Press Releases

Vietnamese Environmental Reporter Wins Reuters IUCN Award

Internews Vietnamese environmental journalist, Hoang Quoc Dzung has won awards for his reporting.

(August 5, 2008) It has been a rewarding year for Hoang Quoc Dzung and his colleagues at the Vietnam Forum of Environmental Journalists (VFEJ). Dzung recently learned that he will receive his third environmental journalism award this year, the prestigious Reuters IUCN Environmental Media Award for the Asian region.

For Dzung, this award comes on the heels of winning Vietnam’s National Environmental Journalism Award early this year, and then an Internews Media Leadership Award in June. Much of this recognition comes as a result of Dzung courageously leading a team of Vietnamese investigative journalists in uncovering a wildlife smuggling ring in Indochina. But as executive vice-president of VFEJ, Dzung has also been very active in carrying out a wide range of training and capacity-building activities for his fellow environmental reporters in Vietnam.

“Much of the credit should go to EJN and Internews. It was the feature stories on the illicit trans-border wildlife trading ring, supported and translated by EJN/Internews, that helped me to win the Asian award from IUCN/Reuters,” says Dzung.

EJN is proud to have trained and worked with Dzung and VFEJ on these and other activities. He stands as an example of what can be achieved when local journalists are empowered to actively cover environmental issues.

Dzung will receive his award at the 4th Congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to be held in early October in Barcelona, Spain, where he will also be eligible to win the Reuters IUCN global prize for environmental journalism. EJN will also be bringing half a dozen journalism fellows from around the developing world to the Congress to report on the crucial issues to be discussed there.