Human Trusteeship Over Nature in Islamic Legal Thought and Vietnamese Environmental Law:

Insights from Environmental Commitments in New-Generation Free Trade Agreements

Nguyen Huu Khanh Linh

 

Abstract: This article uses human trusteeship over nature as a comparative normative lens for analysing environmental responsibility across three legal planes: Islamic legal thought, Vietnamese environmental law, and the environmental commitments embedded in new-generation free trade agreements (FTAs). What normative idea explains the legal limits placed upon human exploitation of nature across Islamic legal thought, Vietnamese environmental law, and new-generation free trade agreements? This article argues that human trusteeship over nature provides that common analytical thread. Despite their different sources, legal vocabularies, and enforcement structures, these three legal planes converge in rejecting unlimited human dominion over nature and in requiring ecological restraint, public welfare, and responsibility towards future generations. Methodologically, the article combines doctrinal analysis, comparative legal analysis, and systematic synthesis. It first reconstructs trusteeship in Islamic legal thought as a juristically meaningful normative framework rather than a merely ethical metaphor. It then shows that Vietnamese law reflects secularised analogues of that logic through constitutional environmental duties, the public-law status of natural resources, biodiversity conservation, rational resource use, and community participation, while also exposing important limits in normative coherence and implementation. Finally, it demonstrates that the European Union and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (EVFTA), the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and the United Kingdom–Viet Nam Free Trade Agreement (UKVFTA) contribute to the transnational legalisation of ecological responsibility through non-regression, effective enforcement, and sector-specific environmental commitments. The article concludes that trusteeship offers a useful bridge between moral-legal responsibility, domestic environmental obligations, and trade-linked international commitments.