a community and project supported system. The
project set up meetings, worked with village leaders to establish credit leaders and
credit groups, and monitored how and when the interest on the loan was to be
repaid. This proceeded smoothly because village leaders had several years of
experience participating in state-run credit programs for their households.
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Participating in the credit program was a process of learning how to work
with the banking institutions and the projects’ credit procedures. The project
structured this non-formal learning and regularly visited the credit leaders, credit
groups, and credit participants to ensure that the procedures and practices were
being carried out so that participants would be able to repay their loans on time.
The program permitted borrowing from three million VND$ up to seven million
VND$ (somewhere from $200 to $500 USD). Several participants explained:
We attended meetings and project staff came to our homes to review our
credit applications and to learn about our credit plans. At first it was
difficult to read the credit applications and to figure out what to use the
money for. The men were all telling us to invest in lobster, but it wasn’t
enough money. We wanted to do things on our own...[but] it takes a lot of
time...the project staff have been very helpful and we are very happy with
the program.
Project staff often proposed that participants use credit for small enterprises
that already had a good success record in the immediate areas. They encouraged
participants to raise livestock, such as rabbits, chickens, pigs, or goats. “Animal
husbandry has been a proven approach to successful poverty alleviation and credit
programs,” explained one staff. There was a ready market for them and plenty of
local knowledge to support those new to the profession, so some people thought.
As a result, many recipients tried these livelihoods with varying degrees of success.
Others used the credit to set up small shops selling a variety of food products and
beverages. “There were not too many people trading in every day needs in the
island villages before,” said a few villagers. Others used the credit to buy supplies
for their home-based craft enterprises, such as the seashell curtains.
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The credit program offered many of the poor their first chance to learn to
apply for and use credit. More and more villagers were becoming involved in
creating a market place in their villages in addition to becoming more involved in
Nha Trang’s commodity and retail market. However, it was a very prescriptive and
limited learning process. The project liaised with the banks and government
agencies and not with the community members to create the credit program. The
project’s credit experts led this process. They presented the program step-by-step
where they mentored and monitored each participant. CD staff visited village credit
recipients on a monthly basis and controlled, as much as possible, how credit was
used.
However, several of the villagers’ micro-enterprise ideas were not
appropriate because they did not know what do with their animals or how to run a
shop that made money. Several people lost their rabbits and goats to disease.
Others did not have enough business to repay their monthly interest payment, so,
in some cases, they borrowed from somewhere else. Eventually, to address the
lack of experience and knowledge in some enterprises, the animal husbandry, in
particular, the project contacted and brought extension officers and state health
agents to the villages for training programs. The transmission of learning continued
through this approach. Participants expressed their eagerness to learn from the
experts, be successful, and earn money.
The credit program involved more than one hundred households and close
to 15% of the island villagers in the project. These activities introduced villagers to
how they could participate in the project, gave them access to knowledge and
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experience that they did not have before, and opportunities to use that knowledge
in their own micro-enterprises. Much of the participants’ learning in the credit
activities was prescriptive though. The banks and the project told the participants
what they could do with their loan. Learning and participation, therefore, was really
another awareness-raising process about how to participate in credit programs.
Similar to the AIG program, participating in the credit program was not specifically
linked to conservation goals of the project.
Summary: Expanding community participation in AIG and credit
The AIG and credit programs were expert-led non-formal learning
approaches to involving more participants in the so-called development aspects of
the project. Both programs involved more women than men as women met the
project’s criteria for participation. They tended to be poorer and have fewer IG
opportunities than men. These programs did raise participant awareness about
how to earn additional income or how to access and establish credit. The
participants overwhelmingly appreciated this program. They had new reasons to
get together and share learning with their neighbors. They also had new access to
training programs, and for most, their household incomes increased slightly.
While the project strongly suggested how participants could participate in
AIG and credit programs, outside of the seaweed jelly enterprise, no other activity
was specifically connect to conservation aims of the project. The additional income
that the AIG and credit recipients were bringing in to their households did not make
up for the income that could be gained from fishing and other marine resource
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exploitation practices. In other words, while AIG and credit programs enhanced
household income to some extent, it did not do so well enough to transform
fishermen or fisher households into full time seaweed growers or handicraft
producers. Furthermore, the participation and learning process was heavily
dependent on direction from the project and other institutions and not from the
community itself.
As the participants completed the non-formal component of learning, they
began a new process of experiential and informal learning. Their self-initiated
collective learning through AIG and credit may contribute to more control over
production, empowerment and organic learning. The seashell curtain makers
experience in one village, suggests this possibility. The next section shows how
accessing other’s learning can stimulate such change.
Accessing Other’s Experiential and Collective Learning
The next section shows how the project set up several programs to increase
villagers’ access to knowledge. Accessing knowledge about others MR As and
gaining new experiences in AIG activities provided the villagers with stronger
foundation to deliberate and participate in MPA policy discussions. These learning
contexts were study tours to other MPAs, and environmentally friendly livelihood
programs to supplement a household’s lost income from the closure of fishing
areas around Hon Mun. The project brought a small group of villagers to the
Philippines to learn directly from Philippine villagers about MPA experiences there.
Furthermore, they organized and facilitated training programs in raising seaweed
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and in making seaweed jelly that supported villagers that wanted to pilot alternative
environmentally friendly livelihoods. These non-formal programs also included
informal and incidental learning. Many villagers gained a new perspective of MPAs
through participating in these learning programs. Some began to apply this
learning to their own AIG pilots indicating their willingness to transform their
livelihoods.
Study Tours: C ollective Learning Exchanges
Participating in study tours has changed those who have participated. The
Hon Mun Project villagers visited two National Park sites in Vietnam and learned
about management and tourist practices. However, the study tour that challenged
villagers’ perspectives the most was the visit to the Philippines CBCRM sites. (For
an excellent study on learning in CBCRM sites in the Philippines see English,
2002). The study tours had non-formal and informal learning components. The
study tours are an opportunity for participant to observe and learn what others have
done. “The participants learned about other projects by listening and seeing...and
we also required them to later indicate what they saw, what they liked and what
they didn’t like, and how some practices could be brought back to our project,” said
a project staff. Incidental learning occurred as well as villagers interacted and
experienced the Filipino MPAs. Prior to arriving in the Philippines, the project
organized a meeting for participants to introduce them to the trips’ objectives and
an overview of the case of locally managed MPAs in the Philippines. The meeting
was held at project offices in Nha Trang.
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In early February 2003, IUCN project brought a small group of 14 people to
the Cebu, in the Philippines, one center of community based marine protection
activities. The participants included some of the Village MPA Committee members
and a few officials from the Commune. “It was a highly desired trip and many of
those left out were unhappy,” reported several of the committee members who
were not invited. The participants visited protected areas at Olongo Island and
Gilutongang Sanctuary in the Cebu area, and met with several official government
officials, such as Cebu’s mayor, state agencies and people’s organizations, such as
fishermen's associations and cooperatives. Several of the participants stated:
We learned that the Philippines has a history of MPAs since the
1980’s...but... it wasn't until the late 1980s that management became
community based...not government based...the government control was
not effective in stopping destruction and marine degradation. [Furthermore],
...local control has improved the participation and monitoring of the marine
resources, and the villagers themselves are not...rarely...involved in
destructive fishing practices, such as cyanide and dynamite fishing...but it
[cyanide and dynamite fishing], still occurs just outside the MPA...[and]
local people have developed their own AIG activities focusing on grocery
and hardware cooperatives, tourist related crafts and memorabilia...[These
are] some things we could do better.
According to IUCN staff, the study tour was also a capacity building activity
for local village MPA committee members. “They gained knowledge about MPA
management, activities and empowerment in community organization... learning
about the need for guarding and management,” claimed IUCN staff. Many of the
village MPA committee members agreed on the impact of the trip showing that they
had reflected on it vis-a-vis their own experiences with Hon Mun. Participants
explained:
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We learned a lot. [For example] the government and the local people [in the
Cebu area] work well together, and they understand the local
conditions...so they can manage for their needs...we don’t do this here [at
Hon Mun]. We learned how they [the Filipinos] protect the environment and
enforce MPA regulations. They have a collection fee when visitors come to
their local reserves [and]...their own self-funded trash pickup system works
and the villages are very clean, unlike the Hon Mun MPA villages.
[Moreover] ...in the Philippines, there is strict enforcement in the MPAs and
the coral and the fish are very beautiful. Here [at Hon Mun], we don’t have
strict enforcement yet. Sometimes one of the [enforcement] team’s buddies
gets off because he knows someone on enforcement [the enforcement
patrol].
The participants emphasized the positive effects of community and local
government involvement and strict enforcement, and the results on maintaining
beautiful, coral ecosystems and increasing the numbers of fish for fishing. They
saw that communities could develop their own eco-tourism and cultural activities,
yet they also saw the persistent poverty. “The people are still poor. Most of their
AIG activities focus on tourism and there are not sufficient tourists to support the
population,” suggested some participants.
This experience changed how the Hon Mun villagers thought about their
MPA and what it could be. 'When we came back to our villages [in the Hon Mun
MPA], we had lots of ideas to try and we talked about them at the bi-monthly
meeting,” said a few participants. Some of the changes were explained as follows:
For one, we brought up that there should be strict enforcement...this is still
a problem with the Enforcement Team playing favorites. Enforcement
should help protect the environment and help develop beautiful coral reefs
like in the Philippines. The community should have chances to operate their
own tourist businesses [and]...some small tourist businesses make a good
living in the Philippines, but there cannot be too many either.. .there [in
Olango] only a few people have a tourist license. We want to have more of
a share of the tourism.
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The participants also explained that they had felt that the [Hon Mun] MPA was
being imposed on them, but that after the study tour, they had a greater awareness
about how to have a community-oriented MPA.
The study tour provided a kind of disorienting context for the participants.
From the flight, to the language, food and cultural differences, the participants
came face-to-face with a new environment. However these dilemmas were
personal and not connected to their villages. These challenges aside, the study
tour present opportunities for awareness and consciousness-raising. Participants’
awareness was raised as they saw and heard how a MPA could be locally
controlled. Their consciousness was raised as they both individually and
collectively reflected on and talked about the differences, strengths and
weaknesses between their participation in the MPA vis-a-vis Filipinos that they had
visited with. Voicing these ideas, participants showed that they were beginning to
think about a MPA through a new conceptual framework, one where they were
active agents in its management. Presently, they were not involved in any of it
policies except on the receiving end.
Learning through the study tour, similar to the PRA activities, was through a
process of symbolic interaction based on the groups’ observations and discussions
with the Filipinos informally and incidentally. For the Vietnamese participants, some
environmental conditions in and around Cebu seemed better to them, while some
economic conditions seemed less favorable vis-a-vis their own conditions on their
island villages. Some individuals integrated this learning with other more
transformative ideas and embarked on transformative environmental practices.
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However, for most participants, the study tour had a “tourist feel...this was my first
holiday ever,” said several participants. So, for a few of the participants, the study
tour was more study; for others, it was more tour.
Accessing, Learning, and Integrating Aquaculture Experiences
The project has initiated and researched environmentally friendly
aquaculture to identify environmentally friendly and economically marketable
species so that villagers could make a sustainable livelihood. “Some people lost
their fishing grounds to the MPA no-take zones; others were farming lobsters and
grouper in a non-sustainable way...we hoped to find alternatives that would bring in
about the same income.. .has a good market.. .that are good for the environment
and shows high potential to be grown in the MPA,” a project staff said. While
numerous trials were conducted on various fish species such as grouper and cobia,
mussels and oysters to marginal degrees of success, the most success was with
seaweed. The Aquaculture staff, in particular, promoted villagers to try growing
seaweed as an alternative to environmentally destructive fishing practices. This
was one of the only programs that could be identified as learning in environmental
action that was facilitated by the project.
However, few villagers were willing to grow seaweed as an alternative to
growing lobster or other more lucrative fish, such as grouper. To change people’s
perceptions of growing seaweed, the Aquaculture Team organized a study tour.
“We wanted to introduce villagers to see how easy it was for anyone to grow
seaweed, and in nearby Ninh Thuan [Province], seaweed farming had been very
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successful,” said a project staff. On the trip, the villagers learned how to tie
seaweed lines, harvest it, dry it and even make seaweed jelly for consumption.
“The jelly seemed like the most interesting part,” said one of the women
participants. Others said, “seaweed growing is not so difficult...but the conditions
in Ninh Thuan are different...it is more of a bay...Hon Mun...is deep ocean.”
After the trip, the Aquaculture Team and the Community Development
Team organized two separate training programs. One was for growing seaweed
and the second was for making seaweed jelly. The project opened a seaweed trial
out at its new aquaculture station. Nevertheless, only a few villagers were
interested. Those who participated in the trials of the respective activities had initial
success. During this pilot period, the project actively encouraged the individual
growers and others to join in growing seaweed. They even proposed forming co
operatives because seaweed can be more profitable when it is grown in large
aquaculture rafts, which would require several people to manage. A couple of
growers said:
The study tour convinced me to try out seaweed, and it grows easily without
much attention... I only have to check it every other day or so. It seems to
attract fish too...mostly reef fish. I can sell the dried seaweed to Ho Chi
Minh City for 4500 VND$ dry. I make about 3000 VND$ profit/ kilo (about
20 US cents) [but] sometimes I couldn’t grow enough seaweed to meet the
demand.. .[besides] It’s not much work so I’ll keep on doing it. [It can also
be used innovatively] growing it near the aquaculture area because it is
suppose to clean the water and it had been good and easy to grow [and]...it
works nicely to keep lobster cages cleaner.
“We were encouraged by the early success of growing seaweed,” said
project staff, but during the summer (2003), interest in growing seaweed waned as
the ice-ice disease took hold. Villagers felt that success was unpredictable and not
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very profitable compared to raising lobsters or fish, such as grouper. Still the
project continued to promote seaweed, even while the villagers took a wait-and-see
attitude. The project investigated the ice-ice disease to share findings with villagers.
In addition, in some areas, rabbit fish ate large quantities of the seaweed. “It’s
impossible to grow enough seaweed to outlast the voracious rabbit fish,” a grower
said. The project also researched this issue and suggested that rabbit fish were
only present at particular times of year and seaweed could be grown at other times.
Still, the villagers waited for several months until they felt that the water conditions
were better to grow it again, and no one is growing seaweed as their only source of
income. “It is still an experimental project for me,” responded one seaweed
growers.
Learning, from their study tour to Ninh Thuan, the project’s trial station, and
then through their own pilot projects, the villagers had an additional experience that
they could use to assimilate and adapt to their marine based IG practices.
