Hue City was voted as an environmentally sustainable city in ASEAN at the 12th Meeting of the ASEAN Working Group on Environmentally Sustainable Cities (AWGESC) that was held in Thailand in June 2014. Accordingly, each ASEAN member country nominated one city that meets the criteria of the AWGESC. Hue City along with nine other cities in ASEAN were selected, meeting full criteria of the award. Since then, Hue City has maintained its environmental sustainability in accordance with the criteria of ASEAN.
Nguyen Van Cao, Chairman of People’s Committee of Thua Thien-Hue, said that since the relics of Hue were recognised by UNESCO as a world cultural heritage, Thua Thien-Hue has made many efforts in the preservation and promotion of the heritage values and sustainable development to attract visitors. The award will encourage the city to improve its environment and tourism to attract tourists to the City.
It can be seen that Hue is a natural green destination with attractive landscapes such as Bach Ma National Park, Tam Giang lagoons, Phong Dien Nature Reserve with hidden primitive natural beauty. Lang Co Bay is recognised as one of the beautiful bays in the world and the Huong River is considered the cleanest river of Vietnam flowing through the city.
Hue tourism has been developed towards green growth, consistent with the trend of many countries around the world. This means the natural landscape is as important as the architectural and cultural heritages owned by the city.
Many tourists coming to Hue commented that Hue is a green city of trees. Specifically, the area is covered by green parks; the total areas of the streets with trees are more than 750ha over 7,100ha of the public areas. The area of the green land in Hue including parks, streets, and lawns is 18.5 m2 per person. This figure does not include trees in residential gardens, nursery soil, trees at working places and trees in the landscapes.
Interestingly, Hue has currently about 750 houses with coverage of trees which has values in terms of culture and history, so the gardens have created a green urban area with trees.
Trees in Hue are diversified; there are at least 170 species belonging to 45 different plant families to meet basic colours and natural designs. In Hue, there are many streets that people simply remember by the names of the trees along them, instead of the actual street name. Doan Thi Diem street is named “the Delonix” street and Huynh Thuc Khang street is known as “Tamarind” street.
Currently, Hue City is implementing projects to improve water system, the total investment of the project is JPY24 billion, equivalent to about US$3,170 billion, which is lent by the Japanese government through Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The project helps to build up 250 kilometres of drains; 30 kilometres of wastewater collection drains, 90 gates, 9 pumping stations, and a wastewater treatment plant with a capacity of 20,000m3 per day which will be constructed by 400,000 m3, collected from the bottom of the rivers and lakes. This project is also developing the urban infrastructure with the largest scale that has been built in Hue City.
In the first phase, the project focuses on building the sewage system to collect mixed types of water from rainwater and wastewater and 8 pump stations. Waste water drainage from the mixture is separated. Dirty water that goes through the sewer system to wastewater treatment plant with a capacity of 20,000 m3 per day on the area of 9.5 hectares will be treated by the sludge technology.
Thus, once the wastewater treatment plants are operated, there will be about 70 percent of the processed domestic wastewater, contributing to easing environmental pollution. In addition, the project will build up an embankment of approximately 5 kilometres of the An Cuu River, the Nhu Y Bac River, the Phat Lac River and the Moc Han River to prevent erosion. There are about 400,000 people living in the city of Hue who will benefit from the tremendous improvements in the drainage system and wastewater treatment projects.
Chairman Nguyen Van Cao said that Hue City is maintaining areas with clean air, clean soil, and clean water, as ASEAN’s criteria environmental sustainability. This is also a typical city of the country that is developing a sustainable environment for the green growth to prevent climate change.
Hien Nga
Đăng ký: VietNam News