The World Heritage and cultural landscapes

              Vol. 4 Nº 3 págs. 409-419. 2006
www.pasosonline.org
© PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural. ISSN 1695-7121
The World Heritage and cultural landscapes
Mark Esposito †
University of Massachusetts Amherst (Switzerland)
Alessandro Cavelzani ‡
Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione (Italy)
Abstract: Landscapes have a range of values that communities recognize as important and want to conserve.
Cultural and natural values are the qualities which make a place or landscape important. In particular, we can
consider Cultural Landscapes an important and constitutional part of the World Heritage. It is fundamental
that stakeholders must know what values are to be found in their cultural landscapes and consequently rein-force
the protection and enhancement of the values. The attempt to help the awareness is presented in the
paper and discussed as an UNESCO instrument of observation, retention and pro-active conservation of the
heritage of our past, as institutional to the formation of continuity in the future years to come and for the future
generations. Finally, one case study is also illustrated as a very good example of effective values-based man-agement.
Keywords: World Heritage; UNESCO; Cultural landscape; Human and geographical sustainability; Cultural
awareness.
Resumen: Los paisajes tienen un rango de valores que las comunidades reconocen como importante y desean
conservar. Son precisamente los valores culturales y naturales las cualidades que hacen a ese paisaje o lugar
importante. En particular, podemos considerar los paisajes culturales una parte importante y constituyente del
Patrimonio de la Humanidad. Es fundamental que la sociedad sepa qué valores pueden encontrarse en sus
paisajes culturales y, consecuentemente, reforzar su protección y realzarlos. En este trabajo se intenta ayudar a
ese conocimiento y discutir como un instrumento de la UNESCO contribuye tanto a la observación, retención
y conservación pro-activa del patrimonio, como a la formación continua en los años venideros y para futuras
generaciones. Finalmente, se expone un caso de estudio como buen ejemplo de administración eficaz de valo-res.
Palabras Clave: Patrimonio de la Humanidad; UNESCO; Paisaje cultural; Sostenibilidad humana y geográfi-ca;
Conocimiento cultural.
† • Mark Esposito, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Tourism Management, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Lucerne,
Switzerland. E-mail: m.esposito@ht.umass.edu
‡ • 2. Alessandro S Cavelzani PhD, Psychologist, Assistant Professor in Psychology, Libera Università di Lingue e
Comunicazione IULM, Milano. E-mail: alessandro.cavelzani@iulm.it
410 The World Heritage and cultural landscapes
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 4(3). 2006 ISSN 1695-7121
Introduction
Every year, like it has happened for
the past ten years since the introduction
of the cultural landscape categories, thir-ty
cultural landscapes have been in-scribed
on the World Heritage List. These
cover designed landscapes such as the
gardens of Villa d’Este (Italy), relict land-scapes
such as Blaenavon (United King-dom),
human landscapes such as Uluru-
Kata Tjuta (Australia) and Tongariro
(New Zealand)1, and continuing land-scapes
which cover the greatest number
of inscribed landscapes, especially those
involved with agriculture, viticulture,
forestry, pastoralism and their associated
settlements.
The main global reference for the who-le
concept of Heritage and World Heritage
is only duly representative of the massive
workflow that UNESCO2 and the diverse
secretariats working constantly for the
preservation of Heritage is doing.
It would be hard to figure out a world
without the enormous contributions that
UNESCO is bringing to the realty of pre-servation,
restoration and conservation of
our planet’s legacies, through the rein-forcements
of those procedures and guide-lines
which lead to inscription every year.
It is well recognized that many previ-ously
inscribed sites are also cultural
landscapes. The primary management
responsibility is to conserve and protect
the “outstanding universal values” for
which the landscape was inscribed. Man-agement
involves all the processes of pre-paring
a plan or guiding document, im-plementing
the actions lay out in the
plan, tackle the unforeseen events, moni-toring
the impact of management on con-serving
the values and reviewing the ori-ginal
management actions so as to better
conserve the values.
Conservation means all the processes
of looking after a place so as to retain its
cultural significance3 which is embodied
in the place itself, its fabric, setting, use,
associations, meanings, records, related
places and objects.
Values are expressed in those things
from the past and from nature that we
want to conserve and protect. Values are
generic, or specific. They can relate to a
very peculiar ethnicity or have upgraded
into a much more global and universal
entity, but no matter which specific set of
ideas we want to apply, values are the
traditional core of conservation4– values
attached to an object, building, place or
landscape because it holds meaning for a
social group due to its age, beauty,
craftsmanship or association with signifi-cant
persons or events, or otherwise con-tribute
to processes of cultural affiliation.
