Ecological Economics 31 1999 365 – 379
ANALYSIS
Evolution of economy and environment: an application to land use in lowland Vietnam
W. Neil Adger
School of En6ironmental Sciences and Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global En6ironment, Uni6ersity of East Anglia, Norwich, NR
4 7
TJ, UK Received 2 September 1998; received in revised form 17 December 1998; accepted 12 March 1999
Abstract
This paper analyses the interactions between land use, institutions and culture in the context of climatic extremes in Vietnam. Although there has been a long history of examining the evolutionary nature of markets and institutions
within an institutional economics framework, developing the institutional economic approach to include society environment interactions allows examination of processes which facilitate and constrain economic development. For
example, this approach is used here to explain adaptation processes whereby climatic risk affects collective responses. These responses form an evolutionary link between institutions, culture, resources and the physical environment. The
paper argues that historically climatic risks have been a factor in technological and political response within the agrarian society of Vietnam, in the sense that climatic extremes have acted as triggers to some significant social
upheavals. In the past century, the impacts of colonialism, political change and related changes in social organisation, have significantly altered the social basis of resilience to climate extremes. © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights
reserved.
Keywords
:
Coevolution; Agricultural development; Climate change; Vietnam www.elsevier.comlocateecolecon
1. Introduction
This paper develops two themes. Firstly, the interaction of society and environment relations is
expounded as an evolutionary process whereby both society and the physical environment deter-
mine the structure of market institutions. The analysis describes economic development as a
process whereby the selection of activities by insti- tutions operates within available niches. The key
institutions and manifestations of such evolution are those surrounding property and access to
resources. This theme is developed with reference to the evolution of land use under diverse histori-
cal social and political circumstances in the his- tory of Vietnam. Utilisation of natural resources
in Vietnam has fundamentally been affected by
Tel.: + 44-1603-593732; fax: + 44-1603-250588. E-mail address
:
n.adgeruea.ac.uk W.N. Adger 0921-800999 - see front matter © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 2 1 - 8 0 0 9 9 9 0 0 0 5 6 - 7
the pre-colonial, colonial, communist, and post- communist institutions and technologies of land
use. Understanding of present day vulnerability and adaptation to environmental change requires
historical analysis of the land use and social or- ganisation of the agrarian economy.
A second theme of this paper is that of the role of climate as an environmental resource within an
evolutionary framework. In debates on environ- ment and society interactions, climate has vari-
ously been portrayed as one constraint on the ability of regions and societies to undertake eco-
nomic development Sachs, 1997, or as a key factor in agricultural development, in particular in
pre-industrial societies de Vries, 1980. This pa- per by contrast argues that climate acts as one
element in the portfolio of risk inherent in utilis- ing natural resources, and that coevolution occurs
such that land use alters in response to risks from extreme events rather than coevolving directly
with the climate system. This theme is illustrated with reference to the Vietnamese lowland societies
of the past millennium.
The paper proceeds by outlining the theoretical foundations of coevolutionary analysis from the
perspective of institutional economics. It demon- strates that economics has had a long history of
examining economic systems in an evolutionary context, concentrating on how institutions them-
selves evolve and determine the structure of economies in terms of organisation, markets and
scale. Bringing the physical resource base into the calculus leads to the observation that not only
does the economic system evolve but that it has a direct relationship with the natural system on
which it depends. Treating climate as a distinct resource endowment leads to the examination of
the evolution of climate risk with economic sys- tems following Schneider and Londer, 1984; for
example. It is argued in this paper that the important interactions between land use, institu-
tions and climate are essentially manifest in adap- tation to climate variability, and to extreme
climate events in particular. In other words, the economic and climate systems interact with each
other in the evolution of social and environmental risks.
This is not to deny the role of climate charac- teristics as one environmental constraint and
parameter of land use and cultural evolution. In the context of the wet-rice growing areas of Asia,
Bray 1986 demonstrates that the present land allocation, technology and social relations are not
‘matters of chance.’ Rather the development of irrigation and of the social organisation for
labour intensive cultivation are key to the eco- nomic structure of these societies. This paper em-
phasises the variability and the impact of climate extremes as central issues in this evolution. Insti-
tutional strategies and technologies of adaptation, such as investment in irrigation, alter the risk
profile from climatic hazards. The feedbacks to climatic risk come about through smoothing the
impact of climate variability, for example through irrigation in agriculture, and through protective
measures to minimise the impacts of extreme cli- mate events. Thus, in this analytical approach, it
is the set of climate risks and their perceptions which coevolve with social forces.
2. The environment in evolutionary economics
