ABSTRACT
The wildlife trade is a major cause of species loss and can trigger disease transmission. While the COVID-19 pandemic sparked public interest in eliminating the wildlife trade, a better understanding is needed of the economic repercussions of COVID-19 on those who rely on wildlife farming for their livelihoods. Using the case studies of Ba Ria Vung Tau and Binh Duong provinces in Vietnam - a country seen as Asia's wildlife trade hotspot - this paper explores COVID-19's impacts on wildlife farms and their owners. Understanding these impacts is important, both in order to design appropriate interventions to support local people in mitigating COVID-19's impacts as well as to inform effective policymaking around wildlife conservation in Vietnam. In this study, we adopted mixed research methods (including a literature and policy review, stakeholder consultation with government agencies and NGOs engaged in designing and monitoring wildlife conservation policies, a wildlife farming household survey, and research validation workshop) to understand the status of Vietnamese wildlife farms, as well as the impacts of COVID-19, and any opportunities and challenges for wildlife conservation and management in Vietnam. Our paper shows that, across the two studied provinces, numbers of wildlife farms and farmed wildlife animals have both declined since the pandemic, with declining market demand and wildlife farm owners experiencing difficulties accessing markets due to travel restrictions. Although this affected wildlife-related income, this represented less than 30 % of families' overall income on average, and thus households were able to maintain their livelihoods through other sources. Most wildlife is raised as an additional food source for farming families and plays an important role in the diets of surveyed households. Findings also highlighted that most surveyed households' post-pandemic recovery strategies involved expanding their wildlife farms in scope and scale; these households perceived a stable domestic market and high prices for wildlife products in future. Our study found several opportunities for sustainable wildlife farming practices, including greater political commitment, an increasing number of wildlife conservation policies, and stronger law enforcement mechanisms. Challenges remain, however; including an unclear and inconsistent policy framework, the presence of an illegal market, and wildlife farm owners' limited knowledge and understanding of wildlife policies. Our paper also shows a lack of comprehensive data and understanding around actual wildlife transactions during the pandemic, leading to challenges in confirming whether COVID-19 had any real impact on wildlife trade. Further research is required to address this knowledge gap.
ABSTRACT
Halting forest loss and achieving sustainable development in an equitable manner require state, non-state actors, and entire societies in the Global North and South to tackle deeply established patterns of inequality and power relations embedded in forest frontiers. Forest and climate governance in the Global South can provide an avenue for the transformational change needed-yet, does it? We analyse the politics and power in four cases of mitigation, adaptation, and development arenas. We use a political economy lens to explore the transformations taking place when climate policy meets specific forest frontiers in the Global South, where international, national and local institutions, interests, ideas, and information are at play. We argue that lasting and equitable outcomes will require a strong discursive shift within dominant institutions and among policy actors to redress policies that place responsibilities and burdens on local people in the Global South, while benefits from deforestation and maladaptation are taken elsewhere. What is missing is a shared transformational objective and priority to keep forests standing among all those involved from afar in the major forest frontiers in the tropics.
