Chapter 00:

Introduction

keywords: mission statement of UNESCO’s World Heritage Center, Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage

Chapter 01:

From industrial heritage to acoustic awareness

Unesco-Site: Salt Mine 'Wieliczka', Poland

Interviewee: Professor Antoni Jodlowski, director of the Cracow Salt-Works Museum, Monika Szczepa, a former tourist-guide; a present press room worker of the Wieliczka Salt Mine
Hildegard Westerkamp, composer and one initiator of the Worldforum for acoustic ecology (WFAE).

Keywords: mining culture, industrial heritage (in times of communism), the first UNESCO’s World Heritage List (1978), tourism today, acoustic ecology, contemporary electroacoustic composition

Music: Hildegard Westerkamp, "Beneath the Forest Floor" (excerpt)

Journalists: Pawel Kamiñski, Katarzyna Fortuna, Radio Kraków, and Jan Brueggemeier, Heritage Radio Network

Chapter 02:

The “Bird’s paradise” and the fresh water problems

Unesco-Site: Lake Srebarna - the "Bird’s paradise" -, Bulgaria
Interviewee: Petar Jankov, ornithologist from the Bulgarian Society about the protection of birds; Mr. Koïchiro Matsuura, UNESCO’s Director-General

Keywords: Unesco's World Heritage Natural site, protection of bird's habitat, outstanding biodiversity, first United Nation World Water Development report “Water for People, Water for Life”, World Science Forum – Budapest, Hungary 2005

Journalists: Svetlana Dicheva, Bulgarian National Radio & Gyamarthy Dora, Hungarian Radio

Chapter 03

Waiting for the list

Unesco-Site: Cadastre of Ager, Croatia
Interviewee: Sanja Buble from The Ministry of Culture’s Conservation Department in Split, Croatia.
Keywords: Stari Grad, "the greek ager", agricultural field, The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS)

Journalist: Vid Mesaric, Croatian Radio

Chapter 04:

World Heritage Tourism

Unesco-Site: The Early Christian Necropolis and Cemetery of Pécs, Hungary.
Interviewee: Gábor Olivér, archaeologist of Baranya County Museums’ Directorate
Keywords: 'Pécs', Early Christian Mausoleum, Wine Pitcher Burial Chamber, Cultural Capital of Europe in 2010

Journalist: Gyarmathy Dora, Hunagrian Radio

Chapter 05:

The “black list”: World Heritage in Danger

Unesco-Site: Cologne Cathedral, Germany
Interviewee: Kerstin Manz, UNESCO World Heritage Centre
Keywords: Cologne Cathedral, UNESCO Cultural Heritage Centre, poet John Keats

Journalist: Andrew Gledhill, Radio LOTTE Weimar

Chapter 06:

UNESCO – in-between a global intention and local appeal

Keywords: recognition by UNESCO, tourism, unused land, visual disturbance, citizens' initiatives, local-global dilemmas

Writer: Hatto Fischer, Poiein Kai Prattein, Athens

Editors-in-chief of this edition of the Heritage Radio Network Magazine: Svetlana Dicheva, Bulgarian National Radio, & Gyarmathy Dora, Hungarian Radio

Chapter 00: Introduction

“Heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations.” – we can read it as a mission statement of UNESCO’s World Heritage Center. We can’t say this cathedral or that cave is just ours, a country’s or county’s heritage and we have to know that a heritage site is not only for the present but also for the future. That is why we need to protect and preserve the cultural and natural heritage all over the world. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) tried to find out how the protection of this heritage can be encouraged and that is why an international treaty was adopted by UNESCO in 1972. This treaty is called the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.

“The Convention defines the kind of natural or cultural sites which can be considered for inscription on the World Heritage List, sets out the duties of States Parties in identifying potential sites and their role in protecting and preserving them. (…) It explains how the World Heritage Fund is to be used and managed and under what conditions international financial assistance may be provided. The Convention stipulates the obligation of States Parties to report regularly to the World Heritage Committee on the state of conservation of their World Heritage properties. These reports are crucial to the work of the Committee as they enable it to assess the conditions of the sites, decide on specific programme needs and resolve recurrent problems. It also encourages States Parties to strengthen the appreciation of the public for World Heritage properties and to enhance their protection through educational and information programmes.”

In our magazine we would like to present why the cultural and natural heritage is considered to be of outstanding value to humanity.

