Pomp and circumstance in Kandy, Sri Lanka, during an annual pilgrimage to venerate
the Buddha’s tooth.
The Convention
Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted in
1972 by the UNESCO General Conference, encourages states to choose exceptional sites
for preservation. To date, the Convention has been ratified by 161 countries. In
November 2000, the World Heritage List consisted of 630 sites in 118 countries–480
of them cultural, 128 natural and 22 described as mixed.
To know more:
www.unesco.org/whc
World Heritage Review, published quarterly by UNESCO Publishing
www.worldheritagereview.org |
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Léon
Pressouyre
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| A professor at
the Université Paris I, Léon Pressouyre is president of the Commission
for the conservation of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s national monuments, within UNESCO. He
was the ICOMOS coordinator (International Council on Monuments and Sites) for the
World Heritage Convention between 1980 and 1990 and represented France on the World
Heritage Committee from 1990 to 1997. He is the author of The World Heritage Convention,
Twenty Years Later (UNESCO, 1993). |
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The
heritage of a country is essentially its cultural identity, and whether big or small,
majestic or simple, physical or non-physical, it must be maintained and have a meaning
for every new generation.
I.M.
Pei, American architect (1917-)
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The
world’s heritage is about more than monuments and natural wonders–the intangible
ideas and beliefs that make up our collective memory also have their rightful place
What is the common thread
running through the UNESCO World Heritage sites featured in this issue, which have
inspired a constellation of writers and artists fascinated by their unique and irreplaceable
nature? The sites may not be stars on the tourist circuit, nor are they formally
connected with each other, but they are telling examples of some recent changes in
our attitudes towards heritage.
One is the steadily vanishing division between cultural and natural heritage. The
other is a growing awareness of the value of intangible heritage, which is being
undermined and too often brushed aside by the unstinting advance of globalization.
The World Heritage Convention, adopted by the UNESCO General Conference in 1972,
fashioned a vital, ground-breaking idea into an international legal statute. But
it defined humanity’s heritage very conservatively under two headings: the cultural
and the natural. This marked the culmination of a long tradition and of a more recent
intellectual effort to match the splendours of art with the wonders of nature.
Humanity’s admiration for its own creations was displayed as far back as the second
century B.C. in the famous list of the seven wonders of the world–a world narrowly
confined to the eastern Mediterranean.
Tides,
phoenixes and volcanoes: proof of divine power in nature
Few
people are aware that the wonders of nature were in fact listed well before the modern
era and the birth of environmental awareness. A 12th-century Latin manuscript held
in the French National Library, for instance, contrasts the seven destructible man-made
wonders with seven wonders of nature which, the author says, are proof of divine
power.
On the list are tides, plant germination, the phoenix (the mythical bird that rises
from its own ashes), a volcano (Mount Etna in Sicily), a hot spring near Grenoble
(France), as well as the sun and the moon. These were wonders unaffected by age or
accident, the author maintains, and their demise could only come with the end of
the world, whereas the man-made wonders were destined to disappear well before then.
The 1972 Convention reflects this dual European tradition. It was not the product
of a debate among philosophers, historians and sociologists about the concept of
heritage, but simply the convergence of two schools of thought. One came directly
from the 1931 League of Nations conference in Athens, and concerned preserving cultural
heritage as defined in terms of classical notions of a “masterpiece” or “wonder of
the world.” The other stemmed from the first international conference on protecting
nature, in Bern in 1913, which was followed up by the Brunnen conference in 1947
and the foundation the following year of the World Conservation Union, whose aim
was to pass on to future generations “unspoiled” natural sites untouched by humans.
Vineyards
and rice terraces find their way onto the List
This
division between cultural treasures (thought of as monuments created by human beings)
and natural ones (which owed nothing to human involvement) long dominated the application
of the 1972 Convention. In 1994, nearly half the sites on the World Heritage List
were cultural ones within Europe. Nothing could have been further removed from the
spirit of the Convention.
When in June 1994 the World Heritage Committee adopted the recommendations of experts
who had looked into how representative the List was, it absorbed the very different
conception of culture espoused by anthropologists and ethnologists, one that encompasses
a complex mixture of social organizations, ways of life, beliefs, know-how and expressions
of past and present cultures.
The accession to the List of cultural landscapes, such as the rice terraces of the
Philippine Cordilleras and France’s Saint-Emilion vineyards, is one of the positive
outcomes of the 1994 change in guidelines. A few years earlier, even though public
interest in historical gardens (such as those of Shalimar, in Lahore, Pakistan) was
fully recognized, sterile debates would probably have prevented them gaining a place
on the List.
The same goes for industrial heritage. Before they began being put “openly” on the
List, industrial sites were admitted in disguise: the salt mines at Wieliczka, in
Poland, and the royal salt works in the French town of Arc-et-Senans, for example,
were accepted in 1978 and 1988 on the basis of their architectural merit. Meanwhile,
the prestige of monuments declined as interest grew in roads, railway networks, rivers
and canals–all of them long neglected by the List, perhaps because of legal problems
involved in preserving them.
Moving
away from classical definitions of a masterpiece
Such
choices reflect a significant change in our concept of heritage. By finally questioning
the idea inherited from ancient times and firmly rooted in European culture of what
a masterpiece is, the World Heritage Committee opened the way to a more balanced
picture of humanity’s heritage. A shared and indivisible heritage, where the interaction
of people and nature is fully recognized, is gradually winning converts from the
incomplete vision of heritage that the 1972 Convention perpetuated despite its best
intentions.
No longer is the sacred Maori mountain in New Zealand’s Tongariro National Park seen
as very different from Mount Athos, in Greece, even though the forests and volcanic
craters of the first are monuments steeped in sacred meaning while the second houses
the world’s largest collection of Byzantine art.
Legends,
beliefs and traditions: safeguards to our collective memory
So
intangible heritage–the amorphous body of beliefs, legends, written and oral traditions
along with forms of behaviour that make up our diversity–has made a vigorous comeback
onto the World Heritage List. The 1972 Convention made only passing mention of intangible
heritage and tied it to the existence of material evidence. But after long neglect
it now seems that intangible heritage is the key safeguard to humanity’s collective
memory, precisely because of its very vulnerability.
What would happen to Marrakesh–whose city walls, mosques and palaces are preserved
like museum pieces–if the Jemâa-el-Fna Square was no longer a vibrant and colourful
meeting place of cultures, filled with music and hubbub and the aromas of several
worlds that we are lucky to know?
What would the Sri Lankan city of Kandy be like without its annual pilgrimage that
draws thousands of the faithful to venerate the remarkable relic that is the Buddha’s
tooth? And what would become of the World Heritage site of Sukur, in Nigeria, if
the highly structured society living there suddenly lost all its centuries-old traditions? |
