Vietnam rebuts rumor of Ha Long Bay being removed from UNESCO World Heritage List

The rumor on social media that UNESCO considers removing Ha Long Bay in northern Vietnam’s Quang Ninh Province from the UNESCO World Natural Heritage List is untrue, an official representing the Department of Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism has said.

The official made the rejection recently while talking to VTC News.

Similarly, an expert group representative on behalf of Vietnam at the World Heritage Committee also refuted the rumor in an interview with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Monday.

The expert group representative clarified that Vietnam was inviting a UNESCO expert team to assess the implementation of eight new UNESCO recommendations and discuss conservation risks facing Ha Long Bay.

According to the Department of Cultural Heritage, the team will arrive in Vietnam in January. 

Regarding this issue, Reuters recently reported that UNESCO will deploy a team of experts to assess possible risks of the conservation of Ha Long Bay in Vietnam due to their concerns about development projects that may threaten the heritage-listed tourist attraction.

“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,” Reuters cited UNESCO.

However, Facebook pages improperly cited this information and changing the narrative, saying that the UN agency could consider removing Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay from the UNESCO World Heritage List.

According to the aforementioned representative, more than 130 reports, including the one on the conservation of Ha Long Bay and Thang Long Imperial Citadel of Vietnam, were submitted to the 46th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in New Delhi, India in July for consideration.

After considering the report, UNESCO made eight recommendations on how to align with conserving the Ha Long Bay-Cat Ba Archipelago World Natural Heritage Site.

Ha Long Bay has made the UNESCO World Natural Heritage site list three times, in 1994, 2000, and 2023, when the site was expanded to include the archipelago.

In these recommendations, UNESCO is requesting strict control over the operation of development projects in the bay and archipelago area and full assessments of the impacts on the heritage in accordance with their instructions.

UNESCO highly values the efforts of Quang Ninh Province in addressing the waste and environmental pollution issues to maintain the quality of air and water, but it requires the local administration to continue keeping a close watch on possible water resource pollution.

The agency also asked Vietnam to submit a detailed zoning map of the Ha Long Bay-Cat Ba Archipelago area to the World Heritage Center.

In addition, it requires Vietnam to invite a UNESCO expert team for an assessment of heritage conservation, especially including the efficiency of heritage administration and management.

Both the expert group representative and the Department of Cultural Heritage emphasized that removing a world heritage site from the list involves strict procedures and is only considered as a last resort when all efforts to mitigate conservation threats have failed.

As of now, none of Vietnam's heritage sites are among the 56 on UNESCO's List of World Heritage in Danger.

2024 marks the 30th anniversary of Ha Long Bay's inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List, which now features a total of 1,223 properties worldwide -- comprising 952 cultural, 231 natural, and 40 mixed sites.

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