At a recent meeting in India, the World Heritage Committee requested Quang Ninh province to invite the Response Monitoring Team of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the World Heritage Center to conduct a comprehensive inspection of the management and protection of the Ha Long Bay World Heritage Site.
The main contents include: Effective management and administration of the exceptional values of Ha Long Bay; expansion of tourism space and development of urban infrastructure on the shores of Ha Long Bay in Ha Long City. The delegation is expected to arrive in Ha Long in January 2025.
Currently, the Ha Long Bay Management Board is closely coordinating with relevant units in advising the Provincial People's Committee to welcome and prepare conditions in the areas where the delegation will go to the field and the content of explanations and arguments before the recommendations of the working group.
From the beginning of 2024 until now, Ha Long Bay has welcomed about 2.7 million visitors, nearly 100,000 vehicles leaving ports and wharves to take visitors.
Also from the beginning of 2024 to present, the Ha Long Bay Management Board and functional forces have coordinated to organize 264 patrols and monitoring; detected and coordinated to handle 187 violations, proposed administrative fines of nearly 2.4 billion VND; confiscated illegal fishing gear.
The main violations are the use of vehicles without registration certificates, technical safety and environmental protection certificates for inland waterway vehicles; vehicle operators without professional certificates for operating inland waterway vehicles as prescribed; following tourist boats to beg and sell goods on Ha Long Bay...
In particular, patrol, monitor and prevent vehicles carrying tourists to visit and travel to some caves and islands that are not on the tourist route or tourist attractions and have not been announced to welcome tourists according to regulations.
However, the coordination in managing and protecting the heritage still faces limitations, difficulties and obstacles. Among them, there are still recurring cases of clinging to tourist boats, begging, and street vendors in the heritage area; and organizing illegal tours to sightseeing spots that have not been announced by the competent authorities in the bay.
The reason is that Ha Long Bay is a large island area with thousands of large and small limestone islands, while the functional and management forces are thin, so patrolling and controlling are difficult. In addition, the directives and instructions related to the management and protection of the Ha Long Bay World Heritage have not fully covered all areas, only handling violations according to the management sector; not enough deterrence...
Currently, the Ha Long Bay Management Board continues to coordinate with relevant units and localities to focus resources on collecting and treating waste in the bay; speeding up the progress of dismantling and relocating illegal aquaculture facilities in Ha Long Bay; along with closely managing and supervising the process of dismantling and relocating...