Any place will have a range of values –
these may be assessed against criteria in
order to determine whether the values
are important enough for the place to be
listed for heritage protection. For World
Heritage listing, values must be consid-ered
to be of ‘outstanding Universal
value’ in accordance with the six cultural
and four natural heritage criteria of the
World Heritage Convention.
In accordance with UNESCO, our re-search
project aims at fostering aware-ness
among the stakeholders, to sustain
these landscapes while allowing both
continuing use to local communities who
are dependent on them for a livelihood,
and natural ecosystems to continue to
develop.
In other terms of comprehension, the
subtle balance of sustainability and con-servation,
are often projected onto a much
more delicate management of the re-sources
and a “superpartes” organization,
such as UNESCO, plays this vital role of
monitoring the process and assess the
necessities in place, in order to become
effective when required.
World heritage landscape management
We have selected some of the many
questions at disposal within the frame of
the UNESCO publication, “ Tell me about
World Heritage” (2002), which best em-bedded
the topics of sustainability, con-versation
and ethical conciliation, in or-der
to provide better cohesion of concepts
and practices, towards the cultural awa-reness
whose this paper’s aim is.
Thr following questions derived from
the UNESCO Publication “Tell me about
World Heritage, (2002):
Mark Esposito and Alessandro Cavelzani 411
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 4(3). 2006 ISSN 1695-7121
1. What are the limits of acceptable
change in these landscapes? And how can
that change be managed5?
A widely understood management
planning process aimed at sustainability
is the starting point. A management plan
should detail the outstanding universal
values as well as other values in the in-scribed
landscape and the policies chosen
to conserve these values. The plan should
also contain a framework for defining
management priorities, developing man-agement
actions, implementation and
monitoring of their impact.
All policies must relate to the state-ment
of significance for the heritage val-ues
exhibited in the designated cultural
landscape. These values will also have
been reinforced in the management vision
and site objectives.
By using a values-based management
rather than an issues-based management
approach, we also commit our research to
a much more complying vision of the who-lesome,
which is beneficial to the defini-tion
of cultural landscape and its implica-tion
with the Heritage List. The policies
need to address the components of the
landscape which have outstanding uni-versal
value such as:
• natural structure – the dramatically
visual landscape whose beauty is the
tourist attraction
• the relationship between the ongoing
culture of the local people and the land-scape
• viable and sustainable use of the re-sources
– for another 2000 years.
All policies revolve around assessing
vulnerability in the context of limits of
acceptable change. In other words, we
could ask this question to enlighten a
viable path of solvability:
2. How much of the twenty-first cen-tury
should be permitted to intrude in
these landscapes of outstanding universal
significance before their values are com-promised
and changed in meaning6?
The values are derived from interac-tion
of peoples with nature in a specific
place or ecosystem. A sustainable ap-proach
to conservation should be able to
moderate the new 21st century values into
the protection and promotion of the Uni-versal
Values contained and held in any
cultural landscapes.
3. Can this interaction remain au-thentic
while using modern techniques7?
For World Heritage cultural land-scapes
it is the integrity of the landscape
that is paramount – that is, the extent to
which the layered historical evidence,
meanings and relationships between ele-ments
remains intact and can be inter-preted
or deciphered in the landscape. As
the expert meeting on Desert Landscapes
and Oasis Systems in the Arab Region
(UNESCO report from Egypt, September
2001) confirmed, it is the integrity of the
relationship of culture with nature that
matters, not the integrity of nature or
culture alone.
Methodology
The following eight (8) guidelines for
practice stand out as particularly impor-tant
in managing cultural landscapes.
They recur in the management of ma-ny
World Heritage landscapes, though
they vary in detail and application de-pending
on the category of cultural land-scape
and the social and economic envi-ronment
of the place and they have been
a precious tools of speculative studies and
researches, that has enabled UNESCO to
approach with a great sense of conformity
and uniformity the significant sites, the
embedded cultures and the much more
strategic thinking of conservation, inter-preted
as a preventive tool for the future
generations and for the heritage of an-thropological
values, which instill in
every day’s life, the principle of humanity.
The eight following issues are sup-ported
and extracted by the UNESCO
document “ Proclamation of Masterpieces
of the oral and intangible Heritage of
Humanity” (1998).
1. Lack of awareness of and general
education about World Heritage val-ues
in cultural landscapes and their
relationship to society.8
This can be addressed through mass
media promotion, visitor centers at the
properties with exhibitions and displays
or guided tours, brochures and booklets,
films and videos.
Popular community support for the
412 The World Heritage and cultural landscapes
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 4(3). 2006 ISSN 1695-7121
conservation of the heritage values of a
place often translates into political sup-port
when the values are threatened, for
example by pressure for development or
lack of resources for maintenance. The
use of the World Heritage logo as an awa-reness-
raising device and marketing
brand is also to be encouraged in promot-ing
the inscribed cultural landscapes.