However, the experience suggested to most seaweed growers that changing from
fishing or lobster farming to seaweed growing was not economically feasible. They
had assimilated a lot more success in growing lobster. However, more than one
villager applied knowledge from his own and other’s experiences, and integrated
seaweed growing to clean his aquaculture cages. This suggests that villagers
could transform his/her own and other’s experiences in new projective ways. What
villagers learned might not always be what the project wanted them to learn, but
here, some villagers showed that a variety of experiences could help them come up
with their own solutions to environmental issues. This experience indicated the
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unpredictability of learning in informal contexts. The project’s approach to learning
facilitated individual innovation rather than collective change. One reason may be
that learning about seaweed was facilitated by the aquaculture experts or others.
There was no process to encourage collective learning, collective reflection or
collective change.
Summary: Accessing other’s experiential and collective learning
Study tours were truly awareness raising experiences for all participants,
especially for those that participated in the study to the Philippines. On the one
hand, they introduced villagers, mostly MPA committee members, to new ways of
thinking about how communities could have more control over MPA management.
On the other hand, they exposed villagers to new IG activities, such as community-
based tourism and seaweed growing. There were many informal and incidental
learning opportunities throughout the study tour. However, the project controlled the
study tour activities, which limited the participants’ role in making participation or
learning decisions during these activities. Individuals did interact with other
individuals. This facilitated reflection and projective agency for a few individuals
rather than for the participants as a collective. While some individuals assimilated
more transformative IG practices, most resisted change. The influence of the study
tour on community participation and learning, therefore, changed little in the overall
communities’ relationship to its marine resources and coastal environment in the
short-term.
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Learning to Take Action
For some villagers, after the environmental problems of decreased fishing
catches and lobster disease, the most pressing problem was solid waste in their
own front yards, along the shoreline, and at the market. Some villagers, yet mainly
women, wanted to take action on this issue and proposed the project’s assistance.
“One problem was money and one was knowledge...we didn’t know where we
could get help for either one,” said one villager. The project facilitated two
programs related to solid waste. One was a trash collection and disposal program
initiated by Tri Nguyen’s MPA committee. The other was a dry toilet program
piloted in a couple of households in the four most remote villages. The trash
program was a collective effort that has changed how the community thinks about
trash. The toilet program was more of an awareness-raising model. If individual
households were happy using the toilets, then others might be willing to build and
use their own toilets rather than the sea. At both the community level and the
household level, villagers were learning to take deliberate actions for a healthier
environment.
Learning to Take Action: Collective action on community trash
Trash is a huge issue in the Hon Mun villages because besides fishing,
tourism brings people to the area. Mostly people piled up trash next to their house
and burned it or dumped it into the sea. A villager said:
We haven’t thought much about it...but ...before the children used
to swim here and the water was clear and clean...but it is polluted
now. Villagers also use the sea to wash clothes and to relieve
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themselves...at some point this won’t be healthy. Trash will keep
tourists away...and we want tourists to come to our restaurants and
visit our aquarium.
For Tri Nguyen villagers, these issues came together, and with the villager MPA
committee’s initiative, the project offered seed money to start a trash collection
program.
Up until this year (2003), villagers in all the MPA communities have burned
the trash or dumped it in the sea. So, in the closest village to Nha Trang, Tri
Nguyen, which gets the most tourism, the villagers requested the project assist with
trash disposal. “We have some development fund money that villages can use for
such initiatives,” said project staff. The villagers had to set up a program where
each household and business would pay a fee that could hire some public trash
collectors and that would be sufficient to transport the trash to the landfill in Nha
Trang. They had to transport the trash to the mainland because the island, like
others within the MPA “...is very rocky with porous soils that are not suitable for
burying trash,” a local scientist reported. The project offered to contribute several
millions of Vietnamese Dong (hundreds of dollars) for the first few months to help
start the trash collection scheme.
“The project helped out a lot...but it was just the beginning...we still needed
more money...and a self-sustaining program,” one villager explained. At a village
meeting, the villagers’ MPA committee held a meeting to discuss the monthly trash
fee. “We decided that it would be 8000 VND$/household and 10,000 VND$ for
market vendors and restaurants, she said (50 cents and 70 cents US, respectively).
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According to village MPA committee members, some people disagreed and still
wanted to dump trash in the sea, but most people are complying.
Today the village water looks clearer and the paths and the marketplace
look clean. The trash program has had an effect. “Our market area is clean again
and the children can swim in clear water by the boats like before,” said several
women who operate small stands in the marketplace by the northern wharf.
However, some problems remain. One village committee member explained:
Most households pay...we have 80% compliance, but we do need
everyone to pay...we can’t force anyone yet...those that don’t
pay...they don’t get trash pickup...but that is a problem...they burn
their trash or throw it into the sea...[and] Now the project’s support
is ending...but we do not have enough of a budget to pay for all of
the fees.
It seemed likely that the villagers’ concerns for their children and their
interest in increasing tourism contributed to the changes in the community’s
understanding about trash. It was more of a consciousness raising process. The
villagers saw their children swimming in cloudy water that was once clear.
Furthermore, tourists came to the village and would comment on the trash.
Gradually, the village leaders felt some change was needed to meet the changing
economic conditions. “Tourism is going to be big business in the area and we
should prepare community for it,” said an MPA committee member.
However, the villagers did not take care of the trash issue until the project
arrived. “The project’s PRA made us more aware of some of these issues,” said a
committee member. The project provided temporary support, yet when that
supported ended, the villagers’ First response was to return to the project and ask
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for continued funding. Neither the government nor the project has the funds to
support this social service. It is up to the villagers to take steps to pay for the
service themselves. “We know we have a trash problem...it is still difficult...still
difficult,” said on villager. So, even though the villager’s awareness has certainly
been raised on this issue, and they have begun to act to clean up the environment,
they still are relying on state institutions to resolve the issues rather than creating
their own approaches.
Individual Awareness-raising on Solid Waste
Another issue related to trash has been sewage. Neither the City of Nha
Trang with 350,000 residents nor rural villages along the coast and islands have
any waste treatment at all. On the islands, until the project began, no families had
toilets. This is the norm. The island communities do not have a year round water
supply. For about 9 months of the year, it needs to be shipped in and stored. Some
of the poorer families do not even have enough money for large cisterns to store
the water. In this context, the sea has been the number one option for human
waste, and at about any hour of the day, men, women, and children wade out into
the gentle surf to relieve themselves.
“We needed to raise awareness on this issue and provide a model
approach,” project staff explained. The chemical in raw sewage can easily affect
the coral reef ecosystem. With funding from the project, pilot dry toilets were set up
in the four more remote villages. The project investigated toilet designs with the
local Pasteur Institute and identified one that used minimal water and that could be
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kept hygienic with dry material such as sand and paper. The projected proposed,
“Village leaders should identify two households in each village that would be
interested and we will contribute 65% of the cost.. .villagers would contribute the
remaining.” Several households volunteered. Labor, Materials and supplies were
brought over from Nha Trang and the toilets were constructed on site. Mostly, the
villagers just watched as construction problems emerged and disappeared and
then, several days later, they had a small outhouse on their property ready to use.
Project staff gave villagers diagrams of how to use the toilet and hoped for the best.
Old habits are difficult to change and initially “no one wanted to use the
toilets. They smelled and it seemed unsanitary...why not keep using the sea?” One
villager explained. It was difficult to deal with such intimate matters, and some
heated arguments erupted between the project staff and the volunteer households.
Several project staff meeting-minutes even involved discussions on this issue.
Some people were using the toilets to store fishing equipment. Others were using
them like wet toilets. “People had to be shown how to use the toilet,” a staff
member explained.
Eventually, all of the toilets were being used properly. “Let us do it our own
way...on our own time...” explained one villager with a toilet. Some of the
households even found that the night soil made good fertilizer for orchards and
small vegetables gardens. “It is better fertilizer than pig dung,” said one of the
[rare] villagers with large gardens. A staff member suggested, “That is one of the
best promotions for using the toilets...and after six months, the eight trial toilets are
all being used properly.
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For those volunteers, the toilets have been a transformative learning
experience. Most recipients resisted as long as possible to use them. It was hard
to break a personal routine of using the sea. However, given time to change a very
personal practice, households began using and seeing the benefits that toilets can
bring. “It is still easier to use the sea...but we are realizing that we have to
change...there are too many people...we have to think differently,” one villager
said.
While learning to use toilets was difficult, more collective challenges
resulted from enforcement activities. The next section re-tells a brief episode of
conflict between the project’s enforcement team and a group of fishers from the
village. Contesting enforcement has been an on-going challenge as some villagers
continue to resist the project, while others expand their cooperation.
Learning through Contestation
The following section explains one particularly confrontational incidental
learning context. All project activities provided opportunities for incidental
learning—positive and negative, and initially, the MPA and ail associated project
activities were confrontational for many. At times, whole villages refused to
participate in specific project programs. A project staff would arrive to discuss or
evaluate a program and villager homes would be empty. Other times, villagers
willfully circumvented the no-take fishing regulations by fishing when “we knew the
enforcement team was resting or on the other side of the island,” some said. In
other cases of resistance, some participants in the various pilot aquaculture
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projects purposefully sabotaged the research studies by selling off part of the pilot
fish stock or by moving the stock into their own cages. However, the most
provocative incidental learning occurred on a regular basis when the project’s
Enforcement Patrol had to enforce regulations that contested villagers time-worn
fishing practices, previously permissible, but now illegal. Through these
experiences of direct confrontation between the villages and the project staff, the
villagers learned that they could not only contest their right to fish, but they also
could contest project policies that directly affected them. This gradually led to
increasing participation, not through physical confrontation, but through dialogue
and deliberation between affected fishermen and project directors and staff.
Collectively Contesting Enforcement Creates Awareness
In Vietnam, the state had long been absent from enforcing fishing
regulations. Villagers had made their own rules to help out one another or they had
simply done whatever they pleased in a regime that was run as open-access.
Open-access gave anyone the right to catch whatever s/he could wherever s/he
wanted. The fishing regulations had regulated gear, but this was brazenly flouted.
One of the project directors who represented the Ministry of Fisheries even said
that “I was told not to enforce fishing regulations because the people are poor and
they need to make a living.” Many villagers stated that laws had never been
enforced. Many used lights that were too bright. Villagers called this fishing by
“strong light” as the brightness attracted more fish to their nets. Others used illegal
three-layered nets with each layer being a finer weave, which caught everything.
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Thus, species that should not have been exploited were being exploited and
removed from the marine/ coral reef ecosystem around the vicinity of Hon Mun
Island.
Into this milieu came the project and the Enforcement Patrol. The Project’s
Enforcement Team thus had a challenge. First of all, the project had created new
regulations, compatible with the fisheries regulations, but more limiting in that in the
MPA, there were ‘no-take’ zones. No marine species could be exploited from these
zones. The initial regulations were imposed top-down. They were developed by
the Hon Mun MPA Project and passed by the Khanh Hoa Provincial People’s
Committee (Decision No. 26/2002/QD-UB) (Hon Mun MPA Pilot Project, 2002b).
The regulations were developed by the project through meetings with the
Department of Fisheries and People’s Committee. These were called provisional
regulations, but they were to be enforced nonetheless. This had never been the
case in Vietnam’s fisheries. Fishing regulations were enforced at the discretion of
local authorities, and as indicated, local authorities typically did not enforce these
regulations. The main task of the Enforcement team was to enforce the ‘no-take’
zones so that the marine biodiversity in that area—specifically around Hon Mun—
could be rehabilitated.
According to several eye-witnesses, one night, this proved especially
difficult. One village committee member reported the following story:
With no lights, two village fishing boats drifted close to Hon Mun’s core
zone. They were using tremmel nets and divers to catch a run of pelagic fish
(mackrel) that had swum into the core zone. The Enforcement Team, out on one of
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its nightly runs noticed the water moving off to the south west of the island and
directed their boat drive to go over there. Beaming their headlight, they soon
spotted the wayward fishermen. “Get out of the area...you can’t fish here,” the lead
guard said. The fishing boats had their motors off and were not going anywhere
fast. The Enforcement boat soon was ready to dock. Shining the headlight on the
two boats, the team noticed that the license was one from a local village.
“Why are you fishing here...you know it is against the regulations,” said the
team leader. “Our nets drifted in...we just followed the fish over,” said one of the
fishermen. “You can’t do that...you know it is against the regulation to be in
[fishing] the core zone,” the leader added. “Give us your nets...you can’t fish
anymore until you pay the ftne.. .then you can get your nets back.” In the back of
the boat some men began to scuffle. “That’s our fish...our livelihood... you cannot
take it.” Soon a fight broke out...men were hitting...kicking and wrestling one
another. The Enforcement team brought out its stun sticks ending the fight.
“OK... now, we are taking your nets and your fish, because you know it is illegal to
fish here.
The committee leader continued, “...and then they left taking the nets and
the fish from our fishermen...we can’t have the patrol (Enforcement Team) using
weapons against our villagers and robbing them of their livelihood,” he added.
Some committee members from other villages were surprised. Words (of what
happened in one village or the other) get around, but often no one knows “what is
rumor and what is truth?” some said. The meetings provided a forum that
increased collective knowledge of events such as this in addition to happier news.
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Before the project, this episode would have been a story only, remembered
by the villagers and the Enforcement Team, but resulting in little or no change in
fishing or enforcement activities. But now, there was a project-wide Bi-monthly
Meeting program where difficult issues such as this could be brought up. This
collective listening to a crisis created a stir for action. The villages had changed
tactics. One of the committee members reported:
We could tell our story to others...not to the border patrol or
military, who would not care about us, but to the project staff and
authorities, and to other villagers. Before, we would have been
silent, “...or we might have sabotaged some equipment, but we
have this meeting...we can share our experiences good or bad
here. We learned that talking through issues was possible. We
could do it here [at the bi-monthly meetings]. We didn’t have to do
it through some illegal way like before.
The villagers’ story telling brought a reaction from the Project. Within a day
or two, the three project directors met with the villagers and had a village forum.
One of the project directors said:
We thought we should have a community meeting to better
understand their problems and what we might do about it. The
community didn’t really have a problem. They understood the
fishing violations, but they felt that regulations had been enforced
irregularly.
Villagers reported that ‘friends’ of the enforcement team did not have their
equipment confiscated and were not fined, but others were. “Friends of the
enforcement aren’t stopped or fined. ..but others are,” a fisher said.
According to some, the enforcement team doesn’t know how to use its
authority. Furthermore, they are not active enough to stop all illegal activities. A
fisherman explained:
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We know when they rest and when they sleep...and when they
make their rounds in the evening...after we know, we can go back
to the coral areas and fish,” said another. “We can still get away
with fishing, when we want,” added another .. and if we don’t do
it, some one else will.
In the villagers’ presentation at the meeting, and then with the project
directors’ follow up visit, it was agreed that the patrol should get additional training.
The following week, the project organized a training session on communications
skills and fishing regulations for the entire enforcement staff. During the past few
months, villagers did not return with additional complaints about the enforcement
team.
