Nhung Nguyen

Abstract

This paper, first, argues that urbanization in Vietnam, in a certain time, is where the decision-making is an exclusive form of power for some individuals or groups. In other words, urbanization is known not only as a spatial, economic, and social phenomenon but also as a mere administrative project. Thus, the process of urbanizing in many locales in the country is considered as administrative urbanization. Secondly, the paper will examine the impacts of administrative urbanization to climate change governance in the cities. To point out these difficulties, the paper will go briefly through the literature of change governance for cities and its requirements. Finally, the paper will propose some preliminary solutions for the situation of climate change governance in the context of administrative urbanization.

Administrative urbanization in Vietnam

Urbanization is known as a progress of the size, structure, and quality of the population and a progress of economic development. Also, this is a centrally invested morphology, which brings high-efficiency effects. Urbanization process needs to rely on the requirements of economic development, particularly the development of non-agricultural sectors such as industry and services.

However, it seems that urbanization in Vietnam is overly based on administrative decisions. Administrative urbanization may lead to the in-between situation of people who live on the outskirts of the cities. The in-between situation happens when the citizens live in the area, which administratively belongs to the urban sphere, but their infrastructure and lifestyle maintains rural characteristics.

For instance, the expansion of Hanoi in 2008 contributed to the city becoming 3.6 times bigger than its original size. Hanoi has become one of the 17 largest cities in the world, with the acreage of 3300 km2 and the population of over 6.4 million people. Moreover, there are 29 administrative units, including 10 urban districts, 18 rural districts, and 1 township. Before being expanded, the acreage of Hanoi was 921 km2 and the population was over 3 million people by July 31, 2008, including 9 urban districts and 5 rural districts.

Resolution 15 of the 2000 Politburo direction and task for Hanoi development during 2001-2010 said, “Hanoi is the heart of the country, a national, political, and administrative center, a large scientific center for education, economic, and international exchange.” Decision No. 118/2003/QD-TTg of June 11, 2003, established the Steering Committee for planning and investment in construction of, the Hanoi capital region. This Decision has created the legal basis for the development of Hanoi as a multifunctional area. Six different options for the city expansion were presented. The first option was merging the whole Ha Tay province, the Me Linh district of the Vinh Phuc province and four communes of the Luong Son district, and the Hoa Binh province with Hanoi.

Official Statistics reported that the average population density was 5000 people/km^2 in Hanoi at that time. Moreover, the population density was 11,600 people/km² in the core urban areas of the city in 2008. Although faced with various opposing voices, the Vietnam Assembly has adopted the Resolution No. 15/2008/QH12 of May 29, 2008, adjusting administrative boundaries of Hanoi city and related provinces, following the first presented option (Ngo and Do, 2011, p. 599-615).

Considering the process of Hanoi’s expansion, the various administrative decisions were adopted without comprehensive and responsible evaluation research. This study will thus argue that urbanization in many cities in Vietnam has taken place because of administrative decisions rather than economic development, so-called administrative urbanization.

Climate change governance for cities

Bulkeley (2010) presented that climate change governance for cities, or in other words, urban governance of climate change, has been studying for decades “as municipalities across the world increasingly place the issue on their agendas and private actors seek to respond to the issue” (p.229). However, there are no single definition for climate change governance in urban, the understanding concerning this notion depends on the context.

In theory and practice, climate change and environment governance are usually assumed as at “global” level. However, in “local” one, climate change governance should also be taken into account. Moreover, climate change governance should be taken into consideration in both vertically between supranational, international, national and subnational layers of authority (‘multilevel governance’) and horizontally among different parallel rule-making systems.

According to Betsill and Bulkeley (2006), there are four reason make cities and city- level governance become significant in dealing with climate change, with respects to (1) the fact that cities are sites of highly energy consumption and waste production, (2) the history that local government have engaged with issues of sustainable development after Agenda 21 for cities, call LA 21 (Local Agenda 21), the ability that local government can facilitate actions to response to CC: fostering partnership with relevant stakeholders, encouraging public transportation and lobbying national government, and (4) the fact that some local governments have experienced in energy management, transport and planning to reduce impacts of CC, some have experiences in doing demonstration projects or basis for new experiments (p.143).