Beside this, awareness is a precious in-strument
of educational empowerment
and identity recognition and pride, for the
local population who find in the “inher-ited
value” a sustainable realm of pros-perity
and cultural symbiosis. In many
examples, it has been such a major moti-vator
for the preservation of values and
cultural scenarios, which had been threa-tened
by the globalization process.
2. Need for site-specific training for
those working in World Heritage cul-tural
landscapes to ensure that all the
values of a place are managed sensi-tively.
A range of skills is needed for manag-ing
cultural landscapes. Some generic
management and planning skills are re-quired
in all areas of site management,
such as organizational and financial
skills. Specialist skills will be required
depending on the natural, cultural and
social features of the cultural landscape.
For some cultural landscapes, maintain-ing
local cultural knowledge will be pa-ramount.
This has represented a quite hard cha-llenge
for those specialists who have re-motely
tried to investigate the area and
propose sustainable models of responsible
management, throughout the recruitment
of key-figures and personalities, who
could have helped the expertise require-ments
hunt.
However, traditional social settings
and cultures that have been dissolved
cannot be successfully recreated, only
similar systems can be developed anew.
The challenge then is to create new
and alternative structures that allow
revitalization rather than conserving
traditions in museums or turning the
landscape into a fossilized outdoor mu-seum.
Revitalization of local knowledge may
occur when older knowledge is rediscov-ered
and still existing forms of local
knowledge are re-evaluated. This was
highlighted in the restoration program for
the Kasubi Tombs in Uganda, in sustain-able
development policies for the Swedish
archipelago fishing industry, and in in-digenous
knowledge of fire in vegetation
management at Uluru in central Austra-lia.
3. Using farming and forestry policies to
define what changes can be permitted
in the landscape while still maintain-ing
their outstanding universal values,
and what techniques can be used to
ensure this.
Many cultural landscapes are the re-sult
of productive use of the land, and
support farming communities.
The products of current technologies –
quick-growing forest plantations, new
crops with a variety of visual effects as
well as biodiversity impacts, new materi-als
and forms such as plastic sheeting
and wind farms – will have an impact on
our cultural landscapes.
Given that cultural landscapes in the
past have reflected the cultures of differ-ent
periods (and local adaptations to pre-vailing
techniques), we should permit
change to continue in the category of
evolving cultural landscapes.
Following up this conceptualization,
we would like to ask ourselves a question.
But what are the limits of acceptable
change in land-use and agricultural pro-duction
in such landscapes?
The answer and challenge is to man-age
more efficient, intensive production
that increases the prosperity of the farm-ing
communities so that the cultural heri-tage
values in the landscape are not lost.
If the material evidence of successive
layers of landscape use remains intact,
we need to decide what degree of interfer-ence
or stitching in of new uses is permis-sible.
This is a major global issue in cultural
landscape maintenance and the answer
depends largely on local conditions, where
some trial and error may be acceptable so
long as the patterns in the landscape
which exhibit outstanding universal val-ues
are not compromised. Yet it is the
Mark Esposito and Alessandro Cavelzani 413
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 4(3). 2006 ISSN 1695-7121
human interaction with the landscapes
which must remain intact over time. For
different types of landscape – vineyards,
farmland, forests – there is a role for spe-cific
landscape type guidelines to ensure
that new built elements do not detract
from the significant components and fea-tures
in the landscape, for local trusts for
conserving landscape components, and for
a range of legal planning or permit ar-rangements
in conserving landscapes
with continuing agriculture and forestry.
One of the most challenging tasks is to
manage the visual values of the continu-ing
landscape.
There are many techniques now for
assessing the ability of a landscape to
accommodate or absorb new develop-ments.
The English Heritage Historic
Landscape Project details some of these
methodologies, which were underpinned
by the principle that change when prop-erly
planned will usually be more accept-able
than fossilization and will be sus-tainable.
This means that the interaction
with the landscape is controlled and
planned rather than just happening by
default, incremental change or over-whelming
forces.
On top of these consideration then, the
whole idea of “Human Geography”9 has
been implemented in many educational
endeavors and it has represented to new
leading-edge technique for a better impli-cation
of the use of the land, as a result of
human engineering, and consequently as
a result of a cultural element which is
implicit (or intrinsic) to the landscape
which is produced.
In other words, the landscape origi-nated
by forestry and agriculture is the
result of an attentive match between cul-ture
and skills, and between skills and
nature.
4. Managing tourism to ensure continu-ing
visitor access and appreciation of
the landscape.
