Natural resource use conflicts and priorities in small islands of Vietnam

Small islands of Vietnam witness increasing natural resource use conflicts among stakeholders resulting from their isolation from the mainland, combined with more recent pressures of urbanization, tourism, and socio-economic development. A challenge facing both residents and governments is identifying more appropriate inter-sector cooperation to minimize conflicts taking into account short-term economic feasibility and long-term sustainability. This study deals with conflicts and priorities in natural resource use as perceived by residents and local officials in the Ly Son Island of the Vietnamese Southern-Central Coast Region. A decision tree on conflict and priority analysis is structured at four hierarchical levels: sector, sub-sector, socio-economic activity, and objective. While a Likert 5 scale’s weighted mean (wMean) was applied to the survey data and to rank conflicts, the Analytic Hierarchy Process was used to estimate the weight values by priority. The results show that, although conflicts are limited, conflict hotspots exist in mountainous forested areas, farms, residential locations, and along coasts. Both residents and local officials shared the opinion that priorities help dealing with conflicts on the island. Over-all, perception analysis contributes to integrated spatial planning, marine spatial planning, and integrated coastal zone management for Ly Son Island with a consideration of improving inter-sector cooperation between agriculture, fishery, forestry and conservation, industry and service, tourism, and army.