There is a significant lacuna in the literature on civil society activism in authoritarian contexts. This research addresses this gap by providing an innovative conceptual framework that draws upon relational approach to civil society and mainstream social movement theories. The research focuses on legitimacy, autonomy as well as formality and informality as defining characteristics of civil society activism. In the light of this framework, the paper provides an in-depth empirical account of the processes through which a local NGO in one-party ruled Vietnam orchestrates community mobilization to improve policy delivery response to the poor. This paper argues that by taking advantage of their embedded relation into the state, working within and through bureaucratic structures, manipulating available structural links, as well as strategizing around both formal and informal channels of activism, Vietnamese NGOs are seeking to carve out more room for themselves to manoeuvre in critical actions. In authoritarian contexts such as Vietnam, the NGO-led activism is unlikely to produce radical shifts in the political structure and power relations, but this is not to say that its significance is trivial.

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River deltas globally are highly exposed and vulnerable to natural hazards and are often over-exploited landforms. The Global Delta Risk Index (GDRI) was developed to assess multi-hazard risk in river deltas and support decision-making in risk reduction interventions in delta regions. Disasters have significant impacts on the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, despite the strong interlinkage between disaster risk reduction and sustainable development, global frameworks are still developed in isolation and actions to address them are delegated to different institutions. Greater alignment between frameworks would both simplify monitoring progress towards disaster risk reduction and sustainable development and increase capacity to address data gaps in relation to indicator-based assessments for both processes. This research aims at aligning the GDRI indicators with the SDGs and the Sendai Framework for Disaster and Risk Reduction (SFDRR). While the GDRI has a modular indicator library, the most relevant indicators for this research were selected through a delta-specific impact chain designed in consultation with experts, communities and stakeholders in three delta regions: the Red River and Mekong deltas in Vietnam and the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna (GBM) delta in Bangladesh and India. We analyse how effectively the 143 indicators for the GDRI match (or not) the SDG and SFDRR global frameworks. We demonstrate the interconnections of the different drivers of risk to better inform risk management and in turn support delta-level interventions towards improved sustainability and resilience of these Asian mega-deltas.

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This article articulates and analyses the tension between universalism and national ownership in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It focuses on the context of Vietnam as a one-party state, committed to the SDGs, that combines socialist commitments and capitalist aspirations. The SDGs have been critiqued from many angles, and ‘national ownership’ is pivotal to an evaluation of these competing perspectives. The article examines how far, in the tension between global commitments and national ownership, the SDG agenda itself is compromised. Using the set of goals, targets and indicators as well as cross-cutting foundational principles championed by the Agenda 2030, i.e. ‘leave no one behind’, ‘multi-stakeholder participation’ and ‘indivisibility’, the article sheds light on the dynamics of Vietnam’s national ownership of the SDGs and reflects on what this means for the SDGs.