World Heritage tourism has brought
employment to millions, often in remote
parts of the world: it has provided inspi-ration,
recreation, enjoyment and rest to
countless visitors. But it has also de-stroyed
and polluted unique, fragile and
pristine environments, threatened local
cultures, and devalued the heritage char-acteristics
that make a site both of out-standing
universal value and a desirable
tourist destination. Tourism also offers a
major avenue for public appreciation of
the values of World Heritage cultural
landscapes.
In the twenty-first century, the tourist
market places increasing importance on
enjoying authentic experiences authentic
settings, objects and stories, and if possi-ble
a guide or storyteller who lives in the
setting and owns the objects and stories.
Therefore using local people to interpret
their heritage is likely to lead to high
visitor satisfaction and increasing num-bers
of visitors.
A good example of the above men-tioned
scene is the constant reports and
presentations that occur and embody the
theme of Tourism and Bio-diversity im-pact.
It has become, with particular focus
within the past 10 years, a very common
table of discussion, whereas the impor-tance
of tourism as a leading economic
factor, collide with the poor sustainability
of the way tourism is handled.
Tourism10 is a value-adding activity to
the economic activities that have given
rise to the distinctive cultural landscape.
This is especially the case with rural
landscapes and associative cultural land-scapes.
The huge increase in tourist
numbers over the last decade visiting
Cinque Terre by train and on foot is an
indicator of this, while the increased
numbers at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National
Park are the result of intense marketing
coupled with provision of access and fa-cilities
outside but immediately adjacent
to the park.
Tourism as a new industry can have a
low impact on the cultural landscape yet
assist in the transition to a more complex
and diversified economic base for some
communities, especially those more re-mote
from metropolitan cities.
Relationships between the environ-ment
and the economy and standards
have to be further explored – testing is-sues
such as reinvestment of benefits into
local communities, promotion of authentic
local products, strategic alliances in pro-vision
of transport and accommodation.
414 The World Heritage and cultural landscapes
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 4(3). 2006 ISSN 1695-7121
Tourism should be regarded as a posi-tive
influence on management of cultural
landscapes and, if managed correctly, will
build support for the conservation of cul-tural
and natural heritage and provide
income to assist those living in or manag-ing
the landscape.
As a proof of this, WTO (World Tour-ism
Organization) and the Secretariat of
UN for Bio-diversity, work in tight alli-ance
for the better cooperation between
the financial urges and the environ-mental
necessities that our planet is daily
needed for.
5. Finding the resources to ensure eco-nomic
viability of operations to main-tain
the values of the cultural land-scape,
including ‘User Pays’ concepts
and other external income.
Generating income in ways that do not
conflict with heritage conservation and
are culturally sensitive is a management
challenge. It is difficult to generalize be-cause
management authority frameworks
differ so much across the world and all
have different rules concerning collection
and expenditure of income.
For designed landscapes such as gar-dens
or for archaeological sites, where the
managing authority controls or owns the
property, income can be derived from
entry charges, concessions, leases and
licenses. In larger continuing landscapes,
the managing authority has planning
controls only, the property is owned by
many farmers or other landholders who
collect the direct charges, and the manag-ing
authority is funded by taxes levied on
the landholders. This authority may also
involve farmers and landholders in the
management, not only through subsidies
but also through policies which will help
them make a profit from sustainable
management.
There is an increasing literature on
heritage economics, detailing a range of
techniques that could be considered in
cultural landscape protection11:
a) Sustainable development to support
the site, as with tourism or continued
farming.
b) Directing the income from site opera-tion
to site management.
c) Site sustainability through value add-ing
to agricultural and tourism prod-ucts.
d) Labels guaranteeing the quality and
origin of farm products.
e) Public funding through agricultural
subsidies for political or economic pur-poses
(such as keeping people resident
in the countryside, supporting exports,
etc.) or through other sources of fund-ing
for rural activities such as housing
repairs, one-off capital funding for in-frastructure,
training in new skills,
oral history and recording, or unem-ployment
benefits, which can be di-rected
towards maintenance of heri-tage
features in the cultural land-scape.
f) Private funding for programs, such as
establishing non-profit conservation
trusts; encouraging fund-raising part-nerships
with for-profit concerns; tax
breaks for charitable contributions; es-tablishing
special protected- area
funds on the basis of contributions
from the energy sector; private sector
investment in sustainable micro-scale
enterprises, especially in buffer zones,
to ensure more equitable distribution
of the benefits arising from such uses.
Sponsorship of activities or site repairs
is another major high-profile income
generator.
6. Developing landscape conservation
treatments and new techniques for
managing essential components in
the designated landscape.