While the research on urban governance of climate change have essentially focused on three main angles, with regards to (1) examining policy responses to climate change in the city; (2) seeking to explain the governance of urban responses to the issue; and (3) assessing the reasons why the realities of urban mitigation and adaptation efforts frequently fail to live up to the rhetoric (p.231), there is almost no research on the impact of the model of urbanization on governing climate change works in the cities. In this research, I focus on examining the negative impacts of administrative urbanization on the process of urban governance for climate change.

Impacts of administrative urbanization to climate change governance in the cities

In this session, the paper only focuses on pointing out the difficulties bringing by administrative urbanization to climate change government. The advantages of the urbanized phenomenon to climate change government are hopefully examined in another research.

The difficulties in determining the policy for urban or rural

Regarding urbanization, there has been a rapid change in the country. According to the Urban Development Agency, on 31st Dec 2014, there were a total 774 cities and towns including 2 cities at Special grade, 15 cities at grade I, 21 cities at grade II, 42 cities and towns at grade III, 68 towns, and townships at grade IV, and 626 townships at grade V. However, 50% of the urban population is concentrated in 16 big cities (Nguyen, 2015).This rapid urbanization process rooted in the “in-between” situation in various part of the urbanized areas. Sieverts defined the notion of Zwischenstadt (German) or “in-between city” as “grasp the novel urban form that has emerged beyond the traditional, more compact, uncentred European city”. Sieverts presented that this new urban form is now pervasive and is a home as well as a workplace to a growing percentage of Europeans. Similarly, Dutch scholars Hajer and Reijndorp (2001) pointed to the fact that we now all live in an urbanized field, which appears as an “archipelago of enclaves” (as cited by Young and Keil, 2011, p.2).

The in-between situation in the “so-called” urbanized areas can be seen as the aspect of topology and relationality. Similarly, in-betweenness refers to a reordering of socio-demographic and socioeconomic relationships. Relationships between rich and poor are redefined as processes such as deindustrialization or gentrification that lead to new landscapes of exclusion (Young and Keil, 2011, p.4).

All these contradictions will root in the difficulties of climate change governance in such in-between situation. The stakeholders might not determine themselves as ones working in urban or rural areas. Therefore, they might not determine the set of policies, methodologies, or tactics of the city or rural areas need to be utilized in those areas.

The difficulties of empowering for non-state actors in climate change acting

In the thematic report on “institutional arrangement”, Hoffmaister and Chan (2014) stated that institutional arrangements for adaptation are “considering their critical importance for adaptation planning and implementation.”. In which, “institutional arrangements are, in fact, critical for any comprehensive adaptation action that countries are starting to embark on, such as in the context of the national adaptation plan (NAP) process” (foreword, n.p.). Although there are no concrete and single definition for institutional arrangement, it can be seen as:

“structures, approaches, practices or rules set in place by stakeholders at all levels to steer adaptation action including for assessing impacts, vulnerability, and risks; planning for adaptation; implementation of adaptation measures; and monitoring and evaluation of adaptation” (p.9).

It is clear that climate governance is the process of taking into consideration all stakeholders and players, as well as considering all the angles of the decision-making process. In which, the equity among parties should be maintained.

However, administrative urbanization is the expression of the lack of non-state actors- powers. While all important decision is made by only the government, the non-state stakeholders tend to be marginalized from the political and power sphere.

Similarly, while climate change governance is the process of collaboration among stakeholders including state and non-state ones, administrative urbanization might marginalize almost all other actors in civil society. The state can even use its power to prevent non-state stakeholders from many acting for climate change governance and climate change actings. Therefore, I argue that administrative urbanization will bring difficulties for non-state actors in climate change governance.

The lack of human resources for climate change governance

Alongside the further development of urban communities in the country, changes have also emerged in the size of the urban population and the rate of urbanization in Vietnam.

First, the rate of urbanization is described as the projected average rate of change of the size of the urban population over the given period (The World Factbook, 2012). In 2012, the World Bank presented that Vietnam is urbanizing at a rate of 3.4% per year, most of which is in and around Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.

Secondly, the urban population refers to the percentage of the total population living in urban areas, as defined by the country. According to Ngo and Ngo (2015), the rate was18% in the 1990s. For the next two decades, the rates were26% and 35% in 2005 and 2013, respectively (Nguoi Lao Dong, 2004 and Le, 2010). The General Statistic Office of Vietnam stated that the urban population increased from 27.1% to 32.2% in the country. This number increased from 49.9% to 66.6% in CanTho; from 83.8 to 87.3% in Da Nang; and from 40.8% to 46.6% in Haiphong. Although the urban populations of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have not increased at this time, these two cities have also faced many socio-economic issues, in particular for the citizens living in the outskirts.

