Livelihood Transformation and Sustainable Development of Local Communities at the Huong Son Historic and Scenic Complex, Hanoi, Vietnam

The Huong Son Historic and Scenic Complex, widely known as Chua Huong (Perfume Pagoda), is both a major pilgrimage-tourism destination and the living space of a resident community whose livelihoods have long depended on agriculture, forest-related activities, local products and small-scale household production. Rapid tourism growth has restructured this livelihood system, most visibly through the expansion of boat-rowing and related visitor services along the Yen Stream. This study examines whether that transition can be regarded as sustainable when assessed beyond income growth alone. It applies the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework of Chambers and Conway (1992), Scoones (1998) and DFID (1999), complemented by perspectives on heritage tourism, community participation and cultural capital. The study uses a qualitative design combining document analysis, comparative analysis and non-participant field observation. Findings indicate that tourism has strengthened financial, physical and selected forms of human capital by generating service income, infrastructure and new skills. At the same time, it has increased exposure to seasonal shocks, encouraged dependence on a narrow set of tourism activities, placed indirect pressure on the Yen Stream and limestone-karst landscape, and created risks of erosion of place-specific agricultural and ecological knowledge. The transition is therefore better understood as a reconfiguration of livelihood capitals involving gains, losses and trade-offs rather than as a linear shift from an inferior livelihood system to a superior one. The study proposes a complementary livelihood strategy that combines tourism with local agriculture and specialty products, safeguards indigenous knowledge, manages environmental carrying capacity, strengthens substantive community participation and introduces monitoring indicators that connect livelihood outcomes with heritage conservation. The Huong Son case illustrates how sustainable-livelihood analysis can be adapted to inhabited heritage landscapes where natural, cultural and economic resources are closely intertwined.