Hai Hong Dinh

For the last four decades, Professor Gabor Vargyas (Pecs University, Hungary) has been doing fieldwork in the Bru villages in the central tropical forest of Quang Tri province that is becoming a ?forest of wind turbines? without trees. Similarly, I have been doing my fieldwork in the Katu villages for the last two decades in Quang Nam province, a place that is becoming the base for one of the largest hydroelectric dams in Southeast Asia: A Vuong Hydroelectric Power Station, 210MW. In Thua Thien – Hue province nearby, A Luoi Hydroelectric Power Station, 170MW, is located in the main region of the Taoih people. The Bru, Katu, and Taoih are three ethnic minorities in the Katuic branch (Mon-Khmer family) and are called the Katuic people. Recently, in 2018, while walking in the shadow of wind turbines in the former tropical forest, G’bor Vargyas said: ?They are forever marginalized!? and I immediately recognized that the faster the economic development the more the ethnic minorities are marginalized. The Katuic people (that I dealt with in my PhD dissertation under the supervision of professor Vargyas) in this engaged research focuses on their marginalized situation in the central renewable energy development zone in Vietnam.