Profiles

Hoang Quoc Dzung – Veteran Environmental Reporter in Vietnam

James Fahn/Internews

Hoang Quoc Dzung, who will be honored at Internews’ Media Leadership Awards in Washington, DC on June 5, is one of the founders and the executive deputy-president of the Vietnam Forum of Environmental Journalists (VFEJ). He has specialized in environmental coverage for 13 years at the Tien Phong (Vanguard) Newspaper, one of Vietnam’s ten largest-circulation dailies. In late 2007, Dzung led a team of VFEJ journalists who carried out a landmark investigative report uncovering illegal trade in monkeys in Indochina.

Tell me about your investigation into the illegal smuggling of long-tailed macaques between Cambodia and Vietnam. Why did you decide to investigate this issue, what were the challenges and the rewards?

It is the connection between the gangs and some officials in the Forest Protection Department (FPD), the nation’s highest office assigned to directly manage the forest resources, that attracts me.

The most challenging thing in investigating this issue is my loneliness. All of my colleagues who were involved in the case with me at the beginning have now given up due to various issues. The gangs were so strong that their network remains unchanged after my investigative features. Some officials from FPD came to my newspapers to give negative reactions to my feature and simply ask me to stop writing.

The reward for me is that I dare to do what the others dare not and, especially, Tien Phong’s editorial board continues to support me to to cover the issue.

How has environmental reporting in Vietnam progressed since 1994 when you became involved in it?

The situation changed rapidly during the mid 1990s as Vietnam started to build a national strategy for environmental protection. In early 1994, when the Environmental Law came into force, Vietnam also ratified important international treaties. Meanwhile, the process of development began to reveal its negative side, which was the depletion of natural resources, increased environmental degradation and the pressures of an increasing population. Journalists began to realize that environmental problems were going to be a challenge for the long-term development of the country.

Print media, television and radio in Vietnam have dedicated more space and more airtime for environmental news and features with the efforts of a handful of journalists. In many newspapers, focusing more attention on the environment has become the fashion.

What are the environmental issues that are specific to Vietnam and what are common issues that you share with more industrialized nations?

In Vietnam, it is weak administrative and institutional capacities; poor regulatory enforcement and a highly centralized administrative system; and issues of resource utilization and sanitary services for population growth. Also, the absence of private ownership leads to the lack of protection of various resources. Finally, the reality is that most raw materials have been treated as free or open access goods.

Some issues also common in other countries are lack of financial resources to support a suitable and sufficient monitoring system; and the enormous rate of industrialization and capital accumulation, with few economic incentives for environmental protection.

What are your plans for the future - stories you plan to work on or in general for environmental journalism in Vietnam?

Personally, I will continue to work on unfinished topics such as illicit trans-border wildlife trade and a project on eco-tourism that was planned for the core zone of Tam Dao National Park. Last year, an Internews-supported training course on biodiversity journalism resulted in stories by participants about the Tam Dao project, which caught a lot of attention from the public and resulted in the downsizing of the US $500 million project. The controversial project has reportedly been postponed indefinitely.

My plan for environmental journalism in Vietnam is to involve VFEJ and other stakeholders in communication on climate change, the biggest story of the century.

I would like to see VFEJ become an independent and strongly supported forum to help Vietnamese environmental journalists better report on the environment and to connect them with overseas colleagues.

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