Offers 6 detailed case studies that show how strategies adopted by local communities achieved positive results despite a strong state bias toward development and the absence of existing advocacy groups, a free press, or politically vulnerable elected officials. O'Rourke's policy model of community-state synergy challenges traditional notions of state-centric environmental regulation and the idea that market mechanisms are the best way to solve environmental problems in developing countries.
Dara O'Rourke is Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley.
This book develops an innovative perspective on industrial environmental regulation, convincingly illustrated with strong empirical evidence. Like no one before him, O'Rourke succeeds in providing detailed insight into the often obscure processes of environmental policymaking in Vietnam and the key role communities play in moving this industrializing tiger economy toward sustainability. --Arthur P. J. Mol, Professor and Chair of Environmental Policy and Sociology, Wageningen University, The Netherlands "Dara O'Rourke brings a critically important new dimension to the discourse on sustainability: human agency expressed through community-driven environmental regulation. He offers a rich, detailed account of the Vietnamese people's struggle to sustain their communities against global industry. This book gives hope that continuing political renovation and the rise of civil society in Vietnam can more effectively meet the challenges of environmental management through community-state synergies." --C. Michael Douglass, Director, Globalization Research Center and Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Hawaii "O'Rourke shows that even in the context of a poor market-socialist country whose state places the highest priority on attracting foreign investment in manufacturing, community-driven regulation can be surprisingly effective in reducing pollution and other forms of environmental degradation. Another important conclusion of his study that is relevant to both North and South is the critical role that citizen access to information on pollution emission standards and on how local firms compare to others across the country plays in such regulation." --Frederick H. Buttel, William H. Sewell Professor of Rural Sociology and Professor of Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin--Madison