The villagers’ contesting enforcement practices through story telling at a
meeting raised their consciousness about how they could participate in changing
regulatory practices. Before the project came, villagers could fight, bribe or use
some other avoidance strategy to contest state laws. However, the project initiated
and supported regulations based on fair implementation of enforcement practices.
Furthermore, the project wanted the villagers to participate in the enforcement of
those laws. The project made overtures to the villagers when enforcement conflicts
arose. Villages began to see that the project acted differently than state agencies
would. The project would dialogue with them, and the fishermen, rather than
sabotaging, showed that they had reflected on their capacity to have an influence
on enforcement practices through dialogue, and to act on what they perceived as
unjust practices. Such change indicates that the villagers have learned informally
and incidentally through struggle. They have gained some collective empowerment
through reflecting on, contesting and resisting past practices.
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Summary: Non-formal, informal, and incidental learning in the Hon Mun
Project
In concluding this section, it is evident that the lUCN/Hon Mun’s project
carried out a variety of non-formal and informal learning activities that raised
villagers’ awareness about the project and how to participate in it. These activities
specifically included PRAs, bi-monthly meetings, study tours, AIG and credit
programs. Other programs were more general public awareness-raising activities.
One of the project’s main aims was to raise the community’s awareness of marine
conservation concepts, which were explicit in the marine biodiversity education
programs and enforcement activities. Furthermore, these concepts were talked
about during the PRA, at bi-monthly meetings and specifically acted on in the
seaweed AIG. Study tours also directly introduced a small group of community
members to alternative MPA experiences and practice. Out of all these activities,
the most significant in respect to the conservation issues, were the bi-monthly
meetings and the study tours. Of these two, the study tour directly introduced the
participants to environmental issues related to village participation in marine
conservation. However, in most other activities such as credit and AIG,
environmental issues were not explicit. Much of the learning, overall, was
prescribed by the project. Informal learning created by and shared among villagers
collectively was not encouraged.
Learning outcomes thus far indicate that many villagers, but the Village
MPA Committee members in particular, have participated in learning experiences
that could be identified as symbolic interaction, where they and the project are
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working out the concepts and practices of what acceptable participation and
conservation action in an MPA is. Learning through the project, however, remains
focused at the conceptual level. Critical reflection, organic and experiential learning
do not seem to be learning processes that the project wanted to encourage.
However, some individuals on the MPA committees show more empowerment, yet
they generally are leaders already. Their participation in sharing and discussing
ideas, and in proposing actions that are alternatives to the projects, indicates that
some participants are becoming more engaged in accessing the decision-making
processes. Furthermore, some are contesting project proposals and offering or
implementing their own alternatives, such as alternative aquaculture schemes or
the seashell curtain business, indicating some consciousness-raising on their part
of how their practices can create change vis-a-vis the projects’.
However, this learning has not been directed towards marine conservation
in particular. Much of it has focused on immediate household or community
economic or development issues. Paths needed to be paved, electricity generated,
and docks built. One village, however, used their collective learning to begin a
trash collection program. This suggests the emergence of a deliberate effort at
collective action for the village’s immediate environment. Nevertheless, this village,
in addition to the five others, remains somewhat passive, while waiting for
institutions, such as the project and state agencies, to take action to help them out.
In addition, the other non-formal credit and AIG programs that the project has
implemented have contributed to more villagers liking the project rather than to any
particular conservation goal. Nevertheless, the project has introduced more people
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to alternative ways of thinking about how to participate in conservation and
development projects. By participating in various activities, these villagers have had
broader learning experiences than they had before the project arrived.
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Chapter 6: Discussion of Findings
Overview
The two projects have provided a variety of non-formal, informal and
incidental learning contexts for community members to gain awareness and
participate in learning about the marine environment and coastal resource
management issues. Programs and activities in both projects have increased
community access to development and conservation processes. Furthermore,
these projects have provided opportunities for communities to gain new
experiences in participating in coastal resource management, contest previous
development policy-making practices, assimilate learning about conservation and
development, and add or compare to their own situated knowledge. In some
cases, and moreover in IMA-V’s project, community members had environmentally-
situated learning experiences that began to transform their relationship with their
nearby coastal resources. These experiences were largely informal and incidental,
yet based in non-formal learning programs. In lUCN’s project, awareness-raising
about environmental and policy changes was emphasized more than direct
conservation experiences. Learning was largely prescribed in non-formal
structured experiences.
This discussion section responds specifically to the first two research
questions that guide this study. First, it examines contextual influences on
participation and learning. This includes the affects of these two NGO projects on
their respective communities and adjacent coastal resources. Next, it discusses
findings on the natural, geographical, cultural, social and economic influences on
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learning and participation in the two projects. Third, it compares the two projects,
covers the non-formal and informal learning features, and suggests reasons for
similarities or differences between them. Fourth, it indicates the actions and
outcomes of community learning in the respective projects. The third research
question is answered in the concluding chapter.
Contextual Influences on Participation and Learning
Before comparing the findings from the two projects’ learning programs, in
particular, there are implications of environmental, economic, cultural and social
influences on participation and learning that should be discussed. These factors
not only influenced community participation, but also the learning context. This
section responds to the first research question. It begins briefly by explaining the
state and NGO influences on the evolution of conservation and ICD projects in
Vietnam, and on these two projects, in particular. This is followed by a discussion
of the most influential factors in participation and learning in the two projects, which
were environmental, economic, cultural and social.
In the context of conservation in Vietnam, the state has committed itself to
establishing and enforcing numerous protected areas (PAs) (FF1, 2002). The state,
in general, has favored an institutional approach to conservation (Adger, et a!.
2001a), decreeing regulations and hiring staff, mostly not local, to protect the areas.
Almost all of these PAs have been in forested areas. More recently, marine
protected areas (MPAs) have been established with Trao Reef being the first locally
managed reserve and Hon Mun the first state managed reserve. According to
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IUCN and the state, the Hon Mun MPA is to serve as a model for other state
designated MPA in the pipeline. The state, therefore, is taking an initial position of
favoring institutional rather than local control of PAs. In the meantime, however, it
has legalized the local management atTrao Reef.
Within this context, several environmental NGOs have been conducting
research, policy planning, and more recently, ICD activities in Vietnam (Sage &
Nguyen Cu, 2001). These NGOs have influenced state conservation policy and
have tended to work with the government rather than with communities. This fits
well with state development policy that is economically focused. Vietnam’s
development policy continues to put emphasis on elimination of poverty (World
Bank, 2000). IUCN and IMA-V are two NGOs that have worked with the
government focusing on conservation issues in addition to ICD issues. Out of
dozen or so environmental NGOs in Vietnam, IMA-V is the only one specializing in
marine issues. lUCN’s interest has been in species protection, and has only
recently become interested in marine issues (IUCN, 2004). This indicates the
relative novelty of not only MPA projects, but also of community participation and
learning in ICD projects Vietnam. In this section, the influences of SMA-V’s and
lUCN’s environmental narratives on learning and participation are discussed first.
This is followed by a discussion of the environmental, economic, cultural and social
influences on the communities’ participation and learning in the two projects.
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NGO Influences on Community Participation and Learning
For the two NGOs, IMA-V and IUCN, their own organizational roots
influenced content, approaches, and formative outcomes in their projects. For
both, natural resource conservation is pre-eminent, moreover in the case of IUCN.
Furthermore, they both believe in scientific research as the basis for making
conservation management decisions. However, IMA-V is more organic, and is
therefore, as suggested by Emirbeyer and Mische (1998), an organization that
contests past actions and practices to address uncertainty and conflict through
contextualized, socially constructed solutions. Therefore, in IMA-V’s project,
participation was deliberate. In contrast, IUCN is firmly founded as an elite
institution. Its donors are primarily multilateral institutions and nation-states. IUCN
promotes actions that support institutional control and tends to take actions based
on selectively choosing solutions from the past that have worked. This exemplifies
and approach that sustains iterative agency (Emirbeyer & Mische, 1998).
Furthermore, this suggests that despite participatory language, participation was a
conceptual tool and not a deliberative practice. These factors inevitably affected
how the two projects facilitated programs and activities, and how communities
participated and learned.
IMA-V, as a scion of its parent organization IMA, has had a long term focus
on community-based participatory solutions to coral reef issues. IMA-V, the only
marine focused NGO operating in Vietnam, sought out a community site where
they could promote community initiative and self-reliance in rehabilitating and
protecting coral reef resources. This led their project to Van Hung Commune and
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nearby Trao Reef in Khanh Hoa Province. Having a community-based focus led
IMA-V to gradually develop and strengthen community ties with officials, community
social organizations and unassociated villagers. Being community-based meant
that IMA-V more often modeled and mentored marine rehabilitation and
conservation, while providing an action-oriented framework, guidance and
consultation as the community developed and initiated its own solutions to its
coastal resource issues. This approach is identified in CBCRM practices (DENR,
2001a), and fit well with Vietnam’s newly emerging decentralization of coastal
resource policy and management (NORAD, 2002) and commune level policy
making on local resources (GDD, 1998). Furthermore this approach connected to
some still existing threads of Vietnamese village traditions, in which villagers have
been self-reliant in managing social and economic affairs (Jamieson, 1995;
Kerkvliet, 1995a; Lutrell, 2001; Ton That Phap, 2001). IMA-V nurtured the
community to develop its capacity and recapture past practices to actively control
and manage its nearby coastal resources. The community was receptive to this
approach and gradually empowered itself to act, advocate and make environmental
policy decisions. Its ability to collaboratively guard the marine reserve, to advocate
throughout the greater community, to propose environmental policy, and implement
this policy, indicates this empowerment.
IUCN, a world conservation leader, has a five decade history of protecting
threatened species around the world (Wapner, 1994). Recently, its attention has
been drawn to coral reefs as threatened ecosystems (IUCN, 2004). Having had an
office in Vietnam for more than 10 years, IUCN is continually looking for
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conservation projects in Vietnam. This project, to preserve a representative sample
of coral reef eco-systems in Vietnam, is supported by the World Bank and DAN I DA,
which matches the species focus and the institutional nature of IUCN. Despite its
newly found interest in community participation, IUCN has had an institutional and
scientific research focus since its inception (Wapner, 1994). It continues to create
new hierarchical practices. Its project was organized around a newly created state
bureaucracy, the Hon Mun MPA Authority. Training and learning to fit into the
project was emphasized as in learning to learn approaches. Experts, mostly
international, were brought in to train staff. Staff members were trained, and then
villagers received training in marine issues. IUCN used the participatory process
more as a tool, which reflects its continued preoccupation with institutional control
and expert knowledge. For example, the PRA was a tool, used by IUCN to get
community members to give information that the project wanted. The PRA was not
a process where the participants deliberated plans or policies. The project was
telling the community how to participate. This approach fit well with the Hon Mun
Project, since the project is ultimately managed by state institutions.
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Environmental, Economic. Cultural. Social and Geographical Influences on
Community Participation and Learning
At the two project sites, both communities have been blessed with
substantial coastal resources, and more specifically, coral reef resources. Fish
species have readily supplied the two communities’ livelihoods for several
generations. More recently, with declining fish catches, lobster and shrimp farming
have been the profitable resources chosen for exploitation. However, at IMA-V’s
site, the ecosystem is being largely depleted of fish, and shrimp and lobster
disease have caused significant economic losses. This has yet to happen at
lUCN’s site.
While the communities focused on these resources to earn a living, IMA-V
and IUCN based their non-formal programs and informal activities on community
members gaining an appreciation for scientific significance and principles of these
ecosystems, and an understanding for the fishing laws to protect species in the
ecosystem. This approach has been recorded in previous development studies
(Arce & Long, 1993; Quarrels van Ufford, 1993; Sundberg, 1998; Van der Ploeg,
1993). Thus, the environment, the ecosystem, and coastal fishing laws clearly
framed the project for the NGOs, whereas community economic interests provided
community members’ a context for participation and learning. From the beginning,
community members were more interested in income generating concepts and
experiences vis-a-vis environmental ones. This is a suggested likelihood evinced
in other studies on community involvement with NGO projects and natural resource
management (Aipert, 1996; Brown, 2002, Wapner, 1994) This directed community
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participation towards activities where they might be able to increase their
household income. General awareness raising activities on marine conservation,
therefore, were not particularly effective approaches to encouraging environmental
change.
For the two communities participating in their respective projects, income
generation issues played out in their fishing and aquaculture practices. There is a
global demand for Southeast Asian lobsters and the communities involved in the
two projects could respond to that demand (Phuong Giang Hai, 2002). However,
lobster farming and associated fishing activities have been depleting coastal
resources and contributing to polluting the waters. At IMA-V’s site, the community
has directly felt the affect of these environmental changes (IMA-V, 2001 a). At
lUCN’s site, the community, overall, still believes that the resources are there to be
captured and that only their lack of access to sophisticated technology is limiting
them. Therefore, while economic demands to exploit these resources have
increased, the coastal resource based to support those demands has declined to
unsustainable levels (IMA-V, 2001b). IMA-V participants were more affected by a
deteriorating coastal environment than IUCN project participants because of the
total number of lobsters farmed and due to the differences of water currents and
depths, which favored the IUCN site.
Most community members stated their interested in participating in their
respective projects with an expectation that they could learn (and earn) to improve
their IG capacity. The Government of Vietnam supports this focus in its
development goals (World Bank, 2000; develop-vn, 2000-2002), and conflicting
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economic and conservation goals, which seem to favor exploitative practices, are
present in its newly proposed fishing regulations (Bo Thuy San, 2003; NORAD,
2002). The two projects made efforts to respond to their respective communities’
economic interests with AIG and credit programs in addition to daily stipends for
participation in most project activities. Such a response is common in ICD projects,
and in particular, in Vietnam (Sage & Nguyen Cu, 2001; Worah, 2000).
Participation in the credit program therefore had an important impact on
learning in the project. While many community members had access to credit prior
to the project, the projects facilitated additional access, or access for those
previously without it. This had an immediate impact in enhancing participation in
both projects. Numerous participants in these programs said that they participated
because they could earn additional money or potentially learn how to manage
resources better so that there would be more to harvest, exploit and sell. In
CBCRM, it is suggested that this type of participation is based on “material
incentives” (DENR, 2001b, p. 7). More specifically, in IMA-V’s project, credit
enhanced participation only for a small representative group, yet this participation
was focused on deliberate action to improve the coastal environment. In lUCN’s
project, credit and AIG included hundreds of villagers, increasing access to the
project, but this access did not lead participants to deliberate actions to protect or
enhance the environment. Instead, these programs supplemented household
income, while fishing and aquaculture activities continued. This result stresses the
importance of IG activities vis-a-vis conservation activities for the two communities.
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Additional significant influences on community involvement in the two
projects were cultural practices specifically related to hierarchy and gender.
