Actor-centered power and forest governance: Can a conceptual framework help us understand the conflict in managing national parks in Vietnam?

IF 4 2区农林科学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Forest Policy and Economics Pub Date : 2025-04-10 DOI:10.1016/j.forpol.2025.103482

Nhinh Thi Do , Thorkil Casse , Ta Viet Ton

{"title":"Actor-centered power and forest governance: Can a conceptual framework help us understand the conflict in managing national parks in Vietnam?","authors":"Nhinh Thi Do , Thorkil Casse , Ta Viet Ton","doi":"10.1016/j.forpol.2025.103482","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Forests are often a battleground between officials and local people. Management of national parks (NPs) in Vietnam demonstrates this struggle well. Based on the Actor-Centered Power (ACP) concept, this study uses power mechanisms, namely coercion, incentives, and information to illustrate how park administration expanded its control of local people and forest resources. Establishing NPs in northern (Lào Cai) and central (Đắk Lắk) Vietnam led to a surge in tensions between park staff and local people concerning their constrained access to forest resources. Meanwhile, deforestation and biodiversity loss continued to happen inside the NPs since the forest management officers benefited from the new control of natural resources. The breakdown of power mechanisms allowed for a description and analysis of the use of power and local people's reactions. In future studies using the ACP approach, the outcome of the power struggles in forest areas is crucial, and the inclusion of a third party in the analysis is recommended.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12451,"journal":{"name":"Forest Policy and Economics","volume":"174 ","pages":"Article 103482"},"PeriodicalIF":4.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Forest Policy and Economics","FirstCategoryId":"97","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934125000619","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Forests are often a battleground between officials and local people. Management of national parks (NPs) in Vietnam demonstrates this struggle well. Based on the Actor-Centered Power (ACP) concept, this study uses power mechanisms, namely coercion, incentives, and information to illustrate how park administration expanded its control of local people and forest resources. Establishing NPs in northern (Lào Cai) and central (Đắk Lắk) Vietnam led to a surge in tensions between park staff and local people concerning their constrained access to forest resources. Meanwhile, deforestation and biodiversity loss continued to happen inside the NPs since the forest management officers benefited from the new control of natural resources. The breakdown of power mechanisms allowed for a description and analysis of the use of power and local people's reactions. In future studies using the ACP approach, the outcome of the power struggles in forest areas is crucial, and the inclusion of a third party in the analysis is recommended.

查看原文本刊更多论文

以行动者为中心的权力与森林治理：一个概念框架能否帮助我们理解越南国家公园管理中的冲突？

森林常常是官员和当地人之间的战场。越南国家公园（NPs）的管理很好地证明了这一点。本研究基于行动者中心权力（ACP）概念，运用权力机制，即强制、激励和信息，说明公园管理如何扩大对当地居民和森林资源的控制。在越南北部（Lào Cai）和中部（Đắk Lắk）建立保护区导致公园工作人员和当地居民之间的紧张关系激增，因为他们对森林资源的获取受到限制。与此同时，由于森林管理人员受益于对自然资源的新控制，森林砍伐和生物多样性的丧失在国家保护区内继续发生。通过对权力机制的剖析，可以对权力的使用和当地民众的反应进行描述和分析。在未来使用ACP方法的研究中，森林地区权力斗争的结果至关重要，建议在分析中纳入第三方。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Forest Policy and Economics 农林科学-林学

CiteScore

9.00

自引率

7.50%

发文量

148

审稿时长

21.9 weeks

期刊介绍： Forest Policy and Economics is a leading scientific journal that publishes peer-reviewed policy and economics research relating to forests, forested landscapes, forest-related industries, and other forest-relevant land uses. It also welcomes contributions from other social sciences and humanities perspectives that make clear theoretical, conceptual and methodological contributions to the existing state-of-the-art literature on forests and related land use systems. These disciplines include, but are not limited to, sociology, anthropology, human geography, history, jurisprudence, planning, development studies, and psychology research on forests. Forest Policy and Economics is global in scope and publishes multiple article types of high scientific standard. Acceptance for publication is subject to a double-blind peer-review process.