Pamela McElwee's Forests Are Gold argues that Vietnam's forest policies from the colonial period to the present era of market-based socialism (chapter 5) are a form of “environmental rule.” Based on insights obtained from long-term ethnographic fieldwork and archival sources, McElwee suggests that environmental rule occurs “when states, organizations, or individuals use environmental or ecological reasons as justification for what is really a concern with social planning” (p. 5). Combining Foucault's governmentality framework and actor-network theory, the book examines the history of environmental intervention in Vietnam through processes of problematization, knowledge making, directing conduct, and subject making. McElwee innovatively suggests that “by turning away from studies of states and regulations and towards knowledge, networks, and practices, a more complex, realistic, and contingent picture of governance emerges” (p. 13). As a long-time enthusiast of political ecology studies, I find the book's conceptual framing an original and important contribution to the field.

According to McElwee, successive governments have used environmental interventions, such as the colonial administration's forest management (chapter 2), postwar policies of timber extraction (chapter 3), afforestation and forestland allocation (chapter 4), and more recent market-based mechanisms (chapter 5), to achieve economic and social objectives. She cites continued forest degradation and impoverished local livelihoods as evidence that these interventions have often failed. However, other scholars have shown that interventions such as forestland allocation and afforestation have facilitated the expansion of forest cover and improved local livelihoods.Footnote ¹ These findings suggest a more nuanced story about the results of environmental rule than McElwee provides here.

McElwee importantly observes that environmental rule is not static and is transformed by the global knowledge network, human resistance, and the physical properties of resources (p. 6). However, environmental rule and its outcomes are also influenced by other factors, such as frictions within government as agencies contest each other over the formulation and implementation of environmental interventions. Gaps between policy and implementation and diverse implementation pathways may also lead to unpredictable outcomes. In Vietnam, local authorities often resist the directives of central government agencies.Footnote ² Unfortunately, Forests Are Gold is silent on these issues.

Path dependency theory suggests that new policy interventions are often built on past or existing ones. This implies that environmental interventions that disguise economic and social objectives could be corrected to achieve environmental outcomes. However, McElwee's environmental rule framework (figure I.02, p. 17) does not seem to allow this thinking.

It is clear that the environmental rule framework is innovative in asking why and how environmental rule has been implemented in Vietnam by successive governments. What is less clear is the definition of environmental rule. Early on, McElwee seems to suggest it is a government strategy (p. 5), but later describes it as “an amalgam of practices” (p. 208) and a “network” (p. 212). A more consistent definition is needed.

Overall, Forests Are Gold makes an important contribution to the political ecology of resource governance. I highly recommend it to scholars and graduate students of political ecology and human geography who are working on Vietnam and Southeast Asia.