Community Involvement in Urban Watershed Management

Abstract

Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) is facing serious water pollution. Environmental agencies in Ho Chi Minh City and Vietnam are incapable of solving the water pollution problem on their own. Reflecting on the experience in the Pacific Northwest (U.S.), with successful stories of community involvement in urban watershed management, this research aims to facilitate the transfer and adaptation of best practices of community involvement in urban watershed management from the Pacific Northwest to Ho Chi Minh City. In order to do so, this research included four major steps: Selecting best practices of community involvement in urban watershed management in the Pacific Northwest; analyzing factors behind the success of these best practices; assessing the relevance of the U.S. experience for Vietnam; recommending strategies to apply the U.S. experience to Ho Chi Minh City. As a result, several factors that determine the success of best practices of community involvement in urban watershed management were identified and grouped into policy, organizational, social, cultural, and economic factors. Although Ho Chi Minh City faces several constraints in applying the lessons from the Pacific Northwest, opportunities do exist. Recommendations were advanced to facilitate the implementation of community involvement in urban watershed management in Ho Chi Minh City.

The Growth of Service-Learning in Vietnamese Higher Education: Catalysts, Characteristics, and Challenges

“…However, academic publications are scarce. We found only one coauthored book chapter (Halimi et al, 2014) about an international service-learning partnership with Portland State University in Oregon and two other papers (Phung, 2007;Phung & Mol, 2004) about community engagement in the field of environmental studies. Other research publications have been posted on personal blogs and service-learning websites (Nguyễn et al, 2012), as a conference presentation (Nguyen, 2016), and in an institutional journal (Le, 2017).…”

Culture and the Participation of Native in Educational Attainment

“…Several researchers such as Ahmed et al, (2011), Majee and Hoyt (2011), Bloom et al, (2011) and Phuong (2007) in their study on the development of Southeast Asia countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam revealed that at the macro level structure, most of the issues like cultural, spiritual, organizational and the world view of the local people have always been neglected. This is because the ideas of development are constructed from scientific knowledge which is generated from the knowledge of the West against the knowledge of the local people themselves (Novel et al, 2011).…”

“…They also influence access to and control over resources and participation in decision-making. These gender ideologies often reinforce male power and the idea of women inferiority (Phuong, 2007;Bloom et al, 2011). Culture is sometimes interpreted narrowly as custom or tradition and assumed to be natural and unchangeable.…”