Press
Release No.2002-72
NEW TECHNOLOGIES
HELPING
TO SAVE WORLD HERITAGE
Paris, October 8 - As UNESCO prepares
to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention,
adopted on November 16, 1972, preservationists campaigning to
save sites, landscapes and monuments of "exceptional universal
value" still face serious threats, even though most of the
730 world heritage sites* are well managed.
So far, 175 States have ratified
the Convention - the most widely recognized legal instrument for
protecting the planet's natural and cultural heritage - and 125
are represented on the World Heritage List. But, as the terrible
floods that recently ravaged several European countries have shown,
natural disasters do not spare world heritage. Likewise, threats
stemming from human activities, such as wars, the deliberate destruction
of cultural symbols, pillage, pollution, poaching and poorly managed
tourism, are undermining the efforts of UNESCO and its partners
committed to the preservation of sites.
What can be done to more effectively
protect the 33 sites on the List of World Heritage in Danger and
the hundred or so others that are considered to be in an alarming
situation? "We must shift from a reactive attitude to a preventive
approach," says UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura.
"The identification, preservation and enhancement of sites
reflecting our world's natural and cultural diversity can be assured
only if governments, local officials, business and, especially,
local populations work at it together." Determination, solidarity
and a wide range of appropriate tools that are as inexpensive
as possible are also required.
To bring people of good will together
and identify practical solutions in this United Nations Year for
the Cultural Heritage, UNESCO and the Centre for Design Visualization
at the University of California in Berkeley (USA) have organized
a series of seven interactive conferences in seven cities around
the world. These events will form a virtual congress on the theme,
"World Heritage in the Digital Age". The inaugural conference
will take place at the French Senate on October 16.
Between mid-October and mid-November,
hundreds of participants from a broad spectrum of places and professional
backgrounds will meet in Alexandria, Beijing, Dakar, Mexico City,
Paris, Strasbourg and Tours to work out how to make the most of
new information and communication technologies to better manage
heritage sites. They will be able to communicate with each other
via the Internet and feed the Congress's virtual web site. Some
200 papers from approximately 60 countries presenting groundbreaking
experiences have already reached the Congress organizers. The
best ones will be selected by a scientific committee and put on-line**.
Mr Matsuura and Senate President
Christian Poncelet will open the inaugural conference in Paris
on October 16. Over 250 elected officials from France and many
other countries, as well as representatives from States Parties
to the Convention, will exchange ideas, information and experiences
on the theme, "Elected Representatives and World Heritage:
Challenges of Decentralization". Although States are still
primarily responsible for implementing sustainable development
policies for heritage, local elected officials are becoming essential
players. For several years, cooperation between cities, especially
between those in the countries of the North and the South, has
helped concerned people not only to open up to other cultures,
but also to take part in the rehabilitation of endangered cultural
and natural sites.
One example is the cooperation
between Chinon (France) and Luang Prabang (Laos), which began
in 1995. Under the aegis of UNESCO, a plan to preserve the ancient
capital of the "kingdom of a thousand elephants" has
led to the restoration of many of the city's pagodas and landmarks
and helped the inhabitants to improve their homes. A Heritage
Centre has been set up by the local authorities, who have benefited
from the experience and know-how of their counterparts in Chinon
to enact appropriate laws and urban planning regulations. Many
other world heritage cities are also now experimenting with this
kind of decentralized cooperation, including Lille (France), Turin
(Italy) and Hue (Viet Nam); Bath (United Kingdom) and Katmandu
(Nepal); Barcelona (Spain) and Vigan (Philippines); Bergen (Norway)
and Mozambique Island.
At the same time as the October
16 conference in Paris, two other conferences will take place
in Africa and Asia. From October 15 to 17, Dakar (Senegal), in
partnership with the Agence universitaire de la francophonie (AUF),
will host a conference on "Teaching World Heritage in Africa",
which will be opened by Minister of Education Moustapha Sourany.
Some 30 African university professors will take an inventory of
university programmes in the environmental sciences, architecture,
landscape design, urban planning and heritage preservation, examine
the "digital divide" and, for the first time, assess
the state of the World Heritage Convention's implementation in
Africa.
