There is no way around a thorough contextualization to avoid some common mistakes: homogenization of complex sociopolitical relations, historicalness and overly dichotomization. This chapter seeks to counter these three analytical oversimplifications through a detailed discussion of the actors central to this research, their relationship to each other and their overall embeddedness in the environmental governance present in the Vietnamese context. It then demonstrates how historic events have impacted the understanding of humannature relations and how environmental narratives have evolved. Studying the past is crucial to understanding why particular narratives that seemed opposing, are depicted as complementary by state actors. Lastly, the chapter not only takes a closer look at the state-society relations through scrutinizing relevant actors in environmental governance, but also recentres the relations between humans and nature by discussing landscape as a consequential creator of sociopolitical contexts.

Relevant Institutions for Environmental Policymaking in the Vietnamese State

The socialist republic is under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), which is the only party allowed. The authoritarian rule in this one-party state is structured horizontally from the national level downwards. This means that the CPV has a system in which the inner-party organizational structures run parallel to the actual governing structure throughout the whole country. The elected people's committee works alongside the level's party secretariat. The lowest governing level is the village (thôn) and hamlet (xóm, áp). Next is the commune level (xã) or, in urban context, small towns (thị trần) or wards inside a bigger city (phường). This is followed by the district level (huyện for rural areas; quận for urban areas) and the provincial town (thị xã); provincial level (tỉnh) and cities (thành phố); and finally, the national level (trung ương). Authorities are responsible for what is happening in their areas, and they report to the next higher level. The direction of reporting is supposed to create a bottom-up approach, but in practice, directives and decrees from the upper level are handed down and applied on the lower levels (Ortmann 2020). Sometimes local authorities (i.e., up to the provincial level) adjust directives handed down from above to their own context. But in many cases, cadres lack either capacity, knowledge or both to do so and simply copy the text handed down from the national level and insert their area's name.