Actors and strategies in translating global conservation narratives to Vietnam: An agency perspective

Abstract

With the increasing influence of New Public Management, such narratives as payments for ecosystem services and ecological networks are gaining global popularity in natural resource management. Promoted by transnational actors, these narratives have been introduced in Vietnam and have inspired a number of projects. The ensuing politics of multi-level governance triggered conflict and cooperation in adversarial policy process and deserve greater attention from environmental policy scholars. In this paper we advance a framework to analyze such processes from an agency perspective and contend that policy actors engage in three types of strategies in their policy work: (1) scale-based strategies of seeking support across governance scales; (2) meaning-based strategies of linking narratives to other concepts and discourses; and (3) context- based strategies of engaging with the policy context at multiple sites of governance. We illustrate these strategies with examples from the Ba Be and Na Hang protected areas in Vietnam.