Given that the primary aim of man-agement,
as we want to prove in this re-search,
is to retain the outstanding cul-tural
values in the landscape. All conser-vation
treatments must respect the exist-ing
fabric and maintain authenticity in
materials, design, workmanship and set-ting
so as to prolong the integrity of the
cultural landscape and allow it to be in-terpreted.
Care should be taken in intro-ducing
any new elements.
Treatment actions range from cyclical
maintenance to varying degrees of con-solidation,
restoration, continuing tradi-tional
ways of living or even adaptive re-use.
The appropriateness of treatments will
also vary depending on the type and scale
Mark Esposito and Alessandro Cavelzani 415
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 4(3). 2006 ISSN 1695-7121
of the cultural landscape:
in designed landscapes there may be
reconstruction of missing elements as at
Lednice (Czech Republic) or Potsdam
(Germany), rehabilitation and restoration
following damage as at Hampton Court
Palace gardens (UK) and reconstruction
via replanting as at Versailles (France)
following the destructive storms of 199812.
In other sites such as the alpine land-scapes
of the European transfrontier na-tional
parks, species that had disap-peared,
such as wolves, are being reintro-duced.
Management of Hadrian’s Wall illus-trates
the need for cooperation between a
large numbers of diverse partners in the
management of a linear cultural land-scape
– farmers,
tourists, archaeologists.
Insertion of new cattle sheds into the
landscape was a trade-off to ensure grea-ter
protection of the primary resource, the
archaeological heritage.
Protection also requires effective
communication when so many players are
involved.
7. Coping with impacts caused by proc-esses
and events or developments ex-ternal
to the site affecting or threaten-ing
the integrity of the designated cul-tural
landscape.
Threats to the integrity of World Heri-tage
cultural landscapes may come from
within or without.
They can be natural events such as
weather phenomena, or human-induced
such as war or disease, or they can derive
from the impact of management proc-esses,
such as from new developments in
the landscape, provision of utility ser-vices,
adaptation of historic structures for
new uses, activities in the buffer zone
with downstream effects, visitor pres-sures
and associated infrastructure, or
simply sheer ignorance of the conse-quences
of actions.
Sometimes the best heritage manage-ment
outcome may arise from external
processes such as through participation
in the “Environmental Impact Assess-ment
“process which leads to a new ar-rangement
and acceptance by all stake-holders
in that process.
Strategies for improving the risk-preparedness
of World Heritage cultural
properties consider reducing the impact of
natural disasters, armed conflict, indus-trial
pollution and other hazards of hu-man
origin.
These strategies can also be applied to
cultural landscapes. There is a developing
literature on both emergency prepared-ness
and disaster management and long-term
cumulative threats such as salinity
impact on heritage sites.
8. Supporting communities which main-tain
heritage values within the cul-tural
landscape especially where the
associative values of the landscape re-side
with those communities.
There is a large literature on commu-nity
participation in planning and pro-tected
area management. But within cul-tural
landscapes there are some very spe-cific
challenges:
• working with farming communities
resident in the inscribed property to en-sure
continuing sustainability of the pro-duction
and way of life
• maintaining associative values in
the landscape despite pressures such as
youth migration and new technologies
and involving indigenous peoples who are
the traditional custodians of the cultural
values which are expressed in the land-scape
• engaging in ‘social engineering’ to
assist with maintenance of traditional
activities (such as provision of housing for
guest workers; allowing tourists to view
traditional festivals) while respecting
local community wishes (such as no pho-tography
of rituals). World Heritage asso-ciative
cultural landscapes have special
needs for strategies and actions to main-tain
the traditional associations which
give that place its outstanding universal
values. Identification of these associative
values by a local community or special
group occurs during the nomination proc-ess
and they are confirmed by inscription.
In order to conserve these associative
values there is a need to pass on rituals
and traditional knowledge to the ‘right’
people culturally, that is, those who have
been initiated or are next-of-kin.
Maintenance of culturally viable or
416 The World Heritage and cultural landscapes
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 4(3). 2006 ISSN 1695-7121
strong communities with these associa-tive
values is subject to similar pressures
and problems throughout the world youth
attracted to cities and new ways of life
and being unwilling to undergo initiation
and training in required rituals and obli-gations.
Alternatively, young people may
remain on site with no economic liveli-hood
and fall prey to modern social prob-lems,
such as drugs and alcohol.
This is relevant to some World Heri-tage
cultural landscapes such as Uluru,
Tongariro, the Philippines rice terraces,
or Sukur (Nigeria)13. As well as opportu-nities
to pass on traditional skills and
knowledge, which are often dependent on
being present in the landscape when sea-sonal
changes and resources are avail-able,
managers of cultural landscapes
have to assist in maintaining the health
and well-being of those residents in
the landscape. This is illustrated in
the case of the community now resident
at Uluru.
