Individual Paper
3. Prosperity, the Pains of Growth and its Governance
In a remarkably rapid period of transformation, starting in the late 1980s, Vietnam became a global agri-export powerhouse by the mid-2000s. Alongside becoming a major exporter of rice and rubber, Vietnam emerged as the world’s largest exporter of both black pepper and Robusta coffee, the production of which came to be heavily concentrated in the country’s Central Highlands. This region has consequently been converted from a thickly-forested landscape populated by subsistence-oriented ethnic minority communities like the Ede, Jarai and Mnong into a zone of intensive agriculture dominated by Kinh Vietnamese. Significant urban centres are also expanding in these highlands. While these developments were initiated by a project of nation-building by the Vietnamese state, the challenges of social and environmental governance are being increasingly shaped by the region’s insertion into agri-food Global Production Networks (GPNs). Despite material improvements in living standards, development (broadly construed) in Vietnam's Central Highlands remains highly contested.
Jeff Neilson
The University of Sydney, Australia