The mechanical population growth in the city does not help to increase the quality of the human resource of climate change works in the administratively urbanized cities, not except for Hanoi. A Vietnamese environmental administrative authoritarian said that “there is a serious lack of human resource for climate change acting in Vietnam” (Nhat Tan, n.d.). The demands for this sector is known at all levels such as central, municipal, provincial, local, and communal ones.

In the administrative urbanized cities, the human resource, hence can not meet the requirements of climate change urbanization, the area with its unique requirements. This scarcity is foreseeable shortly as well. So, it is obviously that administrative urbanization does not bring positive effects for human resource for climate change governance. In other words, administrative urbanization has somehow brought drawbacks to the process.

Preliminary solutions

In this section, the paper aims to propose three initial solutions to strengthen climate governance in the cities with the context of administrative urbanization, regardless of (1)industrialization and urbanization re-assessment, (2) lessening the autonomy rights of the government in urbanization as well as climate change governance by empowerment for the non-state actors, and (3) strengthening the capacity of civil society in climate change governance in urban areas. However, these “quick view” solutions need to be more comprehensively examined by further research.

Industrialization and urbanization re-assessment

In industrialization and urbanization process, almost all of the decision is made by individuals or interest groups, while the rest of the society is marginalized from the process of decision-making. Taking into account the process of administrative urbanization, the phase of transition would be much more of a struggle. The interference of the government by administrative tools may lead to more serious consequences.

Once again, urbanization has never been a “natural process”. Urbanization is the result of the human-made set of policies, activities, and adjustments. However, urbanization should be conducted under rational logics and means of development. Hence, the administrative urbanization can be considered as a subjective process, which might lead to adverse effects on the elaboration of the urbanized areas.

These practices are rooted in the situation of an in-between situation of many areas, where administratively urbanized but essentially rural. Besides, due to illogical decision making, the cities have not run by the logical process of urbanization, have not under logical way of development, and have not logical- appearance and infrastructure of urban, which might negatively affect the process of institutional arrangement for climate change governance.

Under the theory of governance, the city can be a level of vertical linkages, which are the interconnections among the stakeholders, such as central/local, provincial, municipal, and city level; the private sectors, non-governmental organizations, civil society and civil society organization. There are various conditions to strengthen the linkages among these stakeholders, regardless of the leaderships, the clear and common target or aims, the open forum for all stakeholders, communication, and transparency, responsibility, strengthening the capacities of non-state actors, democracy, the autonomy of civil society and the flexibility of the government.

However, in administrative urbanization, the arbitrary of power among state actors and non-state actors might result in the ideas and actions of the state to dominate and control the non-state stakeholders. This situation can be considered as one of the main challenges for the urban governance for climate change.

Therefore, there is a need of comprehensively assess the status quo of industrialization and urbanization. This would be the first solution to control administrative urbanization in the country. Moreover, this would help to determine whether areas are cities or countryside one, which lead to the clearer approach of climate change governance process in such areas.

Lessening the autonomy rights of the government in urbanization as well as climate change governance by empowerment for the non-state actors

Pattberg and Stripper (2007) argued that there is the fragmentation between public and private concerning climate change governance, so-called public-private divide. In this fragmentation, there are the emerge of three new criteria including:

MANUS, stands for Managers of Global Change, characterized by the increasing participation of actors other than states;

MECGLO means New Mechanisms of Global Governance, marked by new mechanisms of organizations; and

MOSAIC stands for “Multiple Options, Solutions, and Approaches: Institutional Interplay and Conflict’, characterized by different layers and clusters of rule-making and rule implementation.

Therefore, the public-private and the private sector themselves have re-mapped the climate governance with the emergence of clean development mechanism (CDM), the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) partnership, the corporate social responsibility (CSR), and the carbon neutrality.

These phenomena of remapping climate governance were also interpreted by the authors that they are “not just ‘beyond the state’, but within a transnational public sphere with the potential to mitigate climate change largely independent of state action” (Pattberg and Stripper , 2007, sp.16).

Although there are various debates about the means of implementation of these new mechanisms, the emergence of the new mechanisms, in a particular time, shows that the states should also push the empowerment of non-state actors in dealing with climate change.

Especially, in the context of administrative urbanization in Vietnam as analyzing above, the government at all levels might have to think about empowerment for the non-state stakeholder in the city, which would help to increase the autonomy of the citizens in such cities in dealing with the climate phenomenon.

