World Heritage Cultural Landscapes by Gramme Aplin
- 1990s, World Heritage Committee added cultural landscapes as a property category
- 2006, 53 properties on World Heritage list
- Vidal de la Blanche, pays, small homogenous areas
- genre de vie, any group of people is basic in determining how the group lives within and interacts with the landscape
- ecomuseum, popular in museology circles in the late 20th century
- Davis, place, local distinctiveness
- Riviere, ecomusee, local identity, territory, landscape, community, history, and continuity
landscape, key component of heritage
- "sense of place" enduring and recognizable
- Ashworth & Howard, landscape as a European concept
- valued for aesthetic appeal and cultural evidence
Cultural landscape
- exceptionally harmonious, beautiful man-made landscapes
- evolution of living landscapes
- integrity of such landscapes which are seldom protected by national legislation
- consideration of the Lake District National Park in the UK
- can help reinforce understanding on the effects of humans on the biophysical environment, and highlight both successes and failures in environmental and landscape management
- Head expressed one ultimate desired outcome of studies of cultural landscape as being progress in 'the profound and difficult' task of 'rethinking people into nature in such a way that we can better manage the Earth'
- Studies can throw light on differences between cultures and the undeniable fact that no culture or religious or ethnic group has a monopoly on wisdom
Lake District National Park, UK
- large resident population
- agricultural and other economic activity
Guidelines
- the existing balance between nature and human activity may only be modified in a way that ensures the continuation of this special relationship and will exclude any major alterations to the appearance and function of the area
- legislative protection much exist as well as practicable mechanisms for bringing the relevant institutions together together to ensure the preservation of the significant harmonious balance between nature and human activity in an evolving context
- the area nominated should be of such a size that these protective measures can seriously be expected to be effective
- be an outstanding example of traditional human settlement or land use which is representative of a culture (or cultures) especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change
- clearly defined landscape and created intentionally by man
- organically evolved landscape
- associative cultural landscape
- landscape has been so comprehensively altered by human activities over long periods that the distinction between cultural and natural is largely meaningless
- management usually includes measures to ensure that traditional approaches to agriculture are maintained, and that modern intrusions are minimized
Advantage
- limit the sites to those with a well established balance between human activities and the biophysical landscape, implying a large degree of sustainability with potential lessons for people elsewhere
- the relationship is expected to remain largely unchanging in the future, something that may not be 'natural', but rather an artificial or bureaucratic restriction on cultural evolution and development, something that became particularly contentious in the case of the Philippine Rice Terraces
- Landscapes like cultures and societies do tend to evolve over time
- Heritage is held to fossilize, to preclude ambivalence, to tolerate no doubts
- the true product of the heritage-industry is entrophy,` history is over, nothing more is to be done
- Robert Hewison echoes Nietzche in warning that fevered nostalgia precludes present action
- Turning a blind eye to past turmoil, leaching out past distress and bewilderment, heritage is blamed for stifling enterprise. The penchant for patrimony litters the world with legacies of outworn junk
Controversy
- By 1999, ICOMOS was claiming that the property was 'fragile' and that like, many cultural landscapes was extremely vulnerable to the changes in the socio-ecological system
- The problems reduced to the basics revolved around desires of local people to change from rice farming to vegetable growing as the latter was physically easier and economically more advantageous or to move out of the area, probably to the cities
- Should local people be kept in a traditional lifestyle that they did not necessarily want to maintain so that the broader global community could benefit from protection of World Heritage values?
- In a number of cases, the WHC deferred inscription until greater guarantees of legal protection were forthcoming , and in others debated whether or not the Cultural Landscape designation was appropriate
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