Biodiversity and wildlife protection laws are integral to the pursuit of sustainable development, which the member states of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) have had on their regional co-operation agenda for decades. This article provides an overview of the key legal and policy developments in ASEAN on this front, examining the central role of the 'soft law' approaches embraced by member states towards protecting and managing their mega-diverse genetic resources. The developments will be analysed through the lenses of the international law agreements which all ASEAN member states are party to: the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). While it may be sensible to adopt an integrated region-wide approach towards tackling the illicit activities (poaching, smuggling, biopiracy, etc) which threaten the region's biodiversity, the political landscape of ASEAN makes it unlikely for such a supra-national legal framework to emerge anytime soon. Harmonizing the national laws of the ASEAN member states will also be a challenge because of the vast differences between their respective socio-economic circumstances. To illustrate how the domestic concerns and priorities of each ASEAN member state shape the contours of their respective CBD- and CITES-implementing legislation, this article analyses the biodiversity and wildlife protection laws of Singapore – an extreme example within the ASEAN region because it is a land-scarce, densely populated, highly urbanized and economically advanced island state, quite unlike its enormous, populous and resource-rich neighbours. Despite Singapore's unique circumstances, the analysis reveals that there are elements of its legal and policy framework that are potentially transplantable to other legal systems within the region, though this will necessitate a more comprehensive comparative analysis of the relevant laws of the other ASEAN member states, which is beyond the scope of this article.

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东南亚和新加坡的生物多样性保护法：实现联合国可持续发展目标的区域方法？

生物多样性和野生动植物保护法是实现可持续发展不可或缺的一部分，东南亚国家联盟（ASEAN）成员国几十年来一直将其列入其区域合作议程。本文概述了东盟在这方面的主要法律和政策发展，考察了成员国在保护和管理其巨大多样的遗传资源中所采用的“软法”方法的核心作用。将通过所有东盟成员国加入的国际法协定的视角来分析事态发展：《生物多样性公约》（CBD）和《濒危物种国际贸易公约》（CITES）。尽管采取区域性综合方针来应对威胁该区域生物多样性的非法活动（偷猎，走私，生物盗版等）可能是明智的，但东盟的政治格局使得这种超国家法律框架不太可能很快就会出现。由于东盟成员国各自的社会经济状况之间存在巨大差异，因此协调统一东盟成员国的国内法律也将是一项挑战。为了说明每个东盟成员国的国内关注点和优先事项如何塑造其各自的《生物多样性公约》和《濒危野生动植物种国际贸易公约》实施立法的轮廓，本文分析了新加坡的生物多样性和野生动植物保护法，这是东盟地区的一个极端例子。土地稀少，人口稠密，高度城市化和经济发达的岛国，与其庞大，人口众多且资源丰富的邻国大不相同。尽管新加坡的情况特殊，但分析表明，其法律和政策框架中的某些内容可能会移植到该地区的其他法律体系中，尽管这将需要对其他东盟成员国的相关法律进行更全面的比较分析，这超出了本文的范围。