UNIVERSITY - COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND COLLABORATIVE GOVERNANCE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: LEARNING FROM AND WITH VIETNAM Peter Boothroyd* Introduction Much o f the external assistance provided to Vietnam over the last half-century has oeen grounded in the global North’s paternalistic perspective that the role of international agencies is to guide “developing” countries in the global South This perspective, which underlay the establishment of the World Bank at Bretton Woods in 944, continued to inform “international development” programming of multilateral agencies and individual OECD countries even as their preferred strategies shifted over the decades from promoting economic growth with trickledowi, to meeting basic needs, and then to advocating supporting sustainability, go-oc governance, and social inclusion Today, however, the validity o f the perspective that “North knows best” is begiining to be challenged - on the one hand by economic stresses and worsening ineqiality in Japan, North America, and Europe, and by the success o f development initiitives in the South ranging from social forestry to participatory budgeting Slovly, we are coming to understand that sustainable development should be conceived as a long-term process of countries learning from each other, and with each other through jointly conducted action-research Insights into the processes by which such learning can occur, and the impact this learning can have on the development work of Northern institutions, can be gleaied from the experiences and aftermath of a capacity-building project concucted jointly by Vietnamese and Canadian scholars, and funded by the Camdian International Development Agency (CIDA), from 1998 through 2003 * Professor Emeritus, The University o f British Columbia, Presentation to the 4th International Coiference on Viet Nam Studies, 26-28 November 2012, Hanoi 37 V lfT NAM HQC - KY Yfcu HQl THAO QU6c Tt LAN THlT TU* The project, Local Poverty Reduction in Vietnam; Building capacity fo r project planning and policy assessment (LPRV), illustrates well the potential for a development project to contribute to international mutual learning and co-operative knowledge generation at the same time as it serves substantive development goals o f host and donor countries In this paper, I first describe LPRV's background, context, partners, goal, strategy, organizational structure, and results in Vietnam (Complete information on LPRV is available through its website http://www.chs.ubc.ca/lprv/overviewF.html which includes the Final Report (2004) and the NCSSH LPRV Steering Committee’s final assessment (2003) The latter presents the NCSSH perspective succinctly, yet comprehensively and with instructive examples.) After describing LPRV, I discuss the lessons it provided to us at UBC about university-community engagement and collaborative governance, how we applied them to capacity building for collaborative governance in Brazil and university-community engagement generally, and how we disseminated the lessons through publications In preparing this paper, I have drawn on my observations and experience as an active participant in LPRV and in other international development activities of UBC Thanks are due to the many people from and with whom I learned during LPRV: they contributed significantly to my thinking Thanks are due also to C1DA and the partner institutions that made this learning possible Comments from LPRV participants or observers are welcomed especially if they include corrections to this paper or alternative interpretations of the history it presents Local Poverty Reduction in Vietnam (LPRV) 2.1 Background LPRV was built on a strong partnership that had been developed between Vietnam’s National Center for Social Sciences and Humanities (now the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences) and the University of British Columbia in the early 1990s Thanks to doi moi, Vietnam's momentous overarching policy o f social and economic renovation meta-policy direction that had been initiated in 1986, Vietnam was open to such a partnership, and Canada was open to financially supporting it From 1990 to 1996, NCSSH and UBC jointly conducted a capacity-building project funded by CIDA, and a parallel research project funded by the International Development Research Centre The capacity-building project assisted NCSSH to enhance research and teaching on "development planning for sustainability and equity" by introducing Vietnamese scholars to concepts and literature then current in many international circles but not in Vietnam because of historical political, 38 UNIVERSITY - COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT ecoromic, and linguistic constraints Sample course syllabi and core readings were prefared in four topic areas: rural development, urban housing, household economy antd social policy These activities were supplemented by English-language and librarian training The research project involved joint Vietnamese-Canadian teams investigating the social impacts of Vietnam's evolving policies in the above-listed four topic area>, and assessing the implications for Vietnam's future development The outputs were published in an IDRC monograph entitled Socioeconomic Renovation in Met Nam: The Origin, Evolution, and Impact o f Doi Moi (Boothroyd and Nam 200 )) 2.2 Context LPRV was created in response to Vietnam’s need for poverty reduction efforts that could address local conditions by building local capacity, and to the enhanced oppjrtunities for experimentation, participation, and international co-operation that w en enabled by the spirit o f doi moi 2.3 Partners LPRV expanded the early 1990s UBC-NCSSH partnership to include in Vienam the Universities of Thai Nguyen, of Vinh, of Hue, and o f Dalat, and the Ho ChiMinh City College o f Social Sciences, and in Canada, Université Laval, and the Woild University Service of Canada (WUSC) The project was co-chaired by NCSSH President Prof Dr Nguyen Duy Quy and UBC Professor Terry McGee; it was co-directed by Professor Pham Xuan Nam and myself Others, too numerous to rame here, played strong leadership roles (NCSSH was renamed as VASS in 2004, just after LPRV finished.) 2.4 Goal and Strategy The LPRV goal was to "build self-sustaining capacity in the [Vietnamese] partier institutions to develop and teach low-cost, participatory policy assessment and project planning methods that are effective in generating appropriate solutions to ocalized poverty, and suited to Vietnamese cultures and administrative conditions." The strategy was: i) to develop Centres for Poverty Reduction at each of the five Vietnamese universities; ii) to link them through NCSSH into a mutual learning netvork; iii) to undertake leam-by-doing commune-level pilot projects and policy assessments through the CPRs in collaboration with local officials and community menbers; iv) to draw lessons together about the effectiveness of various 39 VI$T NAM HQC - KY YÉU Hverty reduction capacity, which means improved capacity for the poor to relie'e themselves from poverty [T]hey have shifted from passively waiting for ecommic assistance from the State and other organizations to actively exploring effective solutions to escape poverty; and from considering themselves project impbmenters to becoming project designers This is the most important basis for then to get out of poverty in a sustainable manner Thanks to [LPRV induced and other] changes in terms of awareness and appnaches, the poor, instead of being distrusted [by government staff] and passvely carrying out the tasks assigned, are encouraged to participate and make deci ions in planning and implementing poverty reduction projects, and bring into full >lay their capacity to find solutions to escape poverty (NCSSH LPRV Steering Committee, 2003:4-5) LPRV results at a third level potentially offer the greatest leverage in reducing poverty over the long term These results related to the strengthening of univrsity capacities LPRV strengthened the capacity o f the Vietnamese partners to cmtribute to development through innovative perspectives (e.g., commitment to ong