Local Actors in the Lead: “CLA-ing” Environmental Pollution Challenges in Vietnam

Vietnam’s rapid social and economic development and urbanization have led to significant environmental pollution challenges, including poor urban air quality, surface water and groundwater contamination, polluted craft villages, and ocean plastic pollution. The USAID Reducing Pollution Activity, a five-year effort (June 2021- June 2026) implemented by Winrock International, in partnership with the Vietnam’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE), aimed to address these challenges through the locally-led collective impact approach inspired by Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) principles. Unlike most USAID-funded activities with fixed geographic or technical areas of focus, Reducing Pollution was able to select its local partners, pollution issues, and target locations upon award. To do so, the team engaged in a unique Discovery Phase (July 2021- September 2022), enabling a broad consultative process to assess issue readiness and ensure consensus on initiatives, with full engagement from the Government of Vietnam (GVN), local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other stakeholders. CLA subcomponents applied included external collaboration and adaptive management. The team completed an Applied Political Economy Analysis (APEA) to understand underlying power dynamics and socio-economic forces, engaging local stakeholders throughout. Workshops and consultations helped build stakeholder trust, ensuring local stakeholder roles in decision-making and alignment with local needs. This approach led to selecting priority pollution topics and backbone organizations (BBOs) and securing GVN’s approval, which is crucial to ensure the successful activity implementation. Continually adapting its CLA approach, the Activity effectively responded to Vietnam’s environmental pollution challenges, demonstrating the importance of local ownership in addressing complex development issues.