Luận Văn the roles of vietnamese civil society organisations in urban environmental management in vietnam

the roles of vietnamese civil society organisations in urban environmental management in vietnam

At the present, international agencies in term of urban management have a significant trend to impulse public participation and enhance the roles of civil society organisations. This trend has been concretized at the Rio de Janeiro conferences in 1992. In this conferences report, the United Nations emphasized to public partipation at local level and the decentralisation of power between the state and local authorities as well as interactive relationship between local authorities, the private sector and the CBOs (Community – based organisations). They proposed the principles based on the assumption that, at the local level, exist organized civil society and these organisations have enough capacities to run independently and cooperate to local governments. From there, it appeared significant waves to support the empowerment of local actors by many international programmes. Apart from positive sides, there are another sides, mainly from Western scholars and researchers, were not recognized the existence of ‘real’ civil society in Communist countries such as Vietnam and claimed to replacement of local organisations by ‘real’ Western – flavoured . They seemed to assess the context in Vietnam by Western concepts without considerations for local culture, socio – political conditions as well as religious. As we known, in Western countries, due to a long time of development and verifying, the roles of civil society in urban management process are clearly by means of NGOs, CBOs. These organisations are created and operated based on the norms and the methods which are recognized broadly in Western countries. Meanwhile, developing countries have different culture, political regulation, economical condition and democracy and civil society are actually sensitive issues. For this reason, in developing countries, civil society is acknowledged in different way so that the forms and the roles of civil society organisations in development process in general, in urban management process in particular are also different than same organisations in Western. Sometimes these organisations are even recognised as threats for power of the state and it is very complicated to approach information and examine them. Hence, for a long time, Western always has doubts about the transparency and the independence of civil society organisations from the state in developing countries.