USAID is helping Vietnam improve and harmonize its legal framework for wildlife crime by addressing governance weaknesses, supporting trade compliance, and increasing clarity regarding overlapping jurisdictions, contradictory or unclear mandates, and legal loopholes. On August 9, the USAID Saving Species project and the National Assembly’s Science, Technology, and Environment Committee co-organized a conference on the Assessment of Legal Enforcement on the Implementation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). More than 100 attendees from the National Assembly, Supreme People’s Court, national and local government bodies, universities, and wildlife farming/breeding businesses discussed several gaps in current CITES regulation implementation, such as lack of standards for wildlife breeding farms and judiciary disagreement on wildlife trafficking case adjudication procedures.

So What?  Identifying and addressing legal gaps to improve CITES implementation in Vietnam will contribute to the country’s biodiversity conservation - an essential component of achieving sustainable, resilient development.