Cultural associations must be main-tained
to keep the associative values alive
as detailed in the original cultural land-scape
listing.
For example, if no young people are
working or living traditionally, as re-vealed
by monitoring reports, then is the
associative cultural landscape put on the
World Heritage in Danger list or reclassi-fied
as a relict landscape?
This issue must be addressed by World
Heritage cultural landscape property
managers.
In conclusion, these eight issues recur
in landscape development and change, in
identifying threatened but valued land-scapes,
in determining acceptable levels
of intervention, and in managing old
landscapes and making new ones. They
occur worldwide as recent phenomena
and must be addressed by World Heritage
cultural landscape managers.
The message from all this is that sta-keholders
must have a knowledge about
the values present in their landscape and
must implement therefore, management
strategies able to protect the outstanding
universal values of World Heritage prop-erties.
Case study – Tasmanian Wilderness
World Heritage area14
The following case study illustrates
the updating of cultural values as a result
of further and ongoing research into as-pects
of the archaeology and history of the
Tasmanian Wilderness (Australia), a
property inscribed on the World Heritage
list in 1982 and expanded in 1989 in rec-ognition
of its outstanding World Heri-tage
values. Features of outstanding sig-nificance
include extensively glaciated
landscapes; undisturbed habitats of
plants and animals that are rare, endan-gered
and/or endemic and represent a
rich variety of evolutionary processes;
magnificent natural scenery and an im-pressive
assembly of Aboriginal sites that
include cave art. This unique combination
of universal values bringers, wants to
reinforce the blend that every landscape
can perform to present in its wholesome.
Human and natural values are not ne-cessarily
clearly distinguished one from
the other, but they end up belonging mu-tually,
while forging a quite strong sym-biosis
which aims at preserving issues
and local cultural landscapes, which de-termine
the importance of the World
Heritage within the necessities of preser-vation
for Humanity:
The Tasmanian Wilderness World
Heritage Area (TWWHA) covers ap-proximately
20% of Tasmania, 1.38 mil-lion
ha in the south-west of the island. It
includes Tasmania’s four largest national
parks, a range of other reserves and some
of the best wilderness areas in south-eastern
Australia.
During the 1989 World Heritage no-mination
process, the World Heritage
Committee did not agree to some Abo-riginal
values being considered as World
Heritage.
Only those identified in the 1982 no-mination
are recognized. When the area
was denominated in 1989, ICOMOS ad-vised
that further work was required to
determine the status of the area. This
work was specified in the 1992 and 1999
management plans for the TWWHA.
This body of work has produced a
greatly increased number of places with
cultural values. These total 746 Aborigi-
Mark Esposito and Alessandro Cavelzani 417
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 4(3). 2006 ISSN 1695-7121
nal sites (307 new sites) and approxi-mately
400 European historic sites. It has
also allowed a richer, deeper and more
intensive interpretation of the layered
evidence in the landscape to be consid-ered.
No dramatic new discoveries have
been made so as to alter the description of
cultural heritage in the 1989 nomination,
but the new information allows for con-sideration
of new interpretations in ac-cordance
with the new World Heritage
categories for cultural landscapes and
modified cultural criteria. There are sites
identified in the TWWHA which would
add weight to the existing values identi-fied
as being of outstanding universal
value. These sites meet World Heritage
cultural criteria (iii), (v) and (vi) but rep-resent
a fuller appreciation of the values
rather than just being related to aspects
of archaeological significance of a culture
that has disappeared.
Human occupation for 36,000 years is
however denied by the naming of the pla-ce
as wilderness. More particularly, since
rising sea levels separated Tasmania
from the mainland about 12,000 years
ago, Tasmanian Aboriginal culture has
survived one of the longest-known periods
of geographic and cultural isolation af-fecting
a society.
Archaeological surveys since 1982
have revealed occupation sites along the
coastlines, at the mouths of the retreating
glaciers in the Central Highlands, and
along pathways linking plain and moun-tains.
The TWWHA contains cultural land-scapes
and some of these contain out-standing
universal values worthy of
World Heritage listing.
1. For Aborigines the whole area is a
cultural landscape and this belief could be
sustained in a case for it as an associative
cultural landscape in accordance with
World Heritage category 39 (iii). The
beauty of its ‘superlative natural phe-nomena’
also contributes to this categori-zation.
