Ninh Binh is exploiting precious resources.

Besides the economic , social and environmental pillars, culture is considered the third pillar ensuring sustainable development, the spiritual foundation, and the resource of development. Ninh Binh has clearly seen, appreciated and exploited this resource to be useful in practice.

Clearly see valuable resources and orient "green" development

Bearing the unique characteristics of the community - culture was born and exists in each region, area, nation through the process of creation, long-term accumulation and persistent transmission, along with the adaptation, keeping up with the trend of the times while still ensuring the core values, culture is always especially loved and proud of the people who own it as well as having the attraction to learn and exchange with a large number of residents of other regions, areas and ethnic groups.

This is also the reason why culture is considered a rich and luxurious resource for economic development. This is no longer new in many countries such as Italy, Japan, Korea... In Vietnam, this issue has been clarified by researchers, oriented by policy makers, and localities have been implementing it with promising signals. In Ninh Binh, culture in general and cultural heritage in particular have made an important contribution to "positioning" the brand value of the locality. From a purely agricultural province at the time of re-establishment (1992), up to now, Ninh Binh has been making significant changes, becoming one of the important red dots on the tourism map of Vietnam and the world .

Ninh Binh 's geo-economic and geo-cultural position is relatively special, located at the southwestern end of the Red River Delta, with typical natural resources in the semi-mountainous transitional area between the mountains and the plains, the North and the Central regions, and was the first capital of Dai Co Viet more than 1,000 years ago. Ninh Binh has nearly 2,000 historical and cultural relics, of which Trang An heritage is the first and only heritage in Southeast Asia to be recognized by UNESCO as a "dual heritage" when meeting both cultural and natural criteria.

This is also a place that is considered an intact chronicle of geological, geomorphological and environmental landscape changes and human habitation traditions over more than 30,000 years of formation, change and development. Those geographical and cultural resources have been and are being inherited by Ninh Binh in the orientation of building and developing the millennium-old capital heritage city. The province has shifted its focus to allocating adequate budget investment for physical infrastructure and transportation, restoring many festivals, preserving many relics, fostering and developing cultural lifestyles, and developing tourism.

In the 2015-2020 period, Ninh Binh's cultural investment expenditure accounted for 3.37% of the province's total budget expenditure; in the 2021-2025 period, investment expenditure for cultural works and projects accounted for 20% of the province's total medium-term public investment plan, reaching a high level in the country.

Source: data of Ninh Binh Provincial People's Committee in 2022

In recent years, Ninh Binh has implemented synchronous solutions - from planning, policy development and formulation, propaganda to raise awareness and responsibility, to organizing the implementation of economic development from "brown" to "green", from "intensive" exploitation leading to "abuse" and causing natural resources to degrade to respect and invest heavily in preserving natural landscapes, preserving and promoting historical and cultural values.

The implementation of the public-private partnership model has also initially shown effectiveness and has been considered "a successful model combining economic development and sustainable tourism with the central role of the people while still being able to respect nature" - as assessed by Ms. Audrey Azoulay, Director General of UNESCO at the 50th Anniversary of the UNESCO Convention on World Cultural and Natural Heritage (Ninh Binh, September 2022).

Ninh Binh is exploiting precious resources. — Cultural features of the Muong ethnic group at the Tam Coc - Trang An Golden Festival in 2024. Photo: Truong Giang

Bright reality and concerns

The initial successes of Ninh Binh have contributed to realizing the goal of "Developing Vietnam's cultural industries into important service economic sectors, clearly developing in quality and quantity, actively contributing to economic growth and job creation through the production of more and more diverse and high-quality cultural products and services" as set out in the Strategy for the Development of Vietnam's Cultural Industries to 2020, with a vision to 2030. This has met the needs of cultural creation, enjoyment and consumption of the cultural subjects, the People, establishing brands of cultural and tourism products and services, contributing to promoting the image of the country, people of Ninh Binh and Vietnam as a whole.

To create sustainable development and resilience for Ninh Binh and similar provinces, especially in the Red River Delta region, in addition to macro-level policies, it is necessary to add a steering and coordination mechanism: Unifying the viewpoint of comprehensive and sustainable development, enhancing coordination and support between localities; Creating links in building and planning development strategies for each province and city, promoting their own strengths, creating common strength, ensuring synchronization, harmony, efficiency, no conflict, division, fragmentation, creating unity in the diversity of localities.

With a long-standing tradition, Ninh Binh can further promote its pride and confidence in preserving and maintaining cultural values and heritage values so that each individual, family and community is aware of preserving and promoting its important resources in the comprehensive development of the country. And we can hope for a future of development with many new sweet fruits not far away.

Nguyen Hai Minh

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