Step 3: The Advisory Bodies
1.2 Conservation activities and World Heritage Sites
Conservation can be defined as careful planning and management of limited and selected re- sources. It is a conscious process to keep control and restrict changes to the minimum – to ensure the survival of cultural and natural heritage over a long time (Fethi, 1993, cited in Orbasli, 2000). Thus, conservation is a vital component of heritage management (Miller, 1989). The signifi- cance of conservation of cultural and natural her- itage is emphasized by international organizations (Pickard, 2001) such as UNESCO, the Interna- tional Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Proper- ty (ICCROM) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Heritage conser- vation is also encouraged by numerous govern- mental agencies or charities such as English Heritage and the National Trust (UK), the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (China) and the Department for Conservation (New Zealand).
The concept of sustainability is key for conserva- tion of cultural and natural heritage and the triple bottom line (TBL) of sustainability (economic, so- ciocultural and environmental) needs to be con- sidered in conservation policies and activities.
With regard to cultural heritage, Hall and Page (1999) understand heritage conservation as a reaction to the rate of physical and social change within a community and also consider that, generally, people have little call for nostal- gia when they feel that they are in control of their own destiny. Lowenthal (1975, 1985) sug- gests that the strength of heritage conservation organizations in developed countries is perhaps a reflection of the desire to maintain a sense of continuity with the past. In relation to tourism, heritage conservation can lead to a significant economic return to destinations thanks to the desire of many visitors who want to see or expe- rience what they perceive as authenticity (Hall and McArthur, 1996). According to Orbasli (2000), urban conservation has physical, spa- tial and social dimensions. The physical dimen- sion is closely related with building conservation, especially the appearance of buildings, and it contains projects involving historic buildings, groups of buildings and street furniture. The
spatial dimension is the urban planner’s view of the city as a whole, including the relationship between spaces and their use, circulation and traffic, and the internal and external space rela- tionship. The social dimension concerns the user, the local community and the urban popu- lation. Of these three dimensions, the social di- mension is the most difficult to define, but is arguably the most important in terms of urban conservation (Orbasli, 2000). To implement an urban conservation programme, a place must present a meaning to its users and occupants and financial resources need to be secured. Con- cerning cultural WHSs, conserving both tangi- ble and intangible heritage associated with human beings is essential. It contains, for exam- ple, masterpieces of human creative genius; ar- chitecture; town planning; cultural traditions;
landscapes; traditional human settlements; and cultural heritage related to events, ideas, beliefs and artistic and literary works of outstanding universal importance (WHC, 2017c).
Regarding natural heritage, the value of na- ture in its own right, rather than its meaning and usefulness for human beings, must be reflected in conservation policies and activities. This means that ‘strong sustainability’ rather than ‘weak sus- tainability’ (OECD 2005a, 2005b) must be adopt- ed in conservation of natural heritage. There are three main approaches to human beings, human technologies and environment surrounding hu- man beings; namely ecocentric (nature-centred), technocentric (technology- centred) and anthro- pocentric (human-centred) (Byrch et al., 2007).
To realize conservation of natural heritage in a sustainable manner, an ecocentric approach should be employed as a basis of conservation policies and activities and the approach should be supported by a technocentric approach. With regard to natural WHSs, conserving a variety of natural resources on the earth is vital, and such resources include places with natural beauty;
exceptional examples representing the major stages of earth’s history or significant ongoing ecological and biological processes; and natural habitats significant for biological diversity (WHC, 2017c).
The reporting and monitoring system es- tablished by the World Heritage Centre plays an essential role in conservation activities for WHSs (WHC, 2017d). Site managers for WHSs and
local authorities must continuously work towards managing, monitoring and preserving their WHSs, following the reporting and monitoring system (WHC, 2017d). There are two types of sub- system for reporting and monitoring purpos- es under the reporting and monitoring system:
the State of Conservation Information System (SOC) and Periodic Reporting (WHC, 2017d). SOC is explained by the WHC (2017d) as follows:
•
SOC requires that States Parties must pre- pare reports about the state of conservation and various protection measures adopted at their WHSs.•
These reports allow the WH Committee to assess the conditions at the WHSs and, eventually, to decide whether or not adopt- ing specific measures is necessary to resolve recurrent problems.•
Such measures include the inscription of a WHS on the List of WH in Danger (LWHD).The WHC (2017e) emphasizes the mean- ing of SOC, stating that,‘The significant number of reports prepared by the UNESCO Secretariat and the Advisory Bodies to the World Heritage Committee represents an exceptional documen- tation on numerous conservation issues. It is one of the most comprehensive monitoring sys- tems of any international conventions.’ In addi- tion to SOC reports, every six years States Parties are requested to submit to the WH Committee a
‘Periodic Report’ about the application of the WH Convention, including the state of conser- vation of their WHSs (WHC, 2017f). Updated information about the WHSs should also be con- tained in the Periodic Report to record possible changes in the state of conservation of the WHSs (WHC, 2017d).