Cultural practices tended to limit participation and restrict access to information and
learning. To start with, culture imposed limitations on participants’ aspirations to
change; participants were more likely to choose participation strategies based on
“...a zone of knowledge based experience” (Schutz, 1964, p. 283), thus limiting
their agency. Hierarchy, based on Confucianism, was identified by project staff,
community participants, and state officials as a limiting factor in community
participation and organic learning, since Confucianism stresses the knowledge of
state over the village, and the knowledge of men over women (Jamieson, 1995;
O’Harrow, 1995). In both projects, this presented a barrier to the goal of co
management. IMA-V’s project created processes to challenge the hierarchy, while
lUCN’s tended to reinforce it.
IMA-V approach to challenging hierarchical policy-making practices was a
gradual process of action-oriented experiences that increased the Core Groups’
participation in enforcement practices. Co-management was not a meeting
schedule, as in lUCN’s project, it was a process of participation and learning.
Learning conservation practices through direct experiential practice is a concept of
CBCRM (DENR, 2001b). IMA-V had to intervene numerous times to facilitate
collaboration between the community, its Core Group and the local Department of
Fisheries officials. Gradually, IMA-V’s facilitation and the Core Groups extensive
experiential, action-oriented informal learning broke through this barrier. It was
learning through struggle, and such learning is consciousness-raising. By the
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project’s end, not only the Core Group, but also the Advocates and other
community members had contested hierarchical policy making practices and were
active in the environmental decision-making process as partners, with local
officials. Co-management, advocacy, and protecting the coastal resources were a
variety of experiences, which the Core Group and Advocates accumulated and
integrated, and which eventually transformed their environmental and policy making
practices. They contested past meaning schemas and through the process,
rethought what actions they need to change to improve their coastal resources.
In contrast, IUCN and its state collaborators well-exemplified the state’s
hierarchical structures. Co-management, as represented by community
participation in decision-making, was more a term on paper than practice as Village
MPA Committee members had access to policy-making meetings, but no role or
authority in making policy. For example, they reported to village neighbors on
project policies and activities acting as liaison between the project and their
villages. This was evident at the bi-monthly meetings. Furthermore, other
participation in the project reinforced the villagers’ prescribed roles in the process
as receivers of information and experiences, yet within restricted ways of using that
information; for example community members participated in piece-work AIG
opportunities, making baskets or sport nets, or typical animal husbandry credit
activities that have been practiced throughout Vietnam, inclusive of the project site,
for at least two decades already (World Bank, 2000). Participation practices have
reinforced the community’s past practices without reflecting or problematizing
maintaining agency that could be identified as iterative (Emirbeyer & Mische, 1998).
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MPA communities, thus, have had little influence on changing their environment.
Changes have been imposed by the project.
This affect of hierarchical practices was also noticeable in the preference for
institutional knowledge vis-a-vis the community’s own experiential learning. IMA-V
noted that solutions to coastal issues should be based on science (IMA-V, 2001a).
IUCN has deep roots in developing policy positions based on scientific research.
This privileged science, institutions and their expertise over community-based
experiences and organic knowledge. This has been a common approach in
development projects (Chambers, 1997; Finger & Asun, 2001). The two projects
regularly consulted regional marine science institutions, such as NIO and RIA #3 to
conduct research and participate in disseminating scientific findings to the local
communities. Many community members also acknowledged that they trusted
what scientists told them.
However there were differences between the two projects. IMA-V had a
preference for community-based, informal and action-oriented learning activities
that challenged this knowledge hierarchy, because the community members were
actively involved in creating their own knowledge about the environment and
coastal resource management practice through their own hands-on participation
coral reef protection, rehabilitation, advocacy, and policy-making. This suggests
that IMA-V’s project developed a new space for environmental discourse to flourish,
where the community had access and a role in the decision-making process
(Webler & Tuler, 2000). lUCN’s project maintained the primacy of scientific
knowledge and expertise. The project and the associated state agencies made
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project and MPA policy. They also hired staff to manage the MPA. The
community, at most had a representative role in the process through voicing their
opinions.
Moreover, in both projects these cultural practices maintained gendered
participation throughout both projects, which restricted women to supporting roles
in both projects’ leadership and programs. Both projects did not purposefully aim to
reinforce gender roles, yet they did not deliberately contest those roles either.
These practices limited learning and participation for women, in particular.
Women’s participation tended to be supplementary to men in both projects. Some
examples of this were In IMA-V’s project, where women served tea at meetings and
workshops, and wove nets for the men’s work of installing the pilot aquaculture
activities. They hosted cultural exchanges and collected trash. In lUCN’s project,
the women wove baskets and sport nets and raised pigs and rabbits, while the men
built bigger fishing boats and wet further out to sea. These gender distinctions are
common throughout Vietnam (Desai, 2000; ADB, 2002). This suggests there were
few opportunities for women to contest hierarchy that limited their participation in
the project.
On the positive side, IMA-V’s project had a gender workshop that focused
on general gender awareness at the household level (Silverman & Ho, 2004) and
actively engaged the Women’s Union in project activities such as clean-ups. These
programs created awareness about gender issues. IUCN was also planning to
have some gender workshops. Its AIG and credit program benefited more women
overall than men, with some women gaining their first paycheck outside of
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household work. Furthermore, it has made some efforts to address women
interests through developing women’s only activities. Mostly these were meetings.
Furthermore, lUCN’s project had several women on the Village MPA Committees.
This created new IG and policy-making access for women.
On the negative side, despite including gender issues and facilitating
women’s participation in both projects, access, benefits and control over project
activities and resources remained firmly in the hands of men in each project.
Overall, women were almost completely absent from significant roles in decision
making about natural resources in both projects because of their exclusion from
leadership positions. Vietnam’s laws declare that such exclusion is not to be
permitted (ADB, 2002). Nonetheless, in IMA-V’s project, this gender discrepancy
was especially noticeable in the co-management participants, the Core Group and
the Project Management Board, which included only one woman out of 13 people.
Even though both projects assisted the initiation of trash collection programs
headed and largely run by women, trash issues are traditional women’s domain in
Vietnam (Fahey, 1998; Vietnam’s Women’s Union, 1998). However, both men and
women seemed content with maintaining past gendered social meaning schemas
that have worked (Emirbeyer & Mische, 1998). Neither project deliberately
contested such practices founded in centuries of cultural practices dominated by
Confucianism (ADB, 2002; O’Harrow, 1995).
Vietnam’s fishing laws and General Democracy Decree/1998 also had
some influence on project activities. Knowledge of the fishing regulations was a
significant component of non-formal training programs in both projects. In both
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333
projects, these regulations were points of contestation. Therefore, both projects
worked to facilitate a paradigm shift from knowledge [or ignorance] of the
regulations to enforcement. Up until the implementation of both projects,
fishermen, and Department of Fisheries’ staff acknowledged that fishing regulations
were rarely enforced.
In IMA-V’s case, change occurred. Knowledge of the regulations evolved
into practice. From non-formal learning programs, the Core Group participated in
informal activities enforcing regulations drawn up though a consensual community
dialogue process. In IMA-V’s project the community became enforcers and self
regulators. IMA’s facilitated the community election of the Core Group, which
enforced regulations. Before enforcing regulations, the community had already
gone through a process of contestation through dialogues, headed up by the
Advocates. The regulations for Trao Reef, thus, were created by community
deliberation. This was an informal community learning process in which many
community members participated in deliberate dialogue and consensual decision
making framed by state policy and informed by the local context. This suggests
CBCRM practices and processes of transformative learning.
In contrast, In lUCN’s case, knowledge of the regulations remained
prescribed information. The community was not involved in the creation or
enforcement of the regulations. The state and the project created and enforced the
MPA’s regulations in lUCN’s project. The community was only on the receiving end
of these regulations, which resulted in numerous direct actions of resistance.
However, this was contestation outside of project activities, because the fishermen
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were not participants in creating or enforcing MPA regulations. Community
fishermen directly fought with enforcement staff. They also flouted MPA
regulations by fishing in the ‘no-take’ zone around Hon Mun when they could. Their
contestation resulted in the project’s response, but it was a not a response of more
community access, participation or deliberation in policy making. The project
mediated disputes, but did not change the enforcement or policy-making process.
The Hon Mun community’s resistance, therefore, should be understood in light of
Vietnamese communities’ strategies of resistance (Jamieson, 1993; Kerkvliet,
1995b; Kolko, 1997; Scott, 1986). These strategies and practices do little to
change the social context because they are reactive, and resistance typically ends
when the immediate issue is resolved.
Participation in both projects was supported by the General Democracy
Decree/1998, which decentralizes decision-making on development issues to the
commune level. However, neither local governments nor the two projects directly
tied their participation activities and practices to this state decree. The project was
viewed as something apart from government, even local government. However,
this changed during IMA-V’s project. The commune and villages took on the
authority to establish oversight on development and environmental issues
(GDD/1998, Articles 6 and 9), which includes the establishment of boards, such as
the Core Group or the Village MPA Committees (GDD/1998, Articles 13 and 17).
Despite being able to ground community participation and decision-making in this
decree, both projects adapted CBCRM principles and practices to create a
participatory framework for, first, a select group of villagers, and second for
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community members at large. In IMA-V’s case, they created the Core Group and
facilitated the Advocates mobilization. Similarly IUCN initiated the Villager MPA
Committees and the bi-monthly meeting program. In CBCRM, these are identified
as People’s Organizations (PO’s) (DENR, 2001b). Furthermore, In the case of
IMA-V, the Core Group and some community members participated in project
“research, data collection, monitoring and enforcement,” which are principles of
CBCRM (DENR, 2001b, p. 14).
Other possible influences on community participation throughout both
projects’ evolution were community social organizations, such as the Women’s
Union and the Youth Union. These organizations are not part of the government,
but do represent a feature of the communist organization of Vietnamese society.
Therefore, working with these groups from the outset suggests that participation
and actions were unlikely to change agency. However, for both projects, these
organizations acted as important agents that organized community participation.
Participation, mostly in informal activities such as ICCs and music and poetry
competitions, were organized through these organizations. For example, in both
projects, the Youth Union organized artistic events, creating and performing music,
songs, and poetry to further publicize marine conservation.
In IMA-V’s project these organizations were more actively involved in
deliberative participation and in creating new environmental experiences than in
lUCN’s project. In IMA-V’s project, the Women’ Union and War Veteran’s also
have their own local agendas apart from national agendas, and they played an
important role in advocating for conservation in IMA-V’s project. The Women’s
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Union and the War Veterans formed the core of the Advocates and initiated the
advocacy program. Both groups are authorized by the state to conduct such
activities; however, much of any initiative depends on local interest. To a large
extent, members of the War Veterans, in particular, acted as organic intellectuals,
who organized and mobilized the community to advocate and act for Trao Reefs
protection. Participants from these organizations were involved in dialogues and
deliberations. They reflected on past actions related to conservation and advocacy,
problematized and initiated new actions—the Trao Reef Advocates, suggesting a
change in agency. In lUCN’s project, the Women’s Union and the Farmer’s Union,
which includes fishermen and aquaculturists, were also involved in organizing
participants, especially for AiG and the credit programs. However, unlike their
colleagues involved with IMA-V, they did not facilitate environmental advocacy.
Finally, geographical influences affected the solidarity among the
participants. IMA-V’s project worked with one commune, Van Hung, with five
contiguous villages, while centering the project on two of the coastal villages, in
particular. These two villages were most involved in the destructive fishing
practices at the nearby coral reefs. State social and economic services were
readily accessible by Vietnam’s Highway #1, rail and regular public transportation
services. IMA-V’s community of participants had somewhat more solidarity as one
community to begin with. IMA-V’s ICC’s and support of the advocacy program
contributed to increased commune-wide awareness and support for the marine
reserve. IMA-V also did outreach to the outlying villages and included village
members in non-formal training programs and study tours. Nonetheless, some
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community members in outlying areas voiced their disappointment in lack of access
to more project programs. In comparison, IUCN worked with six villages on three
different islands. These villages were physically separated from each other and
often engaged in different marine IG practices. Because of these differences, there
was less incentive for the six villages to collaborate or to work collectively. Some
villagers, in fact, resisted participation or collaboration as much as possible.
Therefore, the geographic influences suggest that communities in the respective
projects would participate differently from the outset
The discussion of the first research question indicated that environmental,
economic, cultural, political, social, and to some extent, geographic influences
contributed to shaping participation and learning in the two projects. Seemingly,
communities put economic interests first, while the two NGOs efforts promoted
conservation practices first. The two NGOs differing conservation foundations and
program approaches further affected participation and learning. The second
research question, which focuses on project similarities and differences in their
respective non-formal and informal learning programs, is discussed next.
Non-formal and informal Learning: Comparing Approaches
Overview
The two projects’ non-formal and informal learning programs targeted
similar participants and used comparable content and activities. However, each
used different learning approaches and emphasized different aspects of
conservation. IMA-V’s approach was more organic and primarily consisted of
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modeling practices followed by informal learning activities, whereas lUCN’s
approach was institutionally based with primarily prescriptive, non-formal learning
activities. Overall, both projects’ principal learners were its select groups, the Core
Group with IMA-V and the Village MPA Committees with IUCN. However, IMA-V
also incorporated an additional group, the Advocates, which evolved organically to
some extent. This significantly broadened access to learning in IMA-V’s project. In
the case of IMA-V, its principal learners directly protected, advocated for, and
enhanced their coastal resources. In the case of IUCN, the Village MPA
Committee members learned about the project through their occasional interaction
with project staff and participation at bi-monthly meetings. In addition, the greater-
community in both projects was involved in general conservation programs, such
as ICC’s. In the case of IUCN, approximately one hundred women were involved in
credit and AIG programs. Community members in IMA-V’s project did not have
similar access to credit or AIG.
As both projects completed three years in operation, there were clear
indications of similar programs, yet different processes and results of learning in the
respective projects. In this section, I respond to the second research question. I
discuss who learned, what, and how participants learned. This discussion includes
a comparison of the two projects’ non-formal and informal learning programs.
Where evident, I indicate influences, similarities or differences between the two
projects, and where and how they occur. This section begins with comparing who
learned.
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Comparing Who Learned and How Learners Participated
Both projects aimed to increase community participation in conservation
activities. Both started with institutionally-led awareness-raising programs to
include the largest number of community members possible. There were
community awareness activities such as the ICCs, and both projects published or
broadcast publicity pieces. However, program emphasis was not on the community
at large. Each project had set an objective targeting specific fishermen, and those
who were using illegal fishing practices (dynamite and cyanide fishing, in
particular). These groups were targeted first, for knowledge of fishing regulations;
second, for awareness of enforcement practices; and third, for credit and AIG
activities. However, fishermen were not the principal participants or learners in
either project. Instead, each project initiated two principal groups of participants
and learners, the Villager MPA Committee members in lUCN’s project and the Core
Group in IMA’s. Of course, some of members of these groups were fishermen, but
they were not a collective of target fishermen in particular. The Core Group and the
Village MPA Committee members, as principal participants, received specialized
training and knowledge that they could use in their community. In addition, they
were regularly paid a small participation stipend by their respective projects. The
stipend was a form of compensation for their work. In IMA-V’s project, this stipend
was beyond access to credit that the Core Group members received.
