The Blurred Boundaries of Voluntary Resettlement: A Case of Cat Tien National Park in Vietnam

The voluntary resettlement of people from national parks has emerged as a potential solution to long entrenched people-park conflicts. Yet critical examination of its associated policy and practice is rare. After identifying a trend toward voluntary resettlement in policy and practice, this article examines a resettlement project at Cat Tien National Park in Vietnam. An analysis of the agreement and negotiation processes with local communities reveals that genuine efforts and organizational commitments to voluntary resettlement can take on qualities associated with forced relocations. The Cat Tien National Park Conservation Project, supported by a major international conservation organization, operated on a principle of voluntary agreements while also applying international resettlement standards based on the World Bank's safeguard policies for involuntary resettlement. This apparent confusion in policy was further reflected in practice with the safeguard policies perversely reinforcing, rather than alleviating, involuntary aspects of the project. This article recognizes the potential of voluntary resettlement as an equitable conservation tool, but warns against applying it as an inconspicuous solution to the problems generally associated with involuntary resettlement. Distinctions between voluntary and involuntary resettlement are ambiguous at best; resettlement policy and guidelines need to reflect and clarify this ambiguity.