Description

Bac Ninh, a province adjacent to the Hanoi Capital Region, has long been renowned for its craft villages whose feudal-era products were sold in the eponymously-named streets of what is now Hanoi’s Old Quarter. Today, Bac Ninh is becoming, like other provinces of the Red River Delta, renowned for the toxic environments produced by its contemporary craft industries, such as the recycling of electronic waste. Based on household survey data from Van Mon commune in Bac Ninh province, the paper will analyze household strategies for accessing clean water for household use and consider the ways in which such strategies are outcomes and markers of social differentiation as well as examining their gendered use and implications.

Le Thi Van Hue is project coordinator and researcher at the Center for the Environment and Community Asset Development (CECAD), the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA). Her specialization and research focus is natural resource use and management, community asset building, climate vulnerability and adaptation in the North, Central and Central Highlands of Vietnam. Hue received her MA in Urban and Environmental Policy at Tufts University, USA, her PhD in Agriculture and Rural Development at the Institute of Social Studies at The Hague, the Netherlands, and was a post-doctoral fellow at Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.