Construction Aggregates and Environmental Policy Integration in a One-Party State: The Case of Hoa Binh, Vietnam

In fast growing economies, rapid urbanization generates high demand for construction aggregates in the rural hinterland of cities. Their extraction often causes negative repercussions on the environment. In Vietnam, the central government has made strong efforts to incorporate environmental objectives in the aggregate mining sector, and, in a one-party state, it has powerful means to implement its policies. Nevertheless, adverse environmental effects of aggregate mining are visible throughout the country. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to identify barriers for environmental policy integration in a one-party state. The aggregates industry in Hoa Binh Province, located in the hinterland of the fast growing capital Hanoi, is taken as a case. Methods of the study, which was conducted between 2015 and 2019, include literature review, document and data analysis, interviews, group discussions for information collection and validation of results, and site visits. Six environmental policy integration barriers are derived from the literature. They form the conceptual basis for explaining difficulties of environmental policy implementation and integration in the concrete case. The study demonstrates that the following factors provide a viable concept for analyzing deficits of environmental policy integration in a fast modernizing one-party state: (a) the prevalence of top-down approaches with insufficient trigger-down effects, (b) the predominance of socioeconomic over environmental objectives, (c) weak incentives to improve environmental performance, (d) fragmented environmental planning and implementation, (e) weak institutional control mechanisms on lower levels of government, and (f) compliance oriented public participation and deficient compensation mechanisms. These are potential entry points for coping with environmental challenges of growth oriented sector policies.