Both institutional and cultural preferences for hierarchical practices likely
contributed to the learning focus on IMA-V’s Core Group and lUCN’s Village MPA
Committees. The Core Group and the Village MPA Committees represented a
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select group that could learn to learn, and then, perhaps, these groups could lead
their communities in scientific and technical approaches to marine conservation.
The projects directed most of their information, knowledge and experiences to
these groups. In the case of IUCN, such limitation on access was a deliberate
feature of the project, and maintained institutional control. In the case of IMA-V,
many programs to conserve the reef were open access. Anyone who wanted to
could participate in artificial reef building, guard house building, and alternative
livelihood pilot studies. Furthermore, the community’s advocates initiated and
implemented their own programs, which increased access to information and
enhanced. However, those outside of the Core Group felt less incentive to
participate for economic reasons. The Core Group accessed credit while other
participants could not.
While a few individual fishermen and aquaculturists were involved in these
groups as principal participants, as a group, they did not participate collectively,
even though they were the most affected by the project. Access to the project for
fishermen and aquaculturists was limited because neither project specifically
considered their learning needs. There were no activities to improve or learn
environmentally-aware fishing catches, for example. The project focused on
marine biodiversity and fishing regulations for conservation, and conservation was
not in the immediate interest of fishermen, who reported that they sea still had
plenty of marine resources to yield, especially within the IUCN project’s community.
Most fishermen expressed their desire to continue to fish or increase aquaculture
believing that the seas have plenty of fish, and they [the fishermen] only have to
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341
find the resources (Bo Thuy San, 2003). Furthermore, many fishermen reported
that from the outset, neither project would listen to these concerns.
There are three noteworthy differences in participation between each
project. First, regarding the principal participants, IMA-V’s Core Group was elected
by the community. lUCN's MPA Committee members were appointed.
Furthermore, lUCN’s Village MPA Committee was a component of the MPA
hierarchy, though an advisory type of body. In contrast, the Core Group was an
entirely new non-institutional organization that had a role in the project and in the
protection of the reserve but no direct responsibility in the local or provincial
government structure. IMA-V’s principal participants thus went through more of a
community decision-making process in their selection, and their role was more one
of community responsibility, trust and action. This is a significant feature in building
deliberate democracy practices (Webler & Tuler 2000). The election itself was not
as significant as the groups’ creation and participation in the project, which gave
the community more access to the process and power to implement outcomes
chosen by them. This contributed to the community-based and more organic
nature of IMA-V’s project vis-a-vis lUCN’s project.
In contrast, lUCN’s Village MPA Committee members were already village
leaders, and thus were already community recognized representatives in
community-institutional dealings. Perhaps because the MPA Committee was part
of the MPA’s institutional structure, and at the bottom of its hierarchy, the
participants reported that they didn’t feel they could make change. Instead most
community members, including the leadership, expressed that it was up to the
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[MPA] Authority to do so. This was indicated in the enforcement, development and
trash collection activities. Participation thus was more of a process of potential
individual change rather than collective change. This approach is explained in
learning to learn (UNESCO, 1995) and perspective transformation to the extent
learning transformed individual’s meaning schemes (Mezirow, 1991) without any
particular social, environmental or political component that would be needed to
bring about the environmental changes.
Regarding leadership participation by other community members, young
adults and women were regular participants, but not necessarily leaders in either
project. However IUCN did, at least, have a slightly better approach to facilitating
women’s participation, especially at the leadership level. While seven out of 36
village committee members were women in lUCN’s Bi-monthly Meeting program, at
least several of these women were leaders from these villages that the project
recognized. Furthermore, some women from this group were also involved in the
study tour to the Philippines, which was one project activity that was
consciousness-raising for its participants. IMA-V had only one woman in a
leadership role on the Project Management Board. Even though IUCN involved
more women in leadership roles, women, overall, did not participate in decision
making activities in either project, because very few leaders, men or women,
accessed decision-making in lUCN’s project.
On a day-to-day basis, IUCN involved many more women than did IMA,
although its facilitation of women’s participation was not by deliberate programming
but by coincidence. Still, women were at the margins of the project’s efforts in
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343
conservation and participation. Women’s participation was limited to an AIG
program or a credit activity that was well situated in past AIG and credit practices
that supported craft and animal husbandry activities respectively. Women did not
gain control over production or knowledge creation through participation in these
activities. Women participated because they were more likely to be eligible for the
credit program, which was designed for the poorest 30% of the villagers. Gender
workshops were held in both projects as well, however, the workshops failed to
address gender in the context of the project itself (Silverman & Ho, 2004).
In Vietnam, women are more likely to be poor than men (ADB, 2002). In
addition, they were more likely to participate in the AIG activities, because the
activities implemented by the project, such as basket and net-making were deemed
a woman’s work and less economically valuable than men’s work (Fahey, 1998).
More than 50% of lUCN’s credit recipients were women, whereas almost all of its
AIG program participants were women. In IMA-V’s project, no women received
credit or gained experience in AIG activities, because credit went to the Core Group
and AIG activities were marine resource pilots where women were not allowed to
work. Taboos limiting women working on the sea are still prevalent in Vietnam
(Fahey, 1998).
Through the Women’s Union, women also participated in both projects in
significant numbers. IMA-V facilitated the Women’s Union development of a trash
collection program and their training as advocates, for example. Furthermore, their
Women’s Union was active in the advocacy movement to protect Trao Reef. In the
Hon Mun project’s island villages, the Women’s Union strength came from its role
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in organizing women to attend general project awareness-raising meetings. These
were significant activities where women were active in making decisions and in
promoting policy in their villages, yet these environmental issues were also within
the institutionally demarcated interest of the Women’s Union (Vietnam Women’s
Union, 1998). In lUCN’s project, most women were interested in IG activities, but
not in marine biodiversity education, as proposed by the project. This was evident
in several meetings where, when the project staff directed women’s attention
towards marine conservation issues, many simply left the meeting, or they quickly
changed the topic back to IG issues through their questions.
Now that the principal community learners have been identified and the role
of other learners had been explained, this discussion examines how and what
participants learned. The next section compares the two projects non-formal and
informal learning programs and activities.
Comparing How and What Participants Learned: The two project’s non-
formal and informal learning activities
What participants learned refers generally to the non-formal and informal
learning programs and activities, and to some extent, the content. In addition, it
includes learning specific environmental and coastal resource concepts and
principles. How participants learned refers more to the process of learning, the
approaches, methods and strategies of learning in the respective project’s
programs and activities. Therefore, the how of learning has significant influence on
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the outcomes of what communities learn. In this case, it is what they learn about
conservation and development.
Participants in both projects were involved in a variety of programs that
were both non-formal and informal. Non-formal programs in each project were
similar and served as a foundation. A difference was that IMA-V’s approach
encouraged collective learning and sharing of experiences during the process,
whereas lUCN’s did not. IUCN continually focused on participants learning, and
even memorizing facts. The different approaches indicated that IMA-V’s was
socially oriented whereas lUCNs was individually oriented. The social orientation
vis-a-vis the individual orientation suggested the collectively transformative
potential of IMA-V’s project over lUCN’s.
IUCN and IMA-V had several conservation oriented non-formal programs
that were similar. These included the marine biodiversity, fishing regulations and
underwater monitoring programs. Primarily, these programs were delivered
through lectures; though the underwater monitoring program was a hands-on field
experience; however, this was for a few community divers only. Unlike IUCN,
however, IMA-V’s non-formal approach facilitated participants situated knowledge
and encouraged their decision-making in the learning process. In marine
biodiversity and fishing regulation programs, IMA-V facilitated group discussions,
dialogues and participant presentations. Participants voiced their own ideas,
problematized and reflected on their particular context. Sometimes they challenged
IMA-V instructional plans. For example, in IMA-V’s case, the community’s own
advocacy plan, study tours for community members to visit Trao Reef, and the
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creation of the Advocates was a result of participant dialogues and
problematization with IMA-V during the marine biodiversity program. The
Advocates also set up and carried out community outreach on the reserve’s
regulations based on the fishing regulations. These are indications of a process of
transformative learning. lUCN’s approach to learning about marine
biodiversity and fishing regulations was largely prescriptive. Lectures and quizzes
on marine concepts and regulations were favored approaches. Project staff or
institutional or government experts often led these programs. This confirmed the
expert and prescriptive approach to learning with IUCN.
A clear contrast between the projects was evident in the informal activities.
IMA-V had many more informal learning activities than IUCN, and facilitated and
encouraged several informal learning activities that complemented these non-
formal marine education programs. These were the programs and activities to
establish the marine reserve, such as building the guard house, the artificial reefs,
the research raft and installing the marker buoys. Guarding and advocating for the
reserve were the primary informal activities. These programs provided
opportunities to experientially learn to establish a marine reserve, and protect and
rehabilitate the coastal environment. These activities were focused not only on
learning about the environment, but also in and for the environment. These
activities were collective, conceptual, experiential and deliberative. These are key
components of environmental education that aims to make environmental change
(Palmer, 1998). IUCN also had informal learning activities. However, outside of
the seaweed trials, none were for [protecting or conserving] the environment in
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particular. Thus, IMA-V’s informal learning advanced environmental learning,
whereas lUCN's did not, in particular.
The informal programs seemed more effective in facilitating collective
learning and collective change. In the case of IMA-V, the collective learning
included processes of collective collaboration, solidarity building, and deliberation
to achieve the goal of guarding and monitoring the reserve, building and installing
artificial reefs, and advocating and initiating environmental policy. Achieving these
goals took several months of learning through trial and error, dialogues,
problematizing and action. Because this was learning was through a process,
participants had time to reflect and draw on their organic knowledge, and to create
convivial practices to deliberate consensual decisions on marine resource
management and conservation practices. These processes are aspects of learning
for transformation, where participants can share, integrate and enhance
experiences, and gradually assimilate transformative knowledge, which may lead to
critical praxis (Schugurensky, 2002). IMA-V’s participants changed from resource
exploiters to resource conservationists. They changed from circumventing fishing
laws to consensually deliberating, creating and enforcing them.
IMA-V’s advocacy program also evolved from IMA-V, but it emerged as an
organic community-driven process. The Advocates, a self-reliant and mobilized
group took ownership of community awareness-raising about Trao Reef. The
advocates were an active organic, self-reliant and mobilized organization that
created outreach programs and field trips to Trao Reef, where they promoted
Freire-like culture-circle dialogues among community members. They integrated
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their experiences from the project and their own knowledge to empower their
participation in the natural resource policy making process. As the project was
ending, and Trao Reef Marine Reserve’s control was in transition from the project
to the commune, the Core Group and the Advocates stepped forward, initiated
environmental policy and management planning dialogues. Communities’ abilities
to re-capture or apply local knowledge and well-manage local natural resources
have some foundation in developing countries (Ostrom & Gardner, 1993), and in
Vietnam as well (O’Rourke, 2003; Thon That Phap, 2001; and Truong Van Tuyen,
2001). This pragmatic and projective action for the environment did not happen in
lUCN’s project.
Other conservation oriented programs in both projects were non-formally
structured but with informal learning activities. For example, in lUCN’s case, the Bi
monthly Meetings program with the Village MPA committees were also non-formal,
yet villagers learned informally from each other while presenting on activities in
their respective villages. This forum provided limited access to the decision-making
process, it was lUCN’s approach to participating in and learning about co
management. However, the villagers involved did not have access to management
policies. Nonetheless, these meetings were significant social learning opportunities
because the villagers were somewhat isolated from each other, being kilometers
apart and typically involved in different fishing activities. For these reasons, they
had few opportunities to share experiences until the project implemented these
meetings.
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While the process at the meeting was largely made routine by the project,
participants occasionally brought up topics that contested project approaches.
These topics mostly included issues such as enforcement or aquaculture or
community development projects such as electricity, docks and foot paths. Stories
about enforcement problems brought almost immediate response from the project
directors. To the extent that these meetings dealt with conservation issues,
enforcement of MPA regulations drew the most interest and contestation.
Enforcement issues were the most contentious and problematic for fishermen and
the villagers resisted their imposition. Such resistance is evident in Vietnamese
villages as they have contested state environmental and development policies over
the past several decades (Lutrell, 2001; O’Rourke, 2004; Scott, 1986).
If any transformation occurs through participation and learning at these
meetings, it will be due to the individual committee members and not the project.
Some committee members stated the importance of having a forum for their
concerns, because before the project, they did not have one and it was often
difficult to discuss issues with local officials. These meetings, therefore, opened a
participatory space, (but not in the Habermas-sense) where villagers could
communicate their interests and concerns as in other documented participatory
environmental focused forums (Fischer, 2001; Webler & Tuler, 2000). However,
the project did not open access to villager participation in making MPA rules. This
suggests that community members were included, but their interests are often
subordinate to the greater development agenda or the agenda of the more
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influential stakeholders as is often the case in development projects (Cleaver,
1999).
Study tours, ICCs and PRAs were also non-formally structured programs
that included informal learning activities. Study tours, were non-formal programs
with numerous informal learning exchanges where there were cross-community
exchanges of experiences about conservation and environmental issues such as
MPAs and environmentally friendly aquaculture. Participants from both projects
indicated that study tours were consciousness-raising events. In both projects, by
talking with communities involved in their own PAs or MPAs, IUCN and IMA-V
participants learned ideas different from their own experiences. Many participants
indicated that they compared and reflected on their own MPA experiences vis-a-vis
their study tour site’s social, economic and environmental experiences. For
example, IUCN study tour participants to the Philippines reflected on the
differences between the water quality, coral and fish density, which were much
better in the Philippine’s than at Hon Mun. They also became conscious of the
ownership and responsibility that their hosts had in contrast to their limited status in
the Hon Mun MPA. In similar respects, participants in IMA-V’s study tour to the
Hon Mun Project site contributed to raising their consciousness about their role in
actively constructing and managing their MPA vis-a-vis the villagers in the Hon Mun
Project. The study tours, therefore, contributed to collectively raising the
consciousness of participants. It facilitated a process where individuals and groups
could share practical wisdom, critically dialogue, and deliberate in a process that
could lead to pragmatic action (Emirbeyer & Mische, 1998).
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Similarly, ICC’s focused on conservation issues. They were organized and
structured community learning events to clean up the environment. ICC’s raised
community member awareness about ways to participate, for example, by
cooperating with authorities, by fishing less, and by cleaning up the shorelines.