Within the framework of the revision of the questionnaire of the periodic reporting exercise (Section II) in 2008, the WH Committee adopted a standard list of factors that can affect the OUV of WHSs (WHC, 2017g). The list was created following a two-year consultation process with experts in natural and cultural heritage and con- sists of a series of 14 primary factors, including a number of secondary factors (WHC, 2017g).
These 14 primary factors are:
1. Buildings and development;
2. Transportation infrastructure;
3. Utilities or service infrastructure;
4. Pollution;
5. Biological resource use/modification;
6. Physical resource extraction;
7. Local conditions affecting physical fabric;
8. Social/cultural uses of heritage;
9. Other human activities;
10. Climate change and severe weather events;
11. Sudden ecological or geological events;
12. Invasive/alien spices or hyper-abundant species;
13. Management and institutional factors; and 14. Other factor(s).
(WHC, 2017g) Full information about primary and secondary factors can be found at: http://whc.unesco.org/
en/factors/
Another system adopted for the conserva- tion of WHSs is ‘Reactive Monitoring’, which aspires to ensure that all possible measures are taken to prevent the deletion of any property from the World Heritage List (WHL) (WHC, 2017h). Reactive Monitoring is the reporting by the WHC, other sectors of UNESCO and the advi- sory bodies to the WH Committee on the state of conservation of specific WHSs that are under threat (WHC, 2017b, 2017h). Hence, the Reac- tive Monitoring system is integral to the proce- dures for the inclusion of properties in the LWHD and for the removal of properties from the WHL.
2 Postmodernism, Globalization and WHSs
‘Postmodernism’ and ‘globalization’ are essen- tial phenomena when heritage management and conservation activities are examined in the current context due to their impacts on these important themes for WHSs. Postmodernism is,
‘A late 20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism, which represents a departure from modernism and is characterized by the self-conscious use of earlier styles and conventions, a mixing of different artistic styles and media, and a general distrust of theories’
(English Oxford Living Dictionaries, 2017). It should also be noted that the idea of postmod- ernism (and modernism) originates in the west
and has been developed in western society based on the western value system. The traits of postmodernism can also be demonstrated via its comparison with modernism. The differ- ence between the former and the latter can also be understood as the contrast between
‘ relativeness’ and ‘absoluteness’, ‘complexity’
and ‘simplicity’, ‘chaos’ and ‘order (control)’, or
‘world’ and ‘west’.
Sociologists such as Lash (1990) and Urry (2002) regard ‘de-differentiation’ as a key term for postmodernism and social anthropologists such as Selwyn (1996) assert that the dissolu- tion of boundaries is the primal characteristic of postmodernism. Selwyn (1996) and Urry (2002) argue that these dissolved boundaries are not only between high and low cultures but also between different cultural forms, including tourism, art and architecture. In his study on the heritage industry in the UK, Hewison (1987, p. 132), a cultural historian, gives a rather neg- ative view of postmodernism and describes it as
‘modernism with the optimism taken out’. He advocates that there is a positive relationship between nostalgia for the British industrial past and the growth of postmodernism. As a social scientist with expertise in urban studies and glo- balization, Hall (2001) argues that the incorpo- ration of past landscape into the present urban scene suits postmodern changes in architecture and urban design in an international context. In other words, this incorporation can satisfy the postmodern yearning for eclecticism, the vernac- ular, regional distinctiveness and decoration through historical quotation (Hall, 2001). This means that heritage has proved a valuable com- modity of great appeal to consumers of urban space in the 1980s and 1990s, either through a famous past or prestigious historical architecture (Hall, 2001). This phenomenon can also be con- firmed in the 21st century, for example in China (e.g. Su, 2015), Japan (e.g. McMorran, 2008), Lebanon (Al-hagla, 2010), the USA (e.g. Inwood, 2010) and Norway (Nyseth and Sognnæs, 2013).
