Concerned about development projects that could jeopardize the heritage listed tourist destination as UNESCO will send a team of specialists to evaluate potential threats to the conservation of Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay, as reported in the Reuters by the U.N body. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the bay’s and the nearby Cat Ba archipelago of limestone island’s inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List, which the organization is now considering “the most extensive and best known example of marine-invaded tower karst.”
The site’s UNESCO designation helped it grow into a popular tourist destination that brings in millions of tourists each year and increases Vietnam’s tourism related income. However in a statement credited to its World Heritage Center, the United Nation’s education, scientific and cultural agency stated that there long standing worries would be “Multiple development projects for new tourism and urban residential areas along the coastline in Ha Long City had been approved and implemented” without any proper research or concerns of their impact.
The review mission if it results in fines or removal from the heritage list may have a considerable impact on Vietnam’s tourism industry which accounted for 8% of GDP last year as per the government estimates. UNESCO said, “If threats are identified which jeopardize the integrity of the property and the reasons for which it was inscribed on the World Heritage List, the Committee may request corrective measures to strengthen the protection of the site.”
According to UNESCO, the mission will be deployed in the upcoming months and will involve specialists from both the International Union for Conservation of Nature and UNESCO.
According to Nuno Ribeiro, a top tourism lecturer at RMIT University Vietnam said that overbuilding “threatens the bay’s unique natural beauty, biodiversity, and ecological balance which are the very attributes that earned it the UNESCO listing. The threat of corrective measures should not be taken lightly.”