IMA-V held five ICC’s, while IUCN had only one. IUCN felt that the one ICC was
ineffective at promoting change. In IMA-V’s case, the ICC’s contributed to the
community’s incremental assimilation of conservation concepts and practices. The
ICC’s were collective awareness raising activities that complemented other
community oriented project activities, such as the advocacy program and the
reserve’s opening. IMA-V enhanced the collective learning process by expanding
its ICC program to include informal plays and artistic performances about marine
issues, which often took place the evening prior to the event. The Youth and
Women’s Union organized these performances for the community. Such
performances helped to build community solidarity and conservation awareness.
Incidental learning was also likely as hundreds of volunteers not only collected
trash, but also talked about their experience during the event. By the third and
fourth ICC’s, many villagers were actively involved in keeping their coastal
environment free from trash.
In both projects, ICC’s also led to interest in trash collection schemes in two
communities. IMA-V’s trash collection program was initiated by the Women’s
Union, which is an open access and participatory organization. lUCN’s process
went through one village’s MPA Committee, which was restricted to committee
members only. IMA-V’s process, therefore was again collective, while lUCN’s only
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involved a few, selected people. IMA-V’s participants developed their trash
scheme into a self-sustaining program. The community’s Women’s Union
advocated for this, and dialogued with community members to promote and support
it. These are community-building activities (DENR, 2001b). lUCN’s process was
different. It was able to fund trash collection in one village only, and it was the new,
Village MPA Committee that initiated the program rather than one of the already
established social organizations. The institutional nature of the trash collection
scheme may have affected the community’s participation, which relied on the
project to fund 35% of the costs. When project funding ended, the Village MPA
Committee first went back to the project for additional funding. They did not seek
out additional support from the community. This further asserts the iterative nature
of much of lUCN’s community’s agency.
In addition, both projects conducted PRA’s that had both non-formal and
informal activities. PRA’s had a social, economic and environmental focus. They
were participatory approaches to getting at statistical data that is typically gathered
by experts in development projects (Chambers, 1997). However, the projects
prescribed what information should be shared. The projects favored an extractive
vis-a-vis a collaborative approach to create knowledge. IMA-V’s was a no-
nonsense rapid appraisal with select community members that happened prior to
the official start of the project. Little documentation was available and it was not
analyzed in this study. lUCN’s included participatory activities where community
members drew out, mapped, modeled and spoke about their socio-economic and
environmental assets and practices. However, this was information that the project
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wanted in order to gain a better awareness of each village and to plan out project
programs. The information was not informally created by the villagers for their own
learning. Similar to a regular survey instrument, IUCN staff took this data back to
their offices in Nha Trang and analyzed it there without any community
involvement. Such project and institutional control has typically further
disempowered communities and resulted in diminishing natural resources
(Chambers, 1997; Hobart, 1993; Van der Ploeg, 1993).
lUCN’s PRA also included several games that encouraged symbolic
interaction in learning conservation and MPA concepts. These concepts were also
constructed by the project though, and not by the community. In the PRA, learning
was largely conceptual and symbolic. The participants were shown how to
understand concepts of collaboration and enhancement, and practices of fishing
less, learning the meaning and practices of these concepts by interacting with
these concepts that the project had created. This was a process of understanding
through symbolic interaction (Mezirow, 1991). Overall, the communities learning
and participating in environmental issues changed little as a result of the PRAs,
because the PRAs were controlled by the projects, who limited access to
information, analysis and decision-making during the PRA process.
Each project also had non-formal credit and AIG programs that evolved into
informal learning activities once the participants had received the credit or once
participants had completed their AIG training. These were learning to learn
practices evident in UNESCO (1995) approaches to development. IMA-V’s credit
and AIG programs focused on the environment, but credit supported the Core
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354
Group, and AIG were pilot activities only. Their credit program, however, was used
to increase lobster farming. lUCN’s credit and AIG programs served close to 30%
of the community, yet, the activities were not directly tied to conservation efforts. In
many instances, these activities increased fishing and exploitation of the
environment as fisherman bought more fishing nets and aquaculturists used loans
to increase their current farming capacity.
As a result, learning through the credit and AIG programs did not
particularly further either project’s conservation agenda. Even the project staff
suggested that these activities were used strategically to get the island
communities to buy into or feel apart of the project as has been common in
numerous development projects (Cleaver, 1999). Moreover, use of credit generally
fit with past experiences, such as fishing net-making and repairing, animal
husbandry, small food shops and the likes. In the AIG programs, the participants
were introduced to alternative or new ways to earn an income. However, the
purpose of this learning was to fit into the market or employment context, and not to
transform exploitative marine resource IG practices. Thus, learning through AIG
and credit has few indications of learning for any transformation.
Both projects also had informal artistic performances that included music,
poetry readings and theatrical performances that focused on the sea and the
communities. These were emotive approaches to promoting awareness about the
coastal environment, another concept in learning for the environment (Palmer,
1998), and in transformative learning (Schugurensky, 2002). Differences between
the two projects were that outside of the marine reserve’s opening ceremonies,
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IMA-V’s community of participants organized the events on their own, while IUCN
organized the activities for the villagers. IMA-V community members invited
neighbors or nearby villagers to exchange music and performances of their own.
Several community members wrote and performed their own lyrics, poems, and
music about Trao Reef, Van Hung, Van Ninh and the province. IUCN also had
several artistic performances. However, the project hired performers, which
included dancers and poets from Nha Trang. In the case of the dancers, they
entertained the island villages once with an environmental play. The poets wrote a
book of poetry that was freely distributed to all community members. The project
also held a competition for secondary school children that focused on MPA
regulations.
In all, these events were exciting and many community members at both
sites identified them as memorable. Some individuals had even memorized a song
or a poem that they had heard. However, collective community conservation
awareness did not seem to be impacted as a result. These performances were
more entertainment than anything else according to audience members, who stated
that they often remembered “the dance” or “the costumes”, “the beauty” or “the
excitement”, but did not remember the message of the performance. What was
noticeable was that some of the poets, performers and song writers reported a
personal environmental ethic. This was an ethic not initiated by the project, but one
that individuals could advocate through project activities such as these. Some of
these artists, in fact, were environmental advocates. The community origin of IMA-
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356
V’s artists lent a stronger environmental ethic its community participants overall.
Such ethic was imported into lUCN’s project.
Differing Learning Processes and Outcomes
At this point, the research has well-established that learning processes and
outcomes in the two projects were distinct. lUCN’s focused on learning concepts
and favored hierarchical processes that limited participation. By comparison, IMA-
V facilitated organic processes that encouraged collective community participation
and learning, which was action-oriented. Differences in the two projects’ learning
programs were observable in how community members participated. lUCN’s
process, while increasing awareness about conservation and the environment, only
aimed to increase participation that maintained hierarchical relationships limiting
most participants to roles that they have played before vis-a-vis the state. IMA-V’s
process was different in that increasing participation was part of a planned process
for villagers to contest hierarchical decision-making and become more self-reliant
and mobilized. For participants in lUCN’s project, their learning outcomes have had
little affect on the environment or policy making. For participants in IMA’s project,
their learning outcomes have transformed social-environmental relations.
Figure 2 below represents the learning programs put into action by the
respective projects. It indicates the non-formal and informal programs, instructional
approaches, processes, strategies and outcomes, and it suggests their relationship
to environmentally and politically transformative outcomes.
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Figure 2 - Comparing Learning and Outcomes
IMA-V
Informal Learning
ActkrrForierif
Concept-crlSnfed
Non-formal Learning
IUCN/ Hon
Mun
Processes
Advocacy Programs
Reserve Openings
Research Raft
Marker Buoys
Guarding
Study Tours
ICC
AIG
PRA
Credit Program
Underwater Monitoring
Bi-monthly Meetings
ftfersity
Collective action
and deliberate
participation
Individual
participation and
-aetien----------
Learning
Strategies
cting for th
nvironment
Advocacy
effecting
Dialoguing
Problematizing
Brainstorming
Negotiating
Conceptualizin
Discussing
Listening at
eetings
Outcomes
Transformative
Actions
Manage Trao Reef
Advocate-led
field trips
Making
Environmental
resent at
Meetings
Cottect Tra
AwarerieSf-raisi ng
Entrepreneur
Seaweed Jelly
Make crafts
Perform songs
and poems
SDiscuss Policy
Iterative
357
358
The figure shows that the IMA-V’s instructional approaches to learning were
largely an informal, deliberate and collaborative process, though it did include non-
formal programs as well, yet informal learning was the most effective in contributing
toward transformational change. IMA-V facilitated a range of consciousness raising
strategies and techniques, which included potentially transformative practices of
advocacy, direct action, dialogue, and reflection in addition to awareness-raising
techniques of brainstorming, problematization, negotiation, mapping and
conceptualizing. This learning process was an evolution from NGO facilitated to
more organic community-led forms of knowledge creation through community
experiential learning, contestation, mobilization, and active decision-making as
evinced by the Advocates and the Core Group. The approaches that IMA-V
implemented has resulted in a community that is actively involved in day-to-day
decision-making, policy development, and actions to conserve, rehabilitate, and
notably transform their coastal resource at Trao Reef.
In comparison, while the figure shows that IUCN had activities similar to
IMA-V’s, IUCN focused more on non-formal activities related to conceptual marine
conservation issues. These were largely awareness-raising activities that did not
evolve into a process of informal learning activities as in IMA-V’s project. lUCN’s
approach to learning was largely based on collective participation in a very loose
sense, and individual action. This was evident in the conservation activities, and
moreover in the credit and AIG activities. Some of the participation was collective,
as in the PRA’s and the ICCs, but these were one time events. Any collective
learning initiated in these two activities did not lead to collective action for the
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359
environment. IUCN directed a program of meetings, such as the Bi-monthly
Meetings and PRAs. The conservation programs, marine biodiversity principles
and practices were presented in meeting-like formats. This approach limited
community member participation to listening, discussing, and conceptualizing.
Occasionally, such as at the Bi-monthly Meetings or PRAs, the community
participants presented and contested policies and practices. The over-riding
institutional nature of the project, and the hierarchical nature of Vietnamese society,
combined to create a largely symbolic and prescriptive learning environment.
Participants showed few inclinations to contest their agency. Instead participants
generally learned their roles as directed by the project; they discussed, but did not
make policy; they made crafts and produced and sold seaweed jelly as a way to
enter into the local economy beyond the fish economy. This process did little to
change how people and communities interacted with the environment. If Hon Mun
could not be exploited, then they would exploit some other area.
As this study ended, IMA-V’s project was also ending. lUCN/Hon Mun still
had 18 more months till its end date (June 2005). With less time, staff and funding,
IMA-V facilitated a community process that has not only begun to transform Trao
Reef, it has also supported transformational community practices of participating
and deliberating community policy, and in this case, environmental policy. The
community’s gradual ownership in establishing, rehabilitating, monitoring and
protecting Trao Reef Marine Reserve has improved environmental conditions. In
addition it has empowered villagers to advocate for the environment and access
decision-making processes on the other hand. This concurs with similar efforts to
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involve grassroots in deliberately democratizing the development process, policies,
and practices (Castellanet & Jordan, 2002; Ferrer et at., 2001; Rahman, 1993). By
comparison, with more time, and considerably more staff, and funding, lUCN/Hon
Mun has yet to get the island communities to buy into the MPA. Programs, such as
the Village MPA Committees and their meetings, and the seaweed jelly
entrepreneurial project indicate that the project is creating spaces and activities for
potential transformation. However, the project’s overall institutional structure
makes transformation unlikely. All conservation activities came from project
initiatives and not by community-initiated action. lUCN’s project followed more a
method of participation without democratization of the process, which is common in
many so-called participatory development projects (Cleaver, 1999).
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Chapter 7: Conclusion
As identified in this study, protecting and rehabilitating the environment in
general, and the coastal environment, in particular, suggests the need for a more
comprehensive understanding of how to change humankind’s environmentally
destructive practices. The two case studies examined here aimed to promote
community understanding through community participation and learning in ICD
projects. Some of this learning was about, from and for the environment. An
important consideration in learning about, from and for the environment as is that
the environment is not an isolated domain, separate from an understanding of
social, economic, political or other relevant domains of social life; however, many
have taught about it as such, and IUCN has approached environmental issues
likewise. Isolating the environment as a domain separated from social world leaves
it vulnerable and objectified. However, the environment is not an object to be
exploited, as identified by many, both during field work for this study, and as noted
in development literature (Chatterjee & Finger, 1994).
As suggested by Finger & Asun (2001), for development to be
environmentally and socially sustainable, society, in general, needs to transform its
modes of knowledge creation and production. Such a change is suggested by
epistemologies evident in PAR (Fals-Borda & Rahman 1991) and convivial
societies (lllich, 1973). In most development projects, decision-making and
knowledge is in the hands of institutions and enterprises that control access to
power, knowledge and resources. This was how lUCN’s project operated. Finger
and Asun (2001) suggest that a transformative approach to learning about
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conservation and development would combine aspects of PAR, critical pedagogy,
and convivial learning as an epistemology that recognizes that social and
environmental development goes hand in hand. IMA-V’s approach included some
of these transformative aspects. There are several implications to consider based
on this study regarding conserving the marine environment, participation in policy
and decision-making, and learning in ICD projects. These implications address
research question number three.
Implications: Conserving the marine environment
IMA-V states that “...if coral reefs are not protected, then near shore
resources are likely to be exhausted soon, and communities will have few
alternative livelihood options.” The two projects aimed to contest this potential
consequence, and conserve what is left of once extensive coral reef ecosystems in
Khanh Hoa Province. Regardless of their differing approaches to protecting the
marine environment, in the short term, both projects have largely succeeded in
halting the destruction of these reefs and in promoting conservation and
rehabilitation. The communities have learned how the marine environment can be
protected and enhanced. At each project site, community members report that fish,
shrimp, lobster and other marine life is returning to the reefs. There seems to be a
visible short term improvement. Institutions such as NIO have also reported that
their underwater monitoring program has found that coral coverage has improved
over the past two years.
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The environmental results suggest that creating MPA’s can protect the
environment. Evidence from previously established MPAs around the region
supports this (CBCRM Learn, 2003; DENR, 2001a). In IMA-V’s case, the marine
environment at Trao Reef Marine Reserve has been protected as a result of
extensive and evolving, deliberate and participatory, community guarding,
advocacy, and rehabilitation programs for the coral reef ecosystem. IMA-V’s case
indicates that a community’s collective, deliberate participation and informal
learning make a difference in coastal conservation. In lUCN's case, the Hon Mun
MPA has been protected due to the state’s intervention in actually enforcing fishing
regulations that it had established several years ago (Bo Thuy San, 2003; NORAD,
2002). The project has facilitated enforcement activities through its funding and
staffing of patrol boats. Furthermore, its awareness-raising activities have also
created community understanding about the benefits of conserving marine
resources. Given the chance, community members are now much less likely to
encroach on the fragile coral reef ecosystems that sustain many of their livelihoods.
Funding and educating communities about the enforcement of fishing regulations,
therefore, also makes a difference.
