Prof. Dr. Quynh Nguyen, Professor at the University of Bern and lead of our Environmental Governance and Global Development research team, talks with us about her path and her work at the Mekong Delta and in Xayabury, and how her team's work supports the Wyss Academy’s core directions. She frames the stakes clearly: “Environmental governance is about how we as society come together and decide to manage our shared natural resources in a way that is efficient, sustainable, and fair.” The conversation traces how evidence moves into practice—at households, in local governments, and across international agreements.

“I often say I’m like a tree with two main roots,” Quynh reflects—“one is in Vietnam, and the other one in Germany.” This binational vantage point has shaped how she reads trade-offs in real places, especially the hard balance between improving livelihoods and protecting fragile ecosystems.

In the Mekong Delta, her team works with farmers, women’s cooperatives, and local officials to co-develop responses to salinity intrusion—looking not only at what is failing, but at what already works and how policy can enable it. Through cross-country survey experiments and randomized controlled trials, they examine when citizens support environmental rules—especially when policies carry costs—and whether perceived fairness strengthens that support. “It’s that mix between theory and practice that I really, really enjoy and appreciate,” she says. In Laos, they map formal, informal, and family ties among village leaders, district and provincial officials, farmers, and army representatives, then adapt engagement so information brokers and peripheral actors are brought into decision-making.

Quynh closes on what keeps the work fresh: “I really enjoy the diversity. It allows for collaboration and learning,” moving between field sites, classrooms in Bern, and co-design sessions with partners. Watch the conversation to see how careful evidence, shared power, and grounded action come together.