Evolution of economy and environment: an application to land use in lowland Vietnam

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.