On November 16 and 17, “The International Tourism Symposium” was held in Copan Ruinas, Honduras, co-hosted by Kanazawa University and JICA, and approximately 40 participants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador joined the event. This symposium was held as part of the JICA’s issue-specific training course, “Conservation and Utilization of Maya Archaeological Sites as Regional Resources.” The aim of the symposium was to build a network of mutual cooperation between the three countries mentioned above, sharing information on the current state and problems of conservation and use of cultural tourist resources of the Mayan civilization.

In the symposium, Prof. Seiichi Nakamura of the Center for Cultural Resource Studies and graduate students of the Graduate School of Human and Socio-Environmental Studies gave presentations about the training course and the project at Tikal ruins they’d been engaged in since 2013. Since the matters of the Mayan ruins draw attention, the symposium was reported in local TV and newspapers.