International Standards and Regulatory Gaps in Vietnam’s Green Credit Framework for Natural Resource Restoration

Natural-resource restoration requires substantial private investment, yet restoration projects often struggle to obtain commercial credit because they generate uncertain revenues, involve long ecological recovery periods, and provide limited conventional collateral. This study examines whether Vietnam’s post-2025 green credit framework provides an integrated and accountable structure for restoration-oriented lending. This study evaluates Vietnam’s green credit framework against selected international environmental, financial, and supervisory standards. It identifies legal and institutional gaps affecting restoration eligibility, ecological integrity, bank due diligence, monitoring, disclosure, and enforcement. The research adopts a qualitative, embedded legal case-study design based on Yin’s case-study methodology. Vietnamese legislation, banking regulations, policy instruments, international standards, and relevant academic literature were examined through functional comparative legal analysis. Braun and Clarke’s reflexive thematic analysis was applied to identify recurring regulatory themes and classify normative, institutional, verification, accountability, and bankability gaps. Its contribution is to assess green credit as an integrated regulatory chain rather than as separate legal instruments. Vietnam has developed significant regulatory foundations through environmental legislation, environmental-risk management rules, banking governance requirements, and a national green taxonomy. Nevertheless, these components remain only partially integrated. Major gaps concern restoration definitions, taxonomy alignment, ecological additionality, independent assessment, contractual safeguards, post-disbursement verification, disclosure, reclassification, and supervisory consequences. Vietnam should develop an integrated restoration-oriented green credit framework linking project classification, ecological performance, bank accountability, lifecycle monitoring, and proportionate financial support.