Brief: Hội An’s heritage and its visitor economy depend on the wide ecological and social living systems. Yet climate risk, tourism-driven material pressures and changing local livelihoods are weakening the systems behind the destination. Regeneration offers a way to connect heritage, tourism, ecology and community wellbeing—by building the local capacity to adapt, recover and renew over time, and by testing progress through evidence rather than claims.
Hội An is more than the Ancient Town
Hội An is often portrayed through lanterns, tiled roofs, yellow facades and a slower rhythm of life. But this is only the destination’s most visible layer.
Its deeper foundations lie in the Thu Bồn River and the wider river–coastal landscape: floodplains and riverbanks, farms and craft villages, native vegetation and biodiversity, and communities whose knowledge of land, water and the seasons continues to shape everyday life.
This wider landscape is not separate from heritage conservation. UNESCO describes Hội An within its original river and seacoast setting—including rivers, dunes, seashore and islands—and recognises it as a living heritage that continues to be inhabited and practised. UNESCO also calls for tourism to remain within the limits of the heritage site, climate risks to be integrated into long-term management and local living conditions to improve as the destination develops.
The implication is clear: preserving Hội An’s buildings is not enough if the ecological and social systems that sustain them weaken. That would protect the most visible face of heritage while losing the conditions that keep it alive.
Tourism growth makes this relationship more urgent. According to the Viet Nam National Authority of Tourism, visitor numbers to Hội An rose from 202,000 in 1999 to 4.43 million in 2024. In the same year, the then Quảng Nam Province received more than eight million visitors and recorded an estimated VND 21.6 trillion in tourism revenue (Viet Nam National Authority of Tourism 2025b).
This growth creates livelihoods, markets and public revenue. But it also increases demand for water, food, transport, materials and land, while adding pressure to waste systems, heritage infrastructure and the ecological areas that quietly support the visitor economy. The issue is not tourism growth alone. It is whether the systems behind that growth are becoming stronger—or more depleted.
Regeneration is NOT a ‘greener’ version of tourism as usual
Sustainable-tourism standards remain an essential foundation. Destinations and businesses must reduce resource use and pollution, protect cultural and natural heritage, improve labour practices and manage visitor impacts responsibly.
Regeneration adds a further test. It asks not only how tourism can do less harm, but how it can help strengthen the capacity of a place and its people to adapt, renew and flourish over time.
A conceptual framework by Bellato, Frantzeskaki and Nygaard (2023) describes regenerative tourism as a place-based approach that builds the capacity of interconnected human and ecological systems, rather than treating tourism as separate from them. Research with destination planners in Aotearoa New Zealand similarly links regeneration with improving place, strengthening community wellbeing and deepening relationships between people and the places they inhabit (Pung, Houge Mackenzie and Lovelock 2024). A recent review of the field identifies four recurring foundations: community-centred practice, a living-systems perspective, meaningful collaboration among stakeholders and an orientation towards net-positive effects (Iddawala and Lee 2025).
This shifts the central question from:
How can we welcome more visitors while causing less harm?
to:
Is tourism helping this place become more capable of caring for what makes life—and tourism—possible?
Revenue remains important, but it is not the only measure of strength. A stronger place may also mean healthier soil, functioning water and nutrient cycles, cleaner material flows, greater biodiversity, viable local livelihoods, knowledge that is practised and passed on, and communities with a meaningful role in shaping the ecological and cultural foundations for tourism.
Why this matters for Hội An now
Climate risk is part of the tourism system
Flooding is not simply an occasional disruption to Hội An’s tourism economy; it is a defining condition of the place. A spatial flood-risk study of the World Heritage Site found that more than 75 per cent of recorded past floods occurred in areas its model classified as high or very high risk (Nguyen et al. 2024).
Extreme rainfall in late October 2025 made this vulnerability visible again. Floodwaters inundated Hội An, visitors were moved from exposed hotels, transport was disrupted and businesses faced cancellations and extensive damage (Associated Press 2025; Reuters 2025).