However, there are numerous development issues which both communities
must address soon. The projects have provided only a partial response to the
issue of marine resource degradation. Their responses have focused on
conservation of small and isolated “representative samples of coral reef
ecosystems” as IUCN states. Neither project has addressed the larger social and
economic development conditions that exist not only in the communities where they
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worked, but also in the areas surrounding their carefully protected MPAs. As a
result, the biodiversity of the marine environment and the sustainability of the coral
reefs at these two project sites are still in peril.
These issues are challenges because both communities’ focus remains
grounded in IG interests above and beyond the NGOs’ conservation interests.
Moreover, as the projects end, there is no guarantee that the respective
communities will continue each project’s conservation practices with the same level
of interest. While the communities have learned about marine biodiversity, in
general, they have not reflected on the incompatibility of their IG focus on lobster
farming vis-a-vis conservation. Neither project facilitated reflection, though, at the
IMA-V site, the community had a dramatic experience with shrimp farming that
cause them to reassess raising shrimp. However, nothing similar has happened
with lobster farming or with other as environmentally damaging aquaculture.
For both communities, immediate issues of excessive lobster farming
continue to threaten to deplete the nearby waters of fish and lobster fry, and
contribute to water pollution, which further damage the coral reef ecosystems that
the two projects are trying to protect. However, almost every village household in
both communities wants to raise lobster to get in on the presently still lucrative
trade (Phuong Giang Hai, 2002). Even while IMA-V emphasized coral reef
rehabilitation they suggested that as reefs are protected with no-take zones, lobster
farming can improve (IMA, 2001a). This statement, along with its emphasis on
aquaculture to clean the water, indicates that technical solutions reverberate for
IMA-V. For example, IMA-V proposed environmentally friendly aquaculture, such
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as seaweed and green mussels, as way to reduce harmful affects of lobster
farming. IUCN also felt empathetic to fisher household IG demands and promoted
access to credit for the purchase of additional fishing nets and the expansion of
already developed lobster farming. The donors eventually halted this support,
because this use of credit was increasing fishing pressure in other environments
even as it lessened the pressure in and around Hon Mun. IUCN also pursued
environmentally-friendly aquaculture to address this issue; however, most of its
pilot studies were not environmentally or economically feasible. Such technical
solutions diverge from ecological-based solutions that might better contribute to
social and environmental sustainability. This belief in technical solutions, trialed in
various aquaculture pilot studies in both projects, is not likely to contribute to
sustainable development. As some of the visiting international experts explained,
“Technical solutions, based on environmentally-friendly aquaculture, for example,
have yet to prove effective anywhere. People simply have to farm fewer marine
species for ecological balance.”
Furthermore, both projects focused narrowly on conserving and enhancing
the coral reef ecosystems in one politically defined community without considering
complementary ecological communities, which include the ecosystems and
ecological processes in the vicinity. Ecological communities, of course, have their
own relationships that have no consideration for political boundaries. In both
communities, but moreover in IMA-V’s, shrimp and lobster farming in adjacent
communes are continuing to have a negative influence on Trao Reef. In addition,
there is no local solid waste sewage treatment, so while the population is small, all
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of its waste goes into the groundwater or the sea. In addition, a shipyard and port
is also under construction nearby, which is likely to increase pollutants in the waters
that reach Trao Reef. In the case of IUCN, the city of Nha Trang has over 300,000
residents and is growing. Some island community members would like to see that
growth expand out onto their island too. All this is occurring with a limited water
supply in Nha Trang, and without a year round water supply in the island villages.
Nine months a year, water has to be shipped in. This province is one of the driest
in Vietnam and droughts are not unknown.
Tourism continues to thrive and new hotels are being completed in Nha
Trang, and in a few selected spots within or adjacent to the MPA. A few resorts
have opened and some villagers expressed a wish that their island would some day
be “like Hong Kong.” Dive operators, also hope to expand their business as the
quality of the coral reefs improve. There is a limit to the amount of development the
environment can absorb. Even as dive operations seek out beautiful coral
environments, they have failed to protect them (La Vina, 2001). Furthermore, the
island communities are largely being excluded from any role in this development.
IUCN was particularly reticent in promoting community access to entrepreneurial
tourism activities. Despite participating in the Bi-monthly Meetings, the
communities simply do not have access to development decision-making.
In the meantime, in addition to residences in the area of both project sites,
there are adjacent farms and factories that dump sewage directly into the sea as
there is no waste treatment facility nor is one being planned in the near term. This
has a dramatic affect on the water quality during the rainy season, which can begin
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in September and continue through February. During heavy rains, the picturesque
tropical aquamarine sea turns a cappuccino brown, which carries with it debris, raw
sewage and chemical residues from the urban and upstream industrial and
agricultural areas. Community members reported that while this coffee-colored
plume has yet to reach the valuable corals at Hon Mun, it is getting closer each
year. Furthermore, the pollution has a negative impact on fishing and tourism.
According to provincial officials, neither the project nor the state has a master plan
to address this issue.
A likely scenario in both communities, thus, is that the coral reefs and
surrounding ecosystems will improve over the next few years. In IMA-V’s case, it
will be because of the community participation in protection and advocacy. In
lUCN’s case, it will result from every improving enforcement and community
accommodation. This is evident already. But, unless the larger development issues
are addressed very soon, none of the protection, enhancement, participation or
learning strategies will have made any difference for the environment. The marine
biodiversity and the economic foundation that was based on the coral reefs will be
lost to the increasing influences of converging, unmanaged development.
Implications: Participation and participatory democracy
Both projects set out to create co-management practices so that
communities, moreover, would be involved in conservation and development
decision-making processes. IMA-V’s participation process strongly suggests that a
facilitated or coordinated informal and experiential approach to co-management
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effectively develops interactive participation, deliberation, dialogue, and decision
making skills. IMA-V’s approach was effective because community participants
actively participated in conserving, protecting, advocating and making policy for the
coastal environment. Furthermore, it was an effective process because it allowed
organic intellectuals and organic knowledge to develop. Through participating in
environmental actions and advocacy, the participants, such as the Core Group and
the Advocates, became environmental activists. The transformative nature of such
an approach on influencing policy is indicated in studies on similar issues (Foley,
1999; Schugurensky, 2002). This was an incremental process that includes
experiential activities where the community rehabilitated and advocated for Trao
Reef and the surrounding marine environment. This process included community
resistance, and the community offering alternative strategies for advocacy and
environmentally friendly aquaculture. These community alternatives eventually
prevailed through a largely informal dialogical process among IMA-V, local officials,
and community members that happened across most of the project’s programs.
The community seems prepared to participate in advocating for and protecting its
coastal resources.
By comparison, lUCN’s participation process remained institutionalized, and
its community does not seem prepared to participate in protecting its coastal
resources and much less so at advocating for such. lUCN’s goal of community
participation seemed to be more focused on general awareness of MPA activities
and policies, in addition to compliance with MPA regulations. As a result,
community participation in conservation practices was narrowly focused. The
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project prescribed all participation during its conservation activities. The most
significant participatory activity for conservation efforts was participation in the
Village MPA Committees. These committees were a component of the MPA
Authority, which was controlled by the state’s Ministry of Fisheries. In lUCN’s
program, committee members learned howto participate in an institutionally-run
project through hearing about the project from staff and through giving advice and
making complaints. Overall, this participation increased community access to
information, while limiting access to decision-making. Other community members
learned how to participate as recipients of credit or AIG training programs that
slightly enhanced their IG stature, while prescribing them to keep their lower status
roles in Vietnam's socio-economic system. Credit and AIG did not replace fishing
activities and the additional income they provided was marginal, at less than $1
USD a day, in Vietnam’s ever expanding economy. With lobster farmers netting
approximately $1500 USD a year, villagers did not eagerly participate in $1 USD a
day AIG activities.
Even as the two respective communities participated, not everyone was
able to participate with the same access to power and information. Neither
project’s vision has included women or fishermen as decision-makers in significant
numbers. While women and fishermen did participate collectively in general
passive modes, no programs were deliberately designed to facilitate women’s and
fishermen’s active and deliberate participation throughout the project. Furthermore,
commercial tourism interests, as well as adjacent industrial or agricultural interests
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had little involvement in the project. Nevertheless, these social and economic
spheres influence the MPA’s surrounding environment.
Regarding women and fishermen, cultural and institutional influences rooted
in hierarchical practices needed to be contested but they were not. The inequality
of women’s participation is a social and economic justice issue based in gender
inequalities. Contesting these inequalities is a feature of gender and development
(Young, 1993) that could have been included in both projects but was not. In
addition, the lack of participation by fishermen as a collective suggests that neither
project knew how to collaborate with fishermen to improve the environment. After
all, the fishermen and their families' livelihoods depended on stable and productive
fisheries. The lack of collaboration between fishermen and the IUCN project most
likely stemmed from its institutional nature, which favored limited access and expert
participation in knowledge development over organic participation and knowledge
creation.
Focusing on the fishing communities’ participation in the decision-making
process was important because these villages had less access to power and
information. However, tourism, agricultural, and industrial enterprises were equal if
not larger contributors to practices that continue to damage the marine environment
as identified above. Tourism and industrial practices are having significant
consequences on the environment in and around the marine reserves. Until the
tourist, manufacturing and agricultural industries join into the collective decision-
making process begun by both projects, their actions are likely to continue to have
environmentally degrading effects. Though tourism and manufacturers could be
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given the benefit of the doubt, O’Rourke (2004) explained that practices across
Vietnam suggest that left alone, they are likely to cause environmental harm.
Neither project made a serious effort to include these economic producing spheres
into participatory conservation programs or environmentally-friendly production
programs with the project or with the communities
Implications: Learning and transformative possibilities
This study has several implications for creating and implementing learning
approaches in ICD and similar projects. Interestingly, neither project considered
learning as a long term practice in establishing and maintaining the MPA. Without
any reflection, IMA-V and IUCN directors and staff only considered their marine
biodiversity, fishing regulations and publicity materials as educational programs.
IUCN has had an extremely instrumental vision of learning as environmental
awareness education. This is a fairly common approach across environmental
NGO projects and programs, and has been understood as conservation biology,
conservation ecology, marine science, or political ecology (Finger & Asun, 2001).
lUCN’s vision, perhaps, blinded it to the potential transformative nature of learning
through environmental action. Though, of course, other institutional factors also
limited its learning programs. While IMA-V did not consider the processes of
establishing the marine reserve, guarding it, advocating for it, and collaborating with
others as a learning process, their participatory and deliberate approach facilitated
the community’s learning conservation and advocacy through environmental action.
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Both projects, therefore, started working with community members on change, yet
without an understanding of how people change through a process of learning.
Indications from the two projects suggest different learning experiences
have led to differing community visions about conservation and development. As
indicated in IMA-V’s case, learning that is both action-oriented and consciousness-
raising is more likely to promote changes in environmental and policy making
practices. As identified in lUCN’s case, learning that focuses on the conceptual or
awareness-raising level is not enough to bring about collective change. So, as
three years have passed, IMA-V’s community participants have integrated a vision
of a marine reserve based on community responsibility, trust and action, where
villagers are actively involved in environmental decision-making with the local
government. Learning is through both NGO and institutional non-formal programs
and organic experiences. Knowledge is produced both through those experiences
and reflection on expert knowledge. IMA-V community members are deliberate
participants in any environmental changes. This participatory approach seems
more effective in creating a process for transforming environmental and decision
making practices. In contrast, lUCN’s community participants have a vision of state
and institutional control over their marine resources. Learning is sometimes
experiential, but it is more likely to be a result of programs that are prescribed.
lUCN’s community participants are told about change, but are unlikely to have
much of an affect on that change.
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A Programming Challenge: A more socially and environmentally
transformative learning model
What would be an effective learning approach when the ICD goal is, as in
these two projects, to have community and the state co-manage in protecting,
rehabilitating and enhancing the marine environment? These two cases provide
policy makers, NGOs, and communities in development contexts such as Vietnam,
a variety of approaches, methods, and strategies to consider. The case studies on
IMA-V and IUCN indicate strengths and weakness of various non-formal and
informal learning approaches, methods and strategies where participation in
protecting and improving the environment is a stated aim and a necessary process.
Experiences from the two projects indicate that for change to occur, learning needs
to be both action-oriented and consciousness-raising. People need to learn to not
only transform how they think, but also how they act. They need to change not only
their relationship with the environment, but also their relationship with the social,
political and economic process that have lead to the present environmental
conditions. The change has to begin somewhere and those closest to the natural
resources, those who live in rural communities, though with the least control over
those resources vis-a-vis the developed-world, might as well be a good place to
start. These rural communities have lacked access and control over what is
considered normative knowledge and the creation of knowledge. Alternative
learning approaches, to be socially and environmentally just, should begin with re
asserting that control back to the place where people have a need to care for
social-environmental relationships, because their communities are based on these
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374
relationships. Such are starting points that have been successful in promoting
sustainable ecosystems and communities that develop at their own pace. Cases
supporting this approach have been most recently evinced in CBCRM projects,
largely in the Philippines (Ferrer, et al. 2001) and over the last two decades in
community based projects in Bangladesh (Rahman, 1993) and India (Shiva, 1988).
These cases, in addition to the two case studies just analyzed in this investigation,
include approaches, strategies and practices that can be included in a social and
environmentally just program of learning. Such a learning model draws upon
holistic environmental learning (Palmer, 1999) and adult transformative learning
models (Foley, 1999; Parks Daloz, 2000; Schugurensky, 2002).
Starting from the premise of constructing a new environmentally and
socially just curriculum, Palmer (1999), conceptualizes a model of learning that
must not only be “about the environment”, but also “in the environment”, and “for
the environment” (p. 269). Components in such a learning framework are
empirical, ethical and aesthetical, and are learned through experience, action, and
reflection. This model therefore goes beyond lUCN’s approach, which focused
primarily on the empirical and aesthetical. However, IMA-V’s approach included
most of these components and learning practices. Nonetheless, Palmer’s model is
rooted in formal education. It begins from the premise that individuals’ knowledge
of concepts and skills, along with changes in attitudes, may bring about
environmental change. This resembles a learning to learn model that also includes
experiential and advocacy elements. This is a belief that institutions, as they are
now, and have been, can provide learning experiences to solve the problems that
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375
these same institutions have perpetuated. Considering the environmental
problems that institutions have been failing to solve, there must be complementary
and alternative approaches that could make a difference.
As IMA-V’s approach suggests, a non or de-institutional model might
facilitate greater change. Illich (1973) suggests such an alternative model based
on convivial learning. In a convivial approach adults learn informally outside of
institutional control, and collectively have access to all the tools of knowledge that
they need to make ethical and responsible decisions in a participatory and
deliberate process. In this conceptualization of learning, there are elements of PAR
and critical pedagogy, which have been identified in the literature review and
conceptual framework of this study. Some of the characteristics of Palmer’s and
lllich’s models were evident in the learning activities in IMA-V’s project. However,
they were barely evident in lUCN’s project. CBCRM, as practiced in the
Philippines, also exhibits some of these characteristics of convivial learning and
PAR. Ton That Phap (2001) and Truong Van’s (2001) studies in central Vietnam,
also indicate evidence for empowered coastal communities in Vietnam. NGOs
such as IMA-V, and programs such as CBCRM, have worked toward building
solidarity across communities and regions through convivial dialogues (Ferrer et al.,
2001; Ferrer et al. 2002).
