Crafting Sustainability? The Potential and Limits of Institutional Design in Managing Water Pollution from Vietnam's Craft Villages

Abstract

Despite a raft of government initiatives, Vietnam's rapidly growing craft villages—rural hubs for small-scale industry—produce alarming levels of water pollution that seriously affects human health and the environment. Framing water quality as a commons dilemma creates the scope for appropriately designed, collaborative institutions that better address local conditions and the need for vertical and horizontal coordination. However, institutional and social theorists highlight that broader historical and social relationships can interact recursively with institutions and are not readily manipulated through institutional crafting. Our research in four craft villages of northern Vietnam finds that the challenge for managing water quality in craft villages is thus broader than institutional design, and requires an understanding of how regulations and policies emerge from and interact with broader societal processes.