"Only You Can Prevent a Forest": Agent Orange, Ecocide, and Environmental Justice

Abstract

The real story of the environmental crisis is one of power and profit and the institutional and bureaucratic arrangements and the cultural conventions that create conditions of environmental destruction. Toxic wastes and oil spills and dying forests, presented in the daily news as the entire environmental story, are symptoms of social arrangements, and especially of social derangements. The environmental crisis, more than the sum of ozone depletion, global warming, and overconsumption, is a crisis of the dominant ideology. ~Joni Seager

Vietnam's Emerging National Parks: War, Resource Exploitation, and Recent Struggles to Protect Biodiversity

“…In an effort to disrupt opposition forces and supply routes, the U.S. military initiated a campaign that involved intensive aerial bombing, tactical spraying, and the mechanized removal of trees and undergrowth (Figure ). Between 1961 and 1971 thousands of square kilometers of upland forests and coastal mangrove forests in the country's south were damaged or destroyed (Waugh ). Losses were especially severe in forests such as Ma Da, Phu Binh, and A Luai where the removal of trees and groundcover resulted in severe erosion, flooding in low lying areas, and the replacement of forest vegetation with invasive plants such as bamboo and cogon grass (AOR ).…”