Viet Nam, facing challenges in compliance with its Law on Environmental Protection, took a different approach to dramatically raise the profile of its environmental enforcement program. In 1997, Viet Nam’s Ministry of Science, Technology, and Environment undertook a large-scale inspection of over 9,000 facilities across 61 provinces and cities and ultimately found that about half of them were out of compliance.

Virachey National Park is one of Cambodia’s pristine conservation areas and one of only two Association of South East Asian Nations Heritage Parks in Cambodia. Despite being isolated and largely unexplored, it has also been plagued by illegal logging for decades. After significant damage from illegal logging was discovered by the World Bank and global non-governmental organizations in 2004, Cambodian agencies mounted a concerted effort to prosecute illegal loggers with international assistance.