Environmental law as developmental infrastructure: conditions for green trade compliance and firm upgrading in Vietnam

In Vietnam’s export-oriented economy, environmental law now operates at the intersection of domestic regulation, trade governance and corporate organization. This article develops developmental compliance capacity as a firm-level construct explaining how enterprises interpret green requirements, build routines and evidence, coordinate suppliers and, where organizational conditions permit, turn compliance into learning and upgrading. The concept is kept distinct from both the external demands placed on firms and the public or private institutions that may help them respond. A qualitative doctrinal and documentary analysis combines Vietnamese environmental and investment law with policy documents and supply-chain materials. Fisheries, coffee and textiles show how public enforcement, product traceability and buyer governance create different compliance tasks. Environmental law has an infrastructural role when common standards, reliable data and accessible support reduce the fixed costs of credible participation. Where those supports are fragmented or costly, the same rules become a selective gateway. For Vietnam, the central policy issue is therefore not legal ambition alone, but whether implementation arrangements allow smaller domestic firms to meet the credible environmental standards without being displaced from export markets.