Dien Bien Phu: development and conservation in a Vietnamese cultural landscape

It has been possible to nominate places for their cultural landscape values to the World Heritage List since December 1992. The Operational Guidelines (2005) define cultural landscapes as cultural properties that ‘represent the “combined works of nature and man” designated in Article 1 of the Convention’. They are illustrative of the evolution of human society and settlement over time, under the influence of the physical constraints and/or opportunities presented by their natural environment and of successive social, economic and cultural forces, both internal and external’ (Para 47). Refining this further, the World Heritage system recognises three categories of cultural landscapes:

1. Clearly defined landscapes designed and intentionally created by man;

2. Organically evolved landscapes of two subtypes:
·  Relict or fossil landscapes in which an evolutionary process has come to an end but where its distinguishing features are still visible;
·  Continuing landscapes which retain an active social role in contemporary society associated with a traditional way of life and in which the evolutionary process is still in progress and where it exhibits significant material evidence of its evolution over time;

3. Associative cultural landscapes where the outstanding universal value relates to the powerful religious, artistic, or cultural associations of the natural elements rather than the evidence of material culture.