Chapter 01: From industrial heritage to acoustic awareness

Have You heard the sound of the warning ring from the Wieliczka Salt Mine? We can say the acoustic part of the heritage, the birdsong from the protected area of Lake Srebarna, the peal of bells in the Cologne Cathedral’s bell-tower, is also part of the World Heritage. Hildegard Westerkamp is a German-English composer and radiomaker living in Vancouver. After completing her music studies in the early seventies she joined the World Soundscape Project under the direction of Canadian composer Raymond Murray Schafer at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Her involvement with this project not only activated deep concerns about noise and the general state of the acoustic environment in her, but it also changed her ways of thinking about music, listening and soundmaking. Her ears were drawn to the acoustic environment as another cultural context or place for intense listening. The founding of Vancouver Co-operative Radio during the same time provided an invaluable opportunity to record, experiment with and broadcast the soundscape. One could say that her career as a composer, educator, and radio artist emerged from these two pivotal experiences and focused it on environmental sound and acoustic ecology.

Jan Brüggemeier investigated the connection between acoustic ecology and world heritage, the acoustic awareness in our visual dominated world and asked Hildegard Westerkamp, who as a composer, radio-maker and one of the initiators of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, has been a long-term activist in terms of acoustic awareness, about the motivation to start the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology in 1993.

One of the most important characteristics of the „Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage” is in the title: this treaty links together the concepts of nature conservation and the preservation of cultural properties. In this way, the treaty tries to express the fact that people interact with nature and the fundamental need to preserve the balance between the two. On the other hand, among the 812 sites included in the World Heritage list, only 160 are natural. 24 are considered mixed properties combining the characteristics of both - cultural and natural. The phrase "cultural landscape" became of interest to the conservation world in the late 80s when people began increasingly to think beyond the monuments, the individual buildings and to look more broadly - not just at the buildings within the territory but at the territory itself. Rather than spending a lot of energy looking after small elements here and there, the cultural landscape approach gives people the chance to think holistically and systematically about all these elements that could be dealt with together. In the interest of proving that natural sites are as important as the cultural ones we present Lake Srebarna, the "Bird’s paradise".

The ecologists call the Bulgariapetarn Lake Srebarna a “Bird’s paradise”. Located adjacent to the Danube this fresh water lake is about 600 hectares in size. Because of its outstanding biodiversity the lake was designated in 1983 as a World Heritage Natural site by UNESCO and furthermore identified in 1989 as an important Bird Area. The situation changed for the worse in 1992 when the lake was added to the list of World Heritage in Danger due to the progressive destruction of the bird population’s fresh-water habitat. Who helped and how did they help the lake to get off the “black list”? Svetlana Dicheva from the Bulgarian National Radio asked Petar Jankov, ornithologist from the Bulgarian Society about the protection of birds.

(Audioreport Srebana-Lake by S. Dicheva, BNR)

Regardless of the relatively calm present of the lake nobody can be absolutely sure that it will be out of danger in the future. The local residents inhabiting the villages near the lake continue to fish uncontrollably. Some poachers even make a business out of it by using up the fish resources. Ecologists and representatives of the Ministry of Environment and Water have difficulties in communicating the "ecological values" to the locals. Tourism is another apple of discord. The temptation is too big and many people working in the tourist sector ignore the strict regulations in order to make a profit. Realizing the importance of the fresh water supplies of the world, based on the title of the first United Nation World Water Development Report “Water for People, Water for Life”, the General Assembly of the United Nations decided to proclaim the period from 2005 to 2015 the International Decade for Action, 'Water for Life’, commencing on World Water Day, 22 March 2005.

Chapter 03: Waiting for the list

Only the countries which have signed the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage can nominate sites within their national territory for inclusion on the World Heritage list. In order to make a proposal for inscription every country must first make an inventory of the most important national cultural and natural sites. This inventory is called the indicative list. UNESCO World Heritage Center can help countries to prepare all the documentation necessary for the proposal for inscription. Two main organisations evaluate the proposals independently - The International Council on Monuments and Sites ( ICOMOS ) and The World Conservation Union (IUCN), an international, non-governmental organization that provides the World Heritage Committee with technical evaluations of natural heritage properties and, through its worldwide network of specialists, reports on the state of conservation of listed properties. The third consultative organisation is The International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, an intergovernmental body which provides expert advice on how to conserve listed properties as well as training in restoration techniques. Once the proposal and the evaluation have been made, it's up to the World Heritage Committee to make the final decision. Once per year, the Committee gathers to decide which sites to include on the World heritage list. In order to be included on the list, the sites must have outstanding universal value and respond to 10 selection criteria. After inclusion, the countries must establish management plans and set up reporting systems on the state of conservation of their sites.

