Monday 1 November 2010
European landscape research
The European Science Foundation’s new Science Policy Briefing paper on current landscape research and future themes and directions 'is an important document that portrays landscape research as a wide-ranging field of study, crossing many disciplinary boundaries. Being published in a series that largely includes policy on the “hard sciences”, which are the ones that tend to get political and funding priority, is important symbolically for putting landscape research (and therefore large areas of archaeology) into the mainstream of the European science agenda. Whether it will be influential depends on how people use it; it will not release funding, but it is a very useful tool, which needs to be taken up and used, while it is new and visible.’
Global Heritage Fund Report: Saving Our Vanishing Heritage: Safeguarding Endangered Cultural Heritage Sites in the Developing World
The complex inter-relationship between heritage and tourism is the focus of a new report from the Global Heritage Fund (GHF), which suggests that c 80% of global tourism is heritage and culture related. While richer nations debate the question of just how far to go in the direction of ‘entertainment’ in order to grow that tourism income, poorer nations are seeing their heritage eroding for want of investment in basic protection and conservation. Heritage could play a central role in meeting the UN’s aim of eradicating global poverty, the report argues, if this position were reversed, and investment in heritage conservation became a core component of international development strategy.
The report assesses the condition of some 500 of the planet’s most threatened and significant cultural sites. It finds that nearly 200 are ‘At Risk’ or ‘Under Threat’ and that twelve are ‘On the Verge’ of irreparable loss and destruction, including the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh, the ancient Greek and medieval port town of Famagusta, in eastern Cyprus, the ancient Greek city of Chersonesos, in Ukraine, and the historic city of Intramuros and Fort Santiago in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Even in their less than pristine state, these 500 global heritage sites earned US$24.7 billion in 2009 from domestic and international tourism and the investment of relatively small sums by government aid programmes in conservation could help drive tourist income up to US$100 billion per year, bringing jobs, skills, regional growth, tourist revenue and foreign exchange earnings to some of the world’s poorest countries. In other words, heritage sites ‘offer the promise of being economic engines for their regions and communities if restored and managed responsibly’.
Ian Hodder, one of GHF’s founders, describes heritage sites as ‘important economic assets for sustainable development’ as well as ‘the basis for scientific and aesthetic inquiry’, and he joins the other authors of the report in calling for the establishment of a ‘Global Fund for Heritage’. Jeff Morgan, Executive Director of GHF, says that ‘funding for preservation remains anaemic … and is a fraction of what is needed’. The UNESCO World Heritage Center, for example, has less than US$30 million annually to provide training and support for World Heritage Sites, while the US government’s voluntary contribution to the UNESCO World Heritage Fund was just US$694,100 in 2009.
What is needed, the report argues, is a multi-billion dollar fund made up of contributions from governments, foundations and corporations that will be used for emergency intervention, training and conservation, specifically focused on the lowest-income countries and regions of the world, which can be achieved if leaders in industry and civil society can be persuaded to take more of an interest in heritage as catalyst for sustainable development.
You can download the whole report, along with supporting documents, from:
http://www.globalheritagefund.org/vanishing
The report assesses the condition of some 500 of the planet’s most threatened and significant cultural sites. It finds that nearly 200 are ‘At Risk’ or ‘Under Threat’ and that twelve are ‘On the Verge’ of irreparable loss and destruction, including the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh, the ancient Greek and medieval port town of Famagusta, in eastern Cyprus, the ancient Greek city of Chersonesos, in Ukraine, and the historic city of Intramuros and Fort Santiago in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Even in their less than pristine state, these 500 global heritage sites earned US$24.7 billion in 2009 from domestic and international tourism and the investment of relatively small sums by government aid programmes in conservation could help drive tourist income up to US$100 billion per year, bringing jobs, skills, regional growth, tourist revenue and foreign exchange earnings to some of the world’s poorest countries. In other words, heritage sites ‘offer the promise of being economic engines for their regions and communities if restored and managed responsibly’.
Ian Hodder, one of GHF’s founders, describes heritage sites as ‘important economic assets for sustainable development’ as well as ‘the basis for scientific and aesthetic inquiry’, and he joins the other authors of the report in calling for the establishment of a ‘Global Fund for Heritage’. Jeff Morgan, Executive Director of GHF, says that ‘funding for preservation remains anaemic … and is a fraction of what is needed’. The UNESCO World Heritage Center, for example, has less than US$30 million annually to provide training and support for World Heritage Sites, while the US government’s voluntary contribution to the UNESCO World Heritage Fund was just US$694,100 in 2009.
What is needed, the report argues, is a multi-billion dollar fund made up of contributions from governments, foundations and corporations that will be used for emergency intervention, training and conservation, specifically focused on the lowest-income countries and regions of the world, which can be achieved if leaders in industry and civil society can be persuaded to take more of an interest in heritage as catalyst for sustainable development.
You can download the whole report, along with supporting documents, from:
http://www.globalheritagefund.org/vanishing
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