Tourism Minister Francis Zammit Dimech yesterday opened the National Forum for Cultural Heritage at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, where he recalled that last year’s forum saw the launch of the Cultural Heritage Strategy after a two-year consultation and drafting process.

Referring to the National Cultural Heritage Strategy, the minister said that the National Forum has become a seminal event in Malta’s cultural heritage calendar, while the Forum’s importance was being further increased through its association to the National Cultural Heritage Strategy.

This last year has seen a marked increase in media coverage of cultural heritage issues, especially in relation to land use issues and construction of land development proposals.

“It is noteworthy that in all these cases the cultural heritage content of each of these cases has been given its due importance. The case for conservation has been upheld, in a manner and to an extent previously unseen in this country,” he said.

The issue of landscape conservation has become a new key word in media reporting on such matters. “Our commitment to the conservation of Malta’s vulnerable, yet valuable cultural landscapes, can be gauged from the initiative taken by the government to set up a Nature and Heritage Park in full collaboration with some of the more important NGOs of the country,” he said.