"Mediterranean as it once was" is the well known motto of Croatia’s offer to tourists. One of the best examples of the richness of archeological sites along the Croatian part of The Adriatic is Ager – fertile Stari Grad’s plain in the middle of the island of Hvar where one can find the best preserved cadastre of the ancient world in the Mediterranean region. In the fourth year of the 98th Olympiad (385 year B.C.), the Persians, Ionian Greeks established the city of Pharos on the edge of the largest plain on the Adriatic islands. As Pharos was an agrarian colony, the plain soon got divided up into the Hellenistic grid and shared 75 rectangular parcels of plain – each 900 x 180 meters in size. It is a masterpiece of exceptional technical skills and geodesic knowledge of ancient Greeks and today it is well preserved in dry stone walls that mark the borders of the plots. The walls were constructed by means of the traditional masonry technique which has not changed until today, and the function of the Stari Grad’s plain has also remained the same for 2400 years. That is why the Ager project is the Croatian priority on the list of proposals for UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Vid Mesaric spoke to Sanja Buble from The Ministry of Culture’s Conservation Department in Split:

Chapter 04: World Heritage Tourism

"World Heritage Tourism" sounds like a strange expression although the "World Heritage Site" status automatically results growing number of tourists. As well as the "Cultural Capital of Europe" title. In our next case both can attract tourists because we travel to the South-Hungarian town, Pécs, which has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000 and will be the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2010.

Pécs has a 2000 year-old history. Even in Prehistoric Ages man found shelter here and a place to settle down. Protected by the Mecsek Mountains, the Roman town, Sopianae, evolved here 2000 years ago and by the end of the 3rd century it became an administrative centre of Pannonia. In the 4th century, a remarkable series of decorated tombs were constructed in the cemetery of the Roman provincial town of Sopianae. These are important both structurally and architecturally, since they were built as underground burial chambers with memorial chapels above the ground. The tombs are important also in artistic terms, since they are richly decorated with murals of outstanding quality depicting Christian themes. The Early Christian Necropolis of Pécs was included on the World Heritage Site List of UNESCO in 2000. Gyarmathy Dóra from Hungarian Radio invites you to take a walk around the Early Christian Cemetery in Pécs with Gábor Olivér, archaeologist of Baranya County Museums’ Directorate.

Cologne Cathedrale at night, Germany

Unfortunately there are many conditions which threaten the sites such as armed conflicts and war, earthquakes and other natural disasters, pollution, poaching, uncontrolled urbanization and unchecked tourist development. When such conditions threaten the very characteristics for which a property has been inscribed on the World Heritage List, it could be included in the list of World Heritage in Danger. There are currently 34 sites among the 812 World Heritage properties in the so called “black list”. The inclusion in this list allows the World Heritage Committee to grant immediate assistance from the World Heritage Fund to the endangered property. Some countries apply for the inscription of a site to focus international attention on its problems and to obtain expert assistance in solving them. Others however wish to avoid an inscription perceiving it as a dishonour.

The construction of the Cologne Cathedral began in 1248, but it wasn’t completed until 1880. The Cathedral was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1996, but 8 years later it was inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger as well. On the reasons behind this and the future of the Cathedral you can hear Andrew Gledhill’s feature.

by Hatto Fischer, Poiein Kai Prattein, Athens

“Heritage in its coat of many colours - UNESCO's blind spots” – that is the title of our magazine and in the last interviews we tried to show our multicoloured heritage. In the reflection of Hatto Fischer, you can read about the challenges of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. UNESCO – in-between a global intention and local appeal