How can 3D simulation contribute
to the design hotels, airports, train stations, museums, information
centres, hiking trails and other tourism infrastructures that
preserve heritage sites for future generations? Internationally
renowned architects, representatives of China's local officials
and representatives of States in the Asia-Pacific region that
have signed the Convention will meet in Beijing (China) from October
15 to 17 to present their experiences and discuss "Architecture
and World Heritage". Liu Zhifeng, the Vice-Minister of Construction,
will chair the opening session.
Two other conferences will continue
the relay four days later in the Arab region and Europe. From
October 21 to 23, the forum of Alexandria (Egypt) will be held
at the new Alexandria Library under the chairmanship of Information
and Communications Technologies Minister Ahmed Nazif. The participants
will include representatives of the Egyptian and Arab authorities
and diplomatic missions as well as international experts, who
will exchange ideas on "Heritage Management and Mapping:
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Multimedia". These
systems make it possible to translate databases involving sites
into a map to improve town and country planning.
At the same time, from October
21 to 24, François Rabelais University, the Mission Val
de Loire and UNESCO will hold a conference in Tours (France) on
"The Great World Heritage Rivers: From Crisis to Risk Management
Culture". After flooding in Europe destroyed precious historic
archives, damaged landmarks and museums in Prague and altered
cultural landscapes such as the Wachau in Austria, the prevention
of natural catastrophes is more than ever on the agenda. Participants
from the Amazon, Danube, Ganges, Indus, Loire, Mekong, Niger,
Nile, Oder, Rhine and Yang Tse Kiang river basins will study ways
of using new technologies to analyze, prevent and manage the risk
of cultural destruction caused by flooding to produce a manua
on the subject.
Lastly, two other conferences will
take place in early November. In Strasbourg (France), UNESCO Deputy
Director General Marcio Barbosa will open a symposium of international
experts on "Space Applications for Heritage Conservation,"
which will take place from November 5 to 8. Observation satellites
are already used to watch natural world heritage sites, notably
in Africa, where the last mountain gorillas survive. But today,
a new generation of satellites could also help to control damage
to buildings and looting at sites. The symposium will help to
identify the possible applications of these new technologies and
estimate their cost.
In Mexico City (Mexico), from November
6 to 8 representatives of the local authorities as well as national
and international urban development experts will take part in
a conference on "Heritage Management and Historical Cities:
Planning for Mixed Use and Social Equity". Today, tourism
and land speculation pressures often have the effect of excluding
the most disadvantaged inhabitants from some 200 historic centres
on the World Heritage List, of which approximately 30 are located
in Latin American and the Caribbean. In the future, urban planning
should preserve the social mix and liveliness of these centres.
Geographical information systems (GIS) are a precious tool for
achieving that goal because they help to identify the population's
density and age, the price of land per square metre, the development
of infrastructures, and so on.
A series of special events will
accompany the Virtual Congress. The fifth annual Berkeley Prize
Competition (UC Berkeley, United States) will begin on October
15. Open to undergraduate architecture students worldwide, the
this year's on line essay competition (www.berkeleyprize.org)
is dedicated to World Heritage. In France, between October 15
and 21 the city of Paris and the Paris metropolitan transportation
authority (RATP) will display photographs from the Magnum agency
in the metro and buses to raise public awareness of the diversity
of the world heritage and encourage people to take part in the
Virtual Congress. In Belize, from November 1 to 12, divers and
biodiversity specialists will supply pictures of that Central
American country's exceptional coral reef so that they can be
transmitted to Virtual Congress participants over the Internet.
*http://whc.unesco.org
**http://www.virtualworldheritage.org
****
A press conference will take place on October 10at the Foreign
Press Centre (CAPE) on the inaugural conference of the virtual
congress:the international symposium organized by UNESCO and the
French Senate on the theme "Elected Representatives and World
Heritage: Challenges of Decentralization" Fax: 33 (0)1 56
40 50 19,
E-mail:michel.andre@capefrance.com
Contact at UNESCO:
Sophie Boukhari
Office of Public Information, Editorial SectionTel: 33 (0)1 45
68 17 03,
Email:s.boukhari@unesco.org"
