been well researched that between 1961 and 1971, U.S military forces dispersed more than 19 million gallons of herbicidal agents over the Republic of Vietnam, including more than 12 million gallons of the dioxin-contaminant commonly known as Agent Orange. As large as these numbers appear to be, the environmental issues which their contaminative elements have given rise to, although significant, have been shown to have limited subsequent effects, such as consequences for planting crops on available arable land, based on World Bank data up to 2009. The focus of commentary on American military action is probably attributable to two reasons. First, the scale of American operations, by virtue of their relative economic and military power, were carried out at a completely different order of magnitude from that of the North Vietnamese. Second, primary sources, such as photographic and documentary archival records which recorded the American side of events, are also more readily available. That being said, other scholars have sought to expand the understanding of the environmental issues which arose as consequences of the War. For example, David Biggs highlights in his environmental history of Central Vietnam that the effect of the War left on the landscape (what he calls "footprints") were not exclusively destructive, but also had constructive or creative dimensions as well. What sort of environmental movement, if any, emerged to address the environmental damage precipitated by the War? For the Vietnam War's environmental issues, unlike other environmental issues which will be elaborated upon subsequently, efforts such as decontamination were driven primarily by governmental and civic movements originating primarily in the United States, such as USAID and the Ford Foundation. Even in the present day, after fifty years of clean up have elapsed, it is foreign international bodies like the World Health Organization, rather than domestic ones, which continue to take the lead in the environmental movement to rectify the scars of military history on Vietnam's natural landscape. Doi Moi, civil society and environmental movements As regards the question of when the environmental movement in Vietnam really took off, historians point to various start dates, including the 1950s as previously mentioned in the case of O'Rourke, all the way up until the early 1990s, as in the case of Kerkvliet's observations about citizen discontent being voiced out by environmental activists. However, there is broad consensus that environmental issues began featuring more prominently in Vietnam's civic sphere following the