2. Within the TWWHA there are areas
that could be categorized as relict cultural
landscapes in accordance with World
Heritage category 39 (ii), and these relate
especially to European land-use practices
which have now ceased. The uniquely
Tasmanian interaction of humans to the
natural resource resulted in these distinc-tive
landscapes:
(a) the pining landscapes of the Gor-don-
Macquarie Harbor – Raglan Range
which illustrate the range of techniques
used in this resource exploitation from
the convict era of the early 1800s to the
1940s;
(b) the hunting and snaring land-scapes
of montane grasslands on the Cen-tral
Plateau, although it could be argued
that they also illustrate both transference
of European ecological knowledge and
European adaptation to Aboriginal sea-sonal
exploitation of native fauna through
the reintroduction of traditional Aborigi-nal
burning practices to the north-western
mountain grasslands.
3. Fire has been the agent maintaining
a complex distribution of disclimax vege-tation,
which can be considered as a con-tinuing
landscape category for large areas
within the TWWHA, especially the but-tongrass
plains/sedge land which com-prise
53% of the vegetation in the
TWWHA (Jackson, 1999, p. 3). Fire not
only produces a successional mosaic but
causes extinction of communities and this
level of displacement appears to demand
a time span of human-induced fire suffi-ciently
long enough to affect soil fertility.
The palaeontological record in Tasmania
shows a twofold increase in open vegeta-tion
relative to closed forest during the
last glacial cycle. Eucalypt forest in-creased
relative to rainforest, and char-coal
increased relative to woody vegeta-tion,
and these changes occurred through
a variety of climates (Jackson, 1999, p. 1).
However, the most recent studies indicate
that the noticeable increase in fire activ-ity
about 40,000 years ago, when there
was no major climate change, is consid-ered
most likely to indicate Aboriginal
burning. This accelerated existing trends
rather than creating a wholesale land-scape
change, but it is difficult to sepa-rate
the effects of climate and human-induced
burning subsequently until the
European era (Kershaw et al., 2002, p. 3).
At the time of European settlement
there were extensive buttongrass plains
throughout south-western Tasmania.
Ecologically, it is unlikely that such ex-
418 The World Heritage and cultural landscapes
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 4(3). 2006 ISSN 1695-7121
tensive plains would have persisted for
more than about 250 to 1,000 years with-out
human-mediated fires. Aborigines
were seasonally active burning patches of
land in the early 1800s and creating open
country across which Europeans moved
swiftly in the 1820s in the midlands.
However, there is considerable anecdotal
evidence for major changes in the fire
regime of south-western Tasmania since
the removal of the Aborigines in the
1830s resulting in major wide-ranging,
landscape-scale fires in the 1890s and
1930s.
Aborigines probably used low-intensity
fires mainly in spring and autumn to
flush out game when hunting and to cre-ate
access tracks. The aim was to create a
large number of small, recently burnt
areas surrounded by thicker vegetation
(Marsden-Smedley, 1998, pp. 15–19). The
slow rate of vegetation change in south-west
Tasmania meant that the distribu-tion
of the majority of the current vegeta-tion
and soil types (especially peat forma-tion)
shows the result of long-term Abo-riginal
land-use practices.
The co-existence of extensive areas of
button grass moorland in close proximity
to highly fire-sensitive rainforest and
alpine heaths also supports the proposal
that the Aborigines burnt the former
when the wet forest communities, espe-cially
those containing coniferous species
such as King Billy, Huon and pencil pi-nes,
were too wet to burn. Given the time
period required for successional processes
and soil formation, these communities
must have co-existed for thousands of
years. Therefore, the current distribution
of vegetation and soils in this region
should not be described as natural and a
better description would be a cultural
landscape (Marsden- Smedley, 1998, p.
25).
A more detailed examination of the
antiquity and characteristics of seasonal
migration of hunter-gatherer societies in
alpine regions throughout the world is
required before the case for the TWWHA
is absolutely confirmed. In comparative
studies, like should be compared with
like. The fire-effects studies have already
compared similar ecosystems in New Zea-land,
Chatham Islands and Patagonia.
However, further research is required
into some aspects to allow a comprehen-sive
construction of the case. For exam-ple,
further studies into seasonal move-ment
for resource exploitation between
coastal areas, valleys and sub-alpine ar-eas
is required to fill out the pattern
emerging from recent studies.
For areas of similar ecosystem-based
landscapes like the buttongrass moor-lands
and the montane grasslands, scien-tific
evidence now points to the need for a
different park-burning regime to both
maintain the cultural landscape and to
maintain its biodiversity. Tasmanian
Parks and Wildlife Service Aboriginal
trainees are being employed to assist in
this new work and this in turn represents
a restoration of cultural practice in accor-dance
with the 1995 management plan.
The impact of the new burning regime
needs to be monitored regularly to check
that it is achieving the desired conserva-tion
objectives.
