Stakeholder Participation in Climate Change Adaptation Policies: A Case in Vietnam

Abstract

Climate change adaptation is a response to global warming and climate change, that seeks to reduce the vulnerability of social and biological systems to relatively sudden change and thus offset the effects of global warming. For adaptation strategy, openness and cooperation is one major principle; the development and implementation of adaptation policies is hence accompanied by broad and diversified stakeholder participation processes. However, the engagement of stakeholder in decision-making processes for climate change adaptation has not been highlighted in many developing countries. Specifically, there is a significant lack of specific plans to integrate stakeholders into the adaptation of policy making and implementation in these parts of the world. In this paper, Vietnam is used as a case study to assess the extent of stakeholder participation into climate change adaptation policies. The results show that Vietnamese government has used the ‘top-down’ approach in their decision making process in which government bodies play the key role; communities and NGOs are only marginally involved in policy formulation and implementation; and private sectors are merely included in the implementation process. Generally, in Vietnam, although stakeholder participation have been recognized, the implementation is inadequately in the context of national climate change policies. As a consequence, the adaptation policies are unlikely to be effective in the specific contexts of different localities and may not be accepted by all stakeholders, which ultimately may limit adaptation action. It is suggested that Vietnam should promote the engagement of different stakeholders in the policy process. The lessons from Vietnam can be used by other nations when developing adaptation policies.