07. EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INTEGRATED COASTAL MANAGEMENT INITIATIVES IN VIETNAM

Giới thiệu

Vietnam is a relatively large marine nation in Southeast Asia, with more than 3,200 kilometres of coastline. Coastal cities have been the country’s fastest economic development area, with coastal activities contributing to almost half of the country’s annual GDP. Along with development, however, this area has been facing numerous problems including ecosystem degradation, overpopulation, and pollution as a result of over-exploitation and under-management status of coastal systems and resources. In response, the Vietnamese government has taken a number of efforts in conserving its coastal resources, highlighted by the implementation of integrated coastal management (ICM). This paper is the first attempt to provide an overview of the current progress of integrated coastal management in Vietnam using a combined quantitative and qualitative evaluation methodology. The paper concludes that, despite strong technical and financial support from experienced countries and the government’s commitment, ICM initiatives in Vietnam so far have been ideologically driven and only achieved a certain degree of success at the strategic level rather than at the operational level. The relatively poor performance overall of ICM in Vietnam is due to insufficient financial resources, ineffective co-ordination mechanism, and inadequate political support and stakeholders' involvement.