Cultural values are also increasingly
being interpreted to the public at visitor
centers, historic convict sites and former
logging sites. Tourist numbers rose from
453,000 in 1995 to 500,600 in 1999 (Len-non
et al., 2001, p. 79). Local people, the
Grining family, who were displaced when
the timber industry ceased, now operate
one of the major tourist boat services up
the Franklin River – the only way access
is permitted.
Conclusion
In this paper, we have illustrated in
particular the 8 UNESCO guidelines for
good practice, through crucial issues such
as sustainability, conservation and ethi-cal
conciliation of the Cultural Land-scapes.
Effective management of outstanding
universal values in World Heritage prop-erties
requires a continual management
process that reassesses the values of the
place/landscape and then adjusts on-site
management to conserve these new or
updated values. As the second round of
periodic reporting for World Heritage
properties is about to occur, the case of
the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heri-tage
Area illustrates a very good example
of effective values-based management.
Cultural Landscape is an important
and constitutional part of World Heri-tage,
as per our need of awareness-rising
for the Tourism stakeholders.
The challenge is on a daily basis, but
the results that have been achieved by
the foundation of World Heritage List are
amazing, as much as the promotion of
this culture as a valuable instrument of
observation, retention and pro-active con-
Mark Esposito and Alessandro Cavelzani 419
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 4(3). 2006 ISSN 1695-7121
servation of the heritage of our past, as
institutional to the formation of continu-ity
in the future years to come and for the
future generations.
References
Jackson, W. D.
1999 “The Tasmanian legacy of man and
fire”. Papers and Proceedings of the
Royal Society of Tasmania, 133(1): 1–
14.
Kershaw, P.; Clark, J. S.; Gill, A. M.;
D’costa, D. M.
2002 “A history of fire in Australia”. In R.
Bradstock, J. Williams and M. Gill
(eds.), Flammable Australia, the Fire
Regimes and Biodiversity of a Conti-nent.
Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity
Press. Pp. 3–26
Lennon, J.; Pearson, M.; Marshall, D.;
Sullivan, S.; Mcconvell, P.; Nicolls, W.;
Johnston, D.
2001 Natural and Cultural Heritage.
Australia State of the Environment
Report, Theme Report. Canberra:
Commonwealth Scientific and Indus-trial
Research Organization.
Marsden-Smedley, J. B.
1998 “Changes in southwestern Tasma-nian
fire regimes since the early
1800s”, Papers and Proceedings of the
Royal Society of Tasmania, 132: 15–29.
Lennon, J.
2001 Management Guidelines for World
Heritage Cultural Landscapes. Report
to the World Heritage Centre. Paris,
UNESCO, December.
2002 Cultural Heritage Values Update of
the Tasmanian Wilderness World
Heritage Area. Unpublished report to
the Department of Tourism, Parks,
Heritage and the Arts, Hobart, Tas-mania,
September.
The Getty Conservation Institute.
2002 Assessing the Values of Cultural
Heritage. Research report edited by
Marta de la Torre. Los Angeles, Calif.:
The Getty Conservation Institute.
NOTES
1 World Heritage, N. 36 publication of the
UNESCO, Paris 2004, San Marcos Ediciones.
2 UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scien-tific
Cultural Organization) www.unesco.org
3 Convention concerning the Protection of the
World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted by
UNESCO in 1972.
4 See above reference.
5 “Tell me about World Heritage”, Paris 2002,
Unesco Publishing.
6 See reference above.
7 See reference above.
8 The 8 criteria are supported and extracted by the
following document: UNESCO, 1998, Proclama-tion
of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible
Heritage of Humanity.
9 “The Importance of Sacred Natural Sites for
Biodiversity Conservation”, China, 2002
UNESCO Publishing.
10 Extract from the final report of „Tourism,
Cultural Diversity and Sustainable Develop-ment”,
July 2004, Barcelona, Spain
11 Cultural Tourism and sustainable development
project, UNESCO, October 2003.
12 Culture and Agriculture : Orientation Texts on the
1995 Theme. UNESCO, Paris, 1995, 68p.
CLT/DEC/PRO.1995.
13 Dacyl, J.W., Westin, C., Management of Cul-tural
pluralism in Europe. A Progress report
submitted to the 5th Ordinary Session of the Inter-
Governmental Committee of the World Decade
for Cultural Development 21-25 April, 1997.
14 The attached case study has been entirely ex-tracted
from: Tasmania Wilderness World Heri-tage
Area, Volume III, appendices B-G and Ref-erences,
January 1994, published by the “De-partment
of Environment and Land Management”
of Tasmania, Australia.
Recibido: 03 de enero de 2006
Reenviado: 5 de abril de 2006
Aceptado: 18 de abril de 2006
Sometido a evaluación por pares anónimos