What these interviews reflect, insofar as UNESCO strives to protect certain cultural and natural heritages by giving recognition to them as being a part of world heritage, are numerous practical shortcomings. They reveal the limits of what an international organisation situated in Paris can do for world heritage in the twenty-first century. It appears that the world list in order to protect has been compromised as more and more municipalities, regions and nations realize such status of being recognized by UNESCO is useful for the promotion of tourism by giving the area a new commercial value. Practically the recent explosion in sites being recognized and put on the world list over recent years indicates such a trend. This dilemma can be best described as not having a reliable method by which recognition of the intrinsic value leading to preservation can be translated into such use which does not harm but enhances the site. Of course, tourists frequenting the place bring a commercial value, but it can easily destroy one key value of any heritage, namely its authenticity. That dilemma intensifies in the case of natural heritage, not only threatened due to the risk of over-fishing but disturbed if invaded by too many human beings. Somehow preservation by active use – a slogan of the HERMES project as well – does not take into consideration the need for mankind to leave areas of the world virtually ‘untouched’. If recognition by UNESCO is translated only into commercial values bringing with it the very destructive forces against which UNESCO has been called into action in order to prevent further damages to existing world heritages, then there is a need to draw more attention to all kinds of ongoing processes of destruction to cultural and natural heritage. It will require more than just recognition and the making possible of another kind of use, for preservation needs another kind of protection, namely what lies outside the scope of any active use by mankind. It seems that the basic law of anything having only then value if it can be used, must be problematized by UNESCO if it is to face the new challenges to world heritage. If not, UNESCO is in risk of becoming like salt in the wound: rather than preserving heritage, by instigating an even greater commercial value to these sites, the protection policy adopted risks to bring about just the very opposite, namely loss of the intrinsic value and another world heritage site more threatened than ever before.

As shown by the example of Cologne Cathedral, but which can include other cases such as the Middle Rhine valley where a similar project, namely the planned construction of a bridge to allow for more tourism in the area, seems to be threatening a natural world heritage, UNESCO seems conscious of this dilemma but responds only in terms of what is in its power to alarm the rest of the world, namely by threatening to remove the site from the list and thereby cancel its recognition as world heritage. Once removed, UNESCO would be free from the obligation to follow up further protective measures while continuing to assume that a threat to lose this prestigious status would like any shaming method would be sufficient to motivate all actors to reconsider their decisions before intervening in this particular site. Moreover UNESCO ends up treating generally a threat only at visual level, as illustrated by the controversy around the Cologne Cathedral: the prospect of three high rise buildings beside the cathedral would warrant the removal from the list or, as the case with the bridge over the Rhine, it could spoil the view of the Rhine valley. That is similar to the archaeological law wishing to protect the surrounding of the Acropolis insofar as no high rise buildings should be constructed in order not to block the view of this historical monument from different angles in the city of Athens. Practically this reduces the threat to a world heritage site to the level of perception and risks in its very over emphasis of the visual to obliterate many other threats to world heritage.

It is one thing that the world inherits from the past, another how this inheritance can be preserved in such a way that future generations will not only have the same unspoiled access to this heritage, but more so take courage out of the way the present world has managed to pass on this heritage to future generations. This very notion of a deeper value has something to do with how memory and identity are linked to the ability of mankind to appreciate what has been given to this earth and created by cultures and civilizations over time. The very notion of appreciation means here living a conscious tension span between the global intention to preserve cultural and natural heritage and what must be done locally, on the ground, to put this really into practice. Here two examples can be given, the concept of cultural and natural heritage as understood by the Council of Europe and what a citizens’ initiative group appeals to since there a site is threatened by land owners wishing to exploit a location in Athens even though it has an intrinsic value and meaning to people knowledgeable about the history of that place. The latter involves memory: the intangible meaning people give to and receive from natural and cultural heritages as part of human consciousness:

The global intention – example by Council of Europe

The cultural and natural heritage provides a sense of identity and helps to differentiate communities in a climate of globalisation. It allows cultural communities to discover and understand one another and, at the same time, constitutes a development asset. 1 and The local appeal by the Citizens of Mets Initiative in Athens that memory lives in ancient sites

Sites carry their history which lives on in the space itself. This physicality is what we wish to protect enhance and be part of especially when the site has continued to be a place of worship for different people in different ages and has survived to this day Artemis Agrotera is alive after all these years in the centre of modern Athens under the nose of the Acropolis yet lies buried like a sysmopath awaiting to be uncovered and revived. Let’s not allow her to be buried there forever under tons of speculative concrete. Let’s instead find ways to link up with other organizations and individuals worldwide interested to save endangered sites, find ways to "buy back" our heritage from governments and their policies which seem ready to sell out. Cultural memory is physical as well as mental without it we wither and die

Cultural heritage belongs to all humanity. 2

UNESCO should enter this tension to ensure that not only what is on its list must be recognized, but natural and cultural heritage linked to memory and meaning belongs to all people and therefore is in need of being preserved by discovering first of all what it takes to appreciate something free from any potential commercial value. For after all without such access human self consciousness would not exist.

That was our acoustic tour around World Heritage Sites "in their coat of many colours - UNESCO's blind spots". Thank you for your attention!