Information-poor environments: Asian tigers - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 261

reported. 42 Studies of O'Rourke ( 2004 ), DiGregorio and colleagues
( 2003 ) and Phung Thuy Phuong and Mol ( 2004 ) register the impor-
tance of complaint systems in Vietnam, evolving into community-
driven regulation and governance on the environment. In such forms of
community-driven governance, informational resources do play a sig-
nificant role. Sometimes, information is spread widely through the vari-
ous media to build up pressure on the political powers to act; sometimes
information is channelled via informal and formal networks to higher
party and state echelon, who act than in conventional - command-
and-control - ways.

Media and public space

The 'old' media (television, radio, newspapers) are still largely owned,
monopolised and controlled by the Chinese and Vietnamese state
authorities, be it not to the same extent in the two countries, lead-
ing to somewhat distinct roles of these media in informational gov-
ernance of the environment in the two countries. 43 In both countries,
the conventional media have long been used primarily for propaganda
and government-controlled information dissemination. In an interest-
ing analysis, De Burgh ( 2003 ) explains the major changes that took
place in the 'old' media and journalism practices in China. Part of
the old media has been given economic independence and competition
emerges between newspapers (but not yet on television), resulting in
the need to get a major share of their funding from advertisements (up
to 60 percent in newspapers) and more attention for consumer prefer-
ences. 44 Media staff is increasingly recruited outside party control and
financial incentives are used to attract good professionals, including

42

The 1992 constitution articulates the right of citizens to lodge complaints, and
the 1998 Law on Complaints and Denunciations elaborates this constitutional
right. Decree 67/1999/ND-CP further details the implementation of this law.

43

In the World Resources Institute indices on environmental institutions and
governance, the two countries score equally on most of the governance indices,
such as Transparency, Level of Freedom, Civil Liberties and Press Freedom
(http://earthtrends.wri.org).

44

In 2004, there were some twenty-one hundred newspapers in China, some of
them organised in groups (data from the World Association of Newspapers:
http://www.wan-press.org/). Few are national newspapers. Most are either
regionally focussed (provincial, major cities), for special target groups