Ninh Binh (VNA) – The Peop𒁏le’s Committee of northern Ninh Binh province on September 20 held a conference to seek ways to promote the value of the Trang An Landscape Complex, which was recognised by the UNESCO as a World Culture and Natu☂ral Heritage in 2015.

Dinh Chung Phung, Vice Chairman of the committee, said that the complex plays a significant role in the tourism development strategy of Ninh Binh and the country, as it is the first mixed heritage of Vietnam and the Southeast Asia. It has motivated the transformation of the province’s economic structure towards a service-based economy with the engagement of various economic sectors, creating jobs and increase incomes for locals, he said. Phung added that over the past years, local government, businesses and people have joined hands in preserving the heritage, which contributed to the success of the conservation and promotion of the heritage’s values. Participants at the conference highlighted a number of important issues to conserve and raise the values of the complex, including the management of forest and environment within the heritage area, and the promotion of the heritage in line with the sustainable development of local tourism. According to the Steering Committee for the Preservation and Promotion of the Trang An Landscape Complex, the complex covers 12,252 hectares, spanning 20 communes and wards in five districts and cities. Comprising 45 recognised cultural and historical heritages, the complex owns outstanding values that are rare in the world. In 2015, Ninh Binh welcomed six million tourists, the majority of whom visited the Trang An Landscape Complex. In the future, the committee plans to encourage social investment as well as different resources in the building of technical infrastructure system in the heritage area. Until 2018, the committee will define and plant markers for core and buffer zones of the heritage. It will also work with the Vietnam Institute of Archeology, the UK’s Cambridge and Queens Universities to carry out archeology works on a number of places in the complex to discover the interaction process of the prehistoric people with the nature and their efforts to adapt to environmental changes 30,000 years ago. At the same time, local government also plans to restore and develop handicrafts and traditional music and festivals of locals to attract visitors, while popularising the complex through mass media.-VNA