The EIA system in Vietnam - subject to irrationality.

Summary

The main objective of my thesis is to contribute in explaining why the Vietnamese
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) system does not operate satisfactory and to
find out which incitement that is primarily causing the inefficiency. I went to Hanoi and carried out a Minor Field Study. I gathered information at libraries and universities plus performed long interviews with key persons at e.g. the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, and The Vietnamese Environmental Protection Agency.

The strategy I use to attain my objective is referred to as “travelling between
empiricism and theory”. During my first interviews, I primarily asked general
questions. I continued by comparing my interviews with each other and also to relevant
literature, regulations and other written material. My final interviews were narrowed
before I performed the same travelling procedure in search of reliability. The thesis do not thoroughly explain all the plausible factors to the malfunctioning EIA system, instead I try to find the main contributing reasons. I describe and analyse in what extent the reasons I find are contributing to the inefficiency. By applying the theory of rationality, I come to the conclusion that the Vietnamese EIA system is subject to irrationality and that the “timing in the decision-making process” is the main contributing tangible reason for the inefficiency. Existing overlapping regulations on EIA imply that development projects sometimes are approved before the environmental impact assessment is performed.

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