The views of postmodernism demonstrated above are associated mainly with cultural herit- age. Concerning relationships between post- modernism and nature or natural heritage, the attitudes of conservationists towards postmod- ernism would be useful to consider in relation to natural heritage. Conservationists such as
Attwell and Cotterill (2000) criticize postmod- ernism in relation to African conservation sci- ence and argue that the postmodernist approach has damaged the efforts to avoid the crises that face African biota and ecosystems and the relevant socio-economies. As confirmed by the above argument, postmodernism is a phenome- non that is examined in multiple disciplines, and all of these subjects are more or less associated with certain aspects of the management and conservation of WHSs. Hence, knowledge on these subjects would be beneficial for the com- prehensive understanding of WHSs’ manage- ment and conservation, especially those for cultural WHSs.
As discussed in Section 6 in Chapter 1, her- itage is originally a very personal thing (per- sonal heritage) but can be something whose
‘value’ can be shared at a local, regional or na- tional level (collective heritage) through the development of its bond with particular local communities, people in a certain region or citi- zens of a specific country. On the other hand, Graham et al. (2000) note that heritage is re- garded as a local phenomenon; however, it cannot be isolated from other places’ heritage, because the more local communities have in- sisted on their independence from national schemes the more directly these communities have been influenced by international impacts.
This signifies that, ironically, a higher degree of independence of local communities from the control of national governments would lead to a higher level of exposure of local communities to the phenomena at a global level such as globalization, westernization, standardization, McDonaldization and internationalization. It is questionable that local communities could still conserve their heritage as it has been in their way without having a kind of ‘protection’ of- fered by their nation that can work as a ‘buffer’
against international impacts.
Ashworth and Tunbridge (2000) argue that the globalization of economy and society has affected both the practice of urban conser- vation and international tourism. According to Burns, globalization is explained as follows:
‘A complex idea that encompasses both politi- cal economy and cultural ideologies’ (1999, p. 132), and ‘globalisation means national borders become increasingly irrelevant, but at
the same time a paradox arises demonstrated by simultaneous rise in nationalism and neo- fascism’ (1999, p. 133). Due to its nature, consequently, globalization brings the same techniques, development programmes, mate- rials and styles that are replicated all over the world and reduce local distinctiveness (Ash- worth and Tunbridge, 2000). Durie (2010) also claims that globalization is a real threat to local distinctiveness. Traditions unique to local communities and heritage valuable to them can be negatively affected by globaliza- tion. For instance, many indigenous commu- nities in countries in the Asia-Pacific region have struggled to revitalize their own lan- guage, culture and native leadership (Durie, 2010). On the other hand, Tomlinson (1999) claims that globalization does not necessari- ly lead to such homogenization or creation of ‘global’ culture, and the essence of glo- balization lies in the highly developed network of interconnections and interdependencies that causes an international ‘flow’ of almost everything across the borders. Concerning heritage conservation, however, Ashworth and Tunbridge (2000) state that conservation is in danger of standardizing cities whose con- served areas increasingly all look alike and serve similar functions and purposes. Ash- worth and Tunbridge (2000) also assert that this danger of standardization should be ac- cepted, but it is possible to avoid such a danger.
If they are right, what should be done for con- servation of WHSs? As discussed in Chapter 1, WHSs must possess OUV. Needless to say, how- ever, each WHS is unique in terms of its ‘value’, which includes history, characteristics, au- thenticity, integrity, geographical location and relationships with local communities. WHSs must follow the Operational Guidelines for her- itage management, and the Reporting and Monitoring scheme in their conservation ac- tivities. These two principles apply to all WHSs in the world without exception. Simultane- ously, however, ‘local’ know-how, approaches and techniques unique to each WHS should still be respected and applied to the manage- ment and conservation of WHSs as much as possible within the framework of the Opera- tional Guidelines and the Reporting and Moni- toring system.
3 Reality of Heritage Management and Conservation Activities at WHSs