Figure 3 below indicates the embedded and connected dimensions of
community learning in a conservation and development project such as lUCN’s and
IMA’s.
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Figure 1 - Agency through Learning and Action
losfitutiona
orld Bank
Danida
IUCN
IMA
IMA- Vietnam
sociations
WaKVeterans
n’s Un
AGENTS
Organi
illage
Committees
Core Group
Interested
Individuals
nsformative
Agency
Guarding Trao R
Advocate led To
Core Group and
Villager Policy
aking
+/- Access to tools,
Information and
resources, and
participation in
decision-making
tes
Nation- Vietnam
Province - Khanh Hoa
Political Party - People's
Committee, Council
Development Project
Gender
Age
Profession - Fishers,
Aquaculturists
Commune, Village
ZONE OF NONFORMAL AND
INFORMAL LEARNING
Conservation/Development Projects
IMA-Vietnam - Ran Trao Locally
managed Marine Reserve
IUCN- Hon Mun Marine Marine
ptected Area Pilot
Contested Agenc
rash Collection
Seaweed Farmin
S jaweed Jelly
iterprise
i-monthly meetin
'Study Tours
Inherited Agency
AIG activities
Credit Program
Hon Mun
Enforcement
376
377
From an environmental standpoint, this indicates the confluence of political,
social, and economic contributions that influence environmental conditions. From a
learning perspective, this suggests the social, collective and experiential nature of
non-formal and informal learning. The community can access learning both inside
and outside of the community, but this requires both community action and
interaction with the state and other actors, such as NGOs, other communities and
private interests. Through action and interaction, the community can gain
awareness and conceptual perspective, deliberate, and reflect on praxis. Through
such a process, a community may become more empowered to be active in
advocating and caring for resources, be they environmental, social, or economic
resources on which their community depends. This suggests that, learning can be
initiated by the community, and it often is, but that it can also be facilitated by
NGOs, the state or others.
To create a target for a environmentally focused transformative learning
process, four specific change-oriented goals are identified here: awareness, policy,
use, and environmental change. Finger and Asun (2001) assert that awareness is
the beginning of knowing what to resist. For example, to resist markets that
demand that you deplete your resources for someone else’s gain. That is what
could happen with the lobster farming. While a few Vietnamese lobster farming
households get comparatively rich, some retailer or restaurant owner in Hong
Kong, Japan or Taiwan is getting a lot richer. Lobsters are raised to satisfy East
Asian or other international palates, while the Vietnamese eat rice and vegetables.
Awareness is understanding and reflection on this context.
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Awareness is also more than policy, even though a policy approach based
on regulations still seems pre-eminent in Vietnam. The general approach to
environmental learning in Vietnam is awareness-raising with lots of “Don’ts”. “Don’t
throw garbage in the street”...’’Don’t cut down the trees”..."Don’t fish.” The IUCN
project regularly implemented this approach. Its regulations were highlighted in its
signboards, brochures, and non-formal learning programs. However, policy and
awareness alone has not been sufficient to cause change.
Changing how communities think about their coastal environment is another
issue for change, perhaps a change of use. Many people I met in these
communities told me, “We know that lobster farming is bad for the
environment...but what can we do? ...it’s a good way to earn a living and we don’t
know any other way.” They were unsure of other uses for the sea or for the
knowledge that they had developed over years of experience working and living in
coastal environments. Furthermore, and moreover in lUCN’s project, fishermen
continued to insist that the seas were bountiful and held an endless resource of fish
just waiting for them to exploit. The paradox was evident when at PRAs and Bi
monthly Meetings, the same fishermen acknowledged that, “Yes, fishing resources
have decreased measurably over the past 10 years [and] we have to fish longer
and use more nets...” While these fishermen were aware of environmental
problems, they had not taken any deliberate action to change. In the case of IUCN,
its programs and activities did not really facilitate any experiential learning that
would promote a change in use. In IMA-V’s case, no restrictions were put on the
use of credit so credit was used to increase lobster farming. A learning process for
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change, therefore, also needs to consider a change in how the marine environment
is thought of and how marine resources are used.
In many ways, these communities, overall, still do not know how to respond
to environmental change until a dilemma, such as extensive disease or toxics kill
off their livelihood. This is what happened with IMA-V’s community. However,
experiential and action-oriented programs, such as those implemented by IMA-V
set up learning experiences where responses to create transformative
environmental change can be constructed by the community. One weakness was
that such programs did not address the development component of the projects.
Such an approach could have been used to question the efficiency of dry toilets or
the relative environmental capacity of lobster farming or mixed species aquaculture.
A transformative learning approach that includes critical awareness, reflection and
praxis can help answer questions such as these. As IMA-V’s project indicated,
people need integrative, assimilative, participatory, action-oriented, non-formal and
informal collective learning experiences to begin to establish control over the
creation of knowledge that can answer these questions. Other recent CBCRM-like
projects in Vietnam and the Philippines corroborate some indications of
environmental and community change using such an approach (Ferrer et al. 2002;
Ton That Phap, 2001; Truong Van Tuyen, 2001).
Continuing with the figure, it presents four principal awareness-raising
concepts: communication, marine biodiversity, marine reserve, and regulations.
These concepts were fundamental to lUCN’s and IMA-V’s projects. However, in a
transformative approach, learning these concepts should be critical, reflective,
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experiential, and situated. These concepts are the domains for non-formal and
informal learning based on experiential learning that can facilitate transformative
actions. Transformative learning would include participatory process-oriented,
experiential learning programs and activities based on advocating, dialoging,
rehabilitating, monitoring, enterprising, protecting, guarding, deliberating and
enforcing among others. The concepts and the actions identified in this model could
be a further interpreted and serve as a guide to create and implement non-formal
and informal environmental learning programs in development contexts.
In learning for the environment, we have to consider associated and
intervening natural, social, economic and political aspects. The concepts and
actions should not be thought as separate spheres of learning, environmental
policy, entrepreneurship or resource management. Their inclusion in the circles
indicates their confluence. Working on one issue separate from the others will not
address the complexity of a rapidly declining coastal resource base. Such
separation was a problem in the two projects. For example, aquaculture trials were
conducted apart from conservation activities. A similar disconnect was evident in
the credit programs. Furthermore, these concepts and action should not be
thought of in the institutional sense. They emanate from the convivial community.
In a convivial community initiated alternative coastal ICD learning program,
the concepts indicate a potential thematic universe related to MPA issues, which
can be used to engage communities and raise awareness. Problematizing those
concepts to develop generative themes and then reflect on those themes can give
perspective or raise critical consciousness. One area that needed problematization
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was environmental entrepreneurship. In the model suggested, actions are
incubating, as in incubating micro entrepreneurs. This is a crucial area. First of all,
both communities emphasized the importance of IG for their participation and
learning. Thus, there is strong community interest to learn conservation practices
when they are based in IG. However, neither projected incubated community
entrepreneurial ideas. One innovation at both project sites were individual lobster
farmers that mixed cultures offish, lobster, seaweed, and shellfish. This innovation
was not initiated by either project, but the community members themselves.
Results were a variety of marketable seafood in addition to a cleaner environment
because of the balance created among the different species. Though this is a
technical solution to a water quality issue, it does indicate organic innovation that
can be transformative. Other innovations remained at the conceptual level. Some,
after their study tour experiences, dreamed about small guesthouse-type
operations at the remote villages. Others thought about floating aquaculture
restaurants. Another possibility mentioned was to trademark specific species
indigenous to Hon Mun or Van Phong Bay. NGO projects ought to build on local
experiences such as these through a micro-enterprise incubator model.
Finally, the outside of the figure represents larger social and institutional
influences on learning about the environment in conservation and development
projects. Collaboration, not control, from NGOs and the state are necessary
contributions to initiating and sustaining convivial and sustainable societies and
environments. The NGOs are more likely to facilitate on issues dealing with
communication, public relations, advocacy, marine biodiversity and rehabilitation.
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382
The state is more likely to intervene on issues of establishing a marine reserve,
entrepreneurial practices, and in enforcing its regulations.
Future Directions
Based on this study's findings, in addition to conceptual frameworks
proposed by Palmer and lllich, the following principles could be suggested as
criteria for facilitating alternative learning approaches in ICD or similar projects that
not only aim to protect, rehabilitate and enhance the environment, but that also aim
to transform the social-environmental paradigm. In Box 3 below, criteria and
examples for transformative social and environmental learning are presented. The
community that participated in IMA-V’s project is identified by its commune’s name,
Van Hung. The community that participated in lUCN’s project is identified by the
MPA name, Hon Mun. Where both communities are indicated, they are identified
as “villagers”.
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383
Box 3 - Criteria and Examples for Transformative Social, Environmental
Learning
CRITERIA EXAMPLE FROM THE PROJECT/ *MISSING
EXAMPLE
ORGANIC AND
CULTURAL
ORGANIZATION
Van Hung Advocates form advocacy group.
Van Hung Core Group is elected by the villagers.
Hon Mun village leaders compose Village MPA
Committees.
‘ GENDER EQUALITY Women did not have equal access to, control of
knowledge and resources.
LOCALLY SITUATED
KNOWLEDGE
Van Hung and Hon Mun villagers experiment with
multi-species aquaculture.
ACCESSED
EXOGENOUS
KNOWLEDGE
Van Hung Core Group liaises with IMA-V and
enforcement authorities to enforce regulations.
Villagers go on study tours.
RE-CLAIMED,
ADAPTED
TRADITIONS
Village Whale Festivals in most villages promote
collective connection to the marine ecosystem.
Villager control over immediate environment.
COMMUNITY-DRIVEN
LEARNING
Van Hung Advocates form advocacy groups and
create study tour advocacy program.
MENTORS IMA-V mentors marine reserve establishment.
ADVOCACY
DIALOGUES
Van Hung advocates hold dialogues and study
tours.
ENVIRONMENTAL
ACTION
Van Hung Core Group builds guardhouse, protects
the reserve.
Van Hung Core Group and other villagers
construct and install artificial reefs, transplant
coral.
Van Hung villagers re-plant mangroves
Hon Mun villagers pilot seaweed farming
EXPERIENTIAL
RESEARCH
Hon Mun villagers pilot seaweed farming
Hon Mun and Van Hung villagers monitor marine
environment
DELIBERATE POLICY Van Hung villagers collectively deliberate marine
reserve exploitation regulations.
Van Hung villagers deliberate research plan
INCUBATE MICRO-
AN D SMALL
ENTREPRENEURS
Hon Mun seashell curtain makers access credit
Hon Mun seaweed jelly makers access the local
market
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384
The villagers in Van Hung Commune showed that they have the capacity
and interest to create a convivial society that promotes transformative social,
economic and environmental practices. This box indicates the significance that the
Core Group and the Advocates had in creating more transformative learning
opportunities. The participation and learning context that IMA-V set up encouraged
these transformative possibilities. Many, in the island villages in the Hon Mun MPA
showed similar capacity and interests, yet they did not have the same participatory
or learning opportunities to build on that agency.
The criteria presented in Box 3 are conceptual and need further research.
In ICD projects, such as the two researched in this study, gender, mentoring, and
enterprise incubation are key areas that need additional research and field studies,
preferably through community oriented, PAR. In general, these three areas are
significant to the issue of sustainability. Regarding gender, it is evident that women
are not equal partners in all aspects of conservation and development. How can
communities become sustainable when more than 50% of the population does not
have equal access to, decision-making control over, and benefit from its resources?
Concerning mentors, experts and leaders are needed not to control, but to share
and exchange knowledge and support community research and learning.
Mentoring has been shown to be one successful technique at guiding learners from
knowledge to transformative practice (Parks Daloz, 2000). Focusing on
entrepreneurs, individual and community innovations and creativity need to be
encouraged, because sustainable financial health of communities fundamentally is
situated within such entrepreneurial action (Development Marketplace, 2004). ICD
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385
projects, whether grass-roots developed or NGO facilitated, need to seriously
consider, conceptualize and pilot such entrepreneurial programs. Support for such
programs already exists from an institutional foundation, such as the World Bank’s
Development Marketplace (Development Marketplace, 2004), and the Grameen
Fund (Grameen, 1994), and also from a community perspective, for example
CBCRM programs (CBCRM Learn, 2003). Entrepreneurial incubation, the
mentoring process, and gender in development projects, thus, are additional areas
for educational research in development programs such as the ones analyzed in
this study.
Investigating similar ICD projects from an educational perspective, past and
present, may help to further complement, enhance and contest the criteria for
transformative social and environmental learning identified in Box 3. Moreover,
such additional case studies are needed to resist and contest the dominating
approaches to development. These institutionally dominated approaches have
contributed not only to a loss of biodiversity, but also to a loss of social diversity in
organizing approaches to address communities’ and societies’ larger
environmental, social and economic issues. Transformative learning approaches
should contribute to a dynamic of creating communities and societies that are both
ecologically and socially sustainable.
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386
On one of the last days of the project, one of the local fishers recalled the
bustle of activities and the new feelings surrounding the marine reserve.
Sitting at a small roadside cafe on the dirt path up to the village's floating
pier, groups of men were sitting and talking about the latest fishing trends
over a cup of thick, sweetened Vietnamese coffee. Overnight, several
boats had found schools of wild grouper fingerlings. The first such large find
since the MPA was established. The SEA Games (Southeast Asian) were
also in town again, and the price for lobster had increased 30%. Tet would
be arriving soon and everyone seemed happy that his family’s fortunes
seemed to be increasing this year.
“Where is the boat to take us out to the reef?" said a small group of tourists,
who had just driven up the coast this morning. A new floating guest house
had opened last winter and tourists from Sai Gon were lined up at the
water’s edge waiting for the commune’s new motor boat to arrive to take
them out to visit the reserve and see the thriving coral reef. There were
more fish there than ever after five years of protection. Local divers
prepared their new shiny tanks and instructed a group of five Vietnamese
boys and four Vietnamese girls how to put on their equipment before
heading out for an educational dive to both explore and record coral reef
species. “Let’s go,” the lead scientist said. Last year’s La Nina had caused
tremendous coral blanching, and a new mega-hotel to the north had been
built without any sewage controls and had been dumping raw sewage into
the bay for the past several months. They were going out to look for any
signs of change from these development activities.
As I was leaving the village that day, one of the active participants in the
group said to me, W e are proud to have the first MPA in Vietnam...but we
still have a lot to learn to make it work.”
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387
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