Tourism cannot prevent flooding on its own. But tourism planning cannot treat rivers, floodplains, farms, vegetation and community preparedness as scenery—or as someone else’s responsibility. They are connected parts of the same system, and risks in one part affect the whole destination.
Waste begins with design, not disposal
High-volume tourism also intensifies material flows. UNDP’s 2026 baseline assessment of plastic pollution in Viet Nam’s tourism sector found that tourists in its two study destinations generated between 1.7 and three times more plastic waste than residents. Overnight visitors in coastal Đà Nẵng generated an average of 0.27 kg per day, compared with 0.12 kg in Ninh Bình. The estimated annual cost of inaction in Đà Nẵng was VND 1,743.7 billion (UNDP Viet Nam 2026).
Although these are not measurements for Hội An only, this is the relevant warning for a nearby heritage and coastal destination with a dense visitor economy. Waste cannot be treated simply as something to collect after consumption. Procurement, packaging, single-use service models, source separation, reuse- refill, organics recovery and the livelihoods of waste workers are all part of tourism design.
Policy ambition needs functioning local systems
Hội An has pursued an ecological development direction for more than a decade. In 2011, UNIDO reported that eco-town development was part of the city’s strategy to 2030, linking cleaner production with tourism, crafts, business development, employment and environmental services. More recently, plastic-free and pedestrian-friendly street pilotshave been framed within an eco-city pathway based on cultural and sustainable tourism, with a longer-term vision of a green and smart city by 2050 (Việt Nam News 2024).
The challenge is not a lack of ambition or good initiatives. It is the missing middle between policy targets and daily practice: the operators, incentives, skills, standards, infrastructure, finance, data and partnerships that allow change to continue after a pilot ends.
Regeneration offers a way to connect these pieces. It asks not only which activities should be launched, but what local capacity must exist for them to function, improve and endure.
What regeneration looks like in practice
For Green Youth Collective, regeneration is neither a label nor a collection of green activities. It is the long-term work of reconnecting systems that have become fragmented.
Organic resources from markets, restaurants and hotels should not be sent to landfill when safe, locally appropriate systems can return them to composting, biological processing, soil and agro-ecosystem restoration. Single-use products should not simply be replaced with different disposable products where avoidance, redesign, reuse or refill are possible. Floodplain restoration should not be treated as some tree-planting events when resilience depends on water, soil, vegetation, biodiversity, farming practices and long-term community stewardship working together.
Visitor experiences should not be designed only to consume a landscape or display community life. Tourism can create demand for local products and services that are made with regenerative mindset and skills, financially support ongoing stewardship, strengthen paid local roles and help visitors understand how heritage, food, waste, water, climate, livelihoods and biodiversity are connected.
But this contribution is credible only when the local system comes first. Visitor participation should support work rooted in local priorities, with appropriate safeguards, skilled supervision, fair distribution of value and evidence of what changes over time.
This is why our practice is organised through five connected Working Models:
- Circular Tourism & Zero Waste redesigns material flows and responsibility.
- Closed-loop Farming & Agroecology reconnects biological resources with soil, food and resilient production.
- Floodplain Agro-ecosystem Restoration works at the scale of ecological processes and landscape-community relationships.
- Community Schools for Regeneration builds the knowledge, agency and practical capability needed to operate and improve these systems.
- Regenerative Tourism connects learning, experiences, finance and long-term relationships back to the place.
Together, these models test a simple but demanding proposition: Hội An cannot become regenerative through scattered green activities. It needs functioning local systems that make better choices possible every day.
For a heritage destination facing climate extremes, waste pollution pressures, biodiversity loss, fading traditional livelihoods and a growing separation between its visitor economy and the wider landscape, avoiding harm is not enough as a long-term ambition.
Green Youth Collective & Community-led regenerative systems treat regeneration as a direction for design and a discipline for learning.