Can landscape planning solve scale mismatches in environmental governance? A case study from Vietnam

Abstract

Landscape planning has been advocated by many researchers and conservationists because of its potential to support nature conservation at broad spatial scales. We examined an internationally funded project in Vietnam (the ECOLIME project) that failed in its endeavor to establish landscape planning at the scale of an ecologically valuable karst landscape. We applied the Research–Integration–Utilization model of scientific knowledge transfer to analyze why the ECOLIME project did not succeed in adapting the scale of the political–administrative planning system to the ecological scale of the karst ecosystem landscape. Our study shows that the implementation of landscape planning in the Pu-Luong Cuc Phuong area was not successful to solve scale mismatches in environmental governance because of weak integration, resulting from both the absence of a link to the Vietnamese political process and the lack of support from powerful Vietnamese actors. The establishment of a landscape planning group with the support of an internationally funded project (the ECOLIME project) was not a sufficient means to create links to the political process and win powerful allies. Based on the results of this study, we recommend improvements in integration to make scientific research relevant to science-based policy support, including (1) the need for a link to the existing political process and (2) the need to gain sustainable support from powerful allies.