Otherwise, however the government powerful is, it cannot tackle all of the challenges of climate change, especially in the city of over 6 million people. First, the government cannot have enough financial resource to ignore the role of the non-state actor in climate change combating. Moreover, secondly, even though climate changes have emerged for a couple of decades, there is no single government accumulating sufficient experiences in dealing with climate changes. Finally, the government always lack human resource to address climate change. That is why almost all of the governments are now calling for the participations of all stakeholders in the society to climate change combating.

Strengthening the capacity of civil society in climate change governance in urban areas

It is likely that many CSOs are marginalized from the political sphere in Vietnam. Since 2010, the Decision of the Prime Minister No. 97 has allowed for scientific or technical research by independent think tanks and non-profit associations on 317 specially approved topics (Kepa, 2013). Visibly, CSOs are not permitted to discuss “sensitive issues” such as democracy, religious freedom or human rights. This restriction has resulted in the concentrations of international donors on legitimate CSOs and topics.

Besides, these organizations have avoided working on those “sensitive” issues. Hence, it seems that they have focused instead on working on social, economic and environmental issues. Climate change, thus, has become one of the major concerns of CSOs in Vietnam because it is known as a non-politically sensitive subjects.

However, in the process of making the decision of the expansion of Hanoi, the roles of civil society and CSOs has not been realized and formalized. Searching the keywords of “CSOs and the expansion of Hanoi”, there is almost no result relating to this topic. Searching another keyword of “CSOs critic the expansion of Hanoi”, the similar result is shown.

Furthermore, the search of “xã hội dân sự và mở rộng thủ đô Hà Nội” (literally meaning “civil society and the expansion of Hanoi”). Nonetheless, the keywords of ““xã hội dân sự phản biện mở rộng thủ đô Hà Nội” (literally meaning “civil society and the expansion of Hanoi”), there is also no result directly related to the topic.This can be seen as the lack of an adequate role of civil society in the process of urbanization in Vietnam, especially in administrative urbanization.

Ngo and Do (2011) also argued that the decision-making had not been democratically discussed in the society. Moreover, the local government had also not apparently informed the rights and obligation of the officers, communist party members, and regular people in the social debate toward the expansion of the capital. In other words, there was no public debate on this significant decision. Tacitly, there is no voice of CSOs in the process of decision making.

As far as we have seen, although CSOs have shown their outstanding role in a wide range angles of climate change acting in Vietnam, this can not be considered as the expression of consistent climate governance, especially in the cities, where the urbanization process has been taken affect administratively. That is why, to strengthen the climate change governance in such cities, the CSOs need to enhance their capacities and capabilities, to actively join the process of critic on what going on in the cities are.

Conclusion

After the Doi Moi, Vietnam has achieved a significant change in the socio-economic situation. The country had to call for humanitarian aid and imported foods during the 1980s. However, Vietnam became a rice-exporting country in 1989 (Hai Quan Newspaper (The Custom Newspaper), 2013). Moreover, Vietnam has stayed among the top three of the world’s biggest rice exporters in the last two decades. This fact led to the significant changes in industrialization and urbanization in the country. However, under the single party regime, the process of urbanization in a particular time, in many locals, is seen as administrative urbanization. This phenomenon results in the difficulties of the human life in the in-between situation and in-between areas. Moreover, in the context of climate change, administrative urbanization has negatively affected in the process of climate change governance in such cities.

In general, the paper argues that in administrative urbanized areas, the roles of urban governance for climate change are even greater than other urbanized areas. In this research, I have tried to figure out the difficulties that administrative urbanization could bring to climate change governance for urban areas, regardless of (1) the difficulties in determining the policy for urban or rural, (2) the difficulties of empowering for non-state actors in climate change acting, and (3) the lack of human resources for climate change governance.

Based on research, I also propose some preliminary solution urban governance for climate change governance in the context of administrative urbanization, with respects to (1) Industrialization and urbanization re-assessment, (2) lessening the autonomy rights of the government in urbanization as well as climate change governance by empowerment for the non-state actors, and (3) Strengthening the capacity of civil society in climate change governance in urban areas.

However, all of my arguments above need to be further examined and accessed by longer and larger scale research. I hope that I can pursue this researching issue shortly. The research would help to consider more accurate answers for the question of is it possible to strengthen climate change governance in the context of administrative urbanization and how to do so.

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