Cultural heritage policy. The Alto Douro wine region - World Heritage Site. Is there an argument for reinforcing the role of the state?

              Vol. 4 Nº 3 págs. 421-428. 2006
www.pasosonline.org
© PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural. ISSN 1695-7121
Cultural heritage policy. The Alto Douro wine region - World Herita-ge
Site. Is there an argument for reinforcing the role of the state?
Lina Lourenço †
João Rebelo ‡
University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD)
Abstract: In this paper we trace the emergence of a specific case of cultural policy: the example chosen is a
UNESCO World Heritage site, namely the Alto Douro Wine Region (ADW) a portuguese living and evolving
cultural landscape. In order to contextualize the particularities of the means that have been adopted for the
management of the ADW, we use Throsby’s (2001) typology of most commonly-used cultural heritage policy
instruments. Additionally we draw on the arguments that are frequently used to support public intervention in
this sphere. We conclude that ADW’s management policy should: 1) use binding agreements to operational-ize
a range of measures that compensate farmers who become providers of cultural products; 2) strengthen
education and information so as to promote greater physical access and personal appreciation of the ADW’s
cultural goods and services; and 3) formulate an integrated set of social policies able to mitigate the negative
socio-demographic trends that characterize the region and its population.
Keywords: World Heritage; Alto Douro wine region; Cultural heritage; Public intervention
Resumo: Neste artigo, salientamos a emergência de um caso específico de política cultural: o exemplo escol-hido
é um local de património mundial da UNESCO, designadamente a região do Alto Douro Vinhateiro
(ADW), uma paisagem cultural viva e evolutiva. Para contextualizar as particularidades dos meios que têm
sido adoptados para a gestão do ADW, tivemos como referência os instrumentos de política de património
cultural de Throsby (2001), comummente utilizados. Adicionalmente avançámos com os argumentos frequen-temente
usados para apelar à intervenção pública nesta esfera. Concluímos que a política de gestão do ADW
deve: 1) estabelecer um conjunto de medidas compensatórias para os agricultores que se tornam fornecedores
de produtos culturais; 2) reforçar a educação e formação para promover maior acesso físico e apreciação pes-soal
dos bens e serviços culturais do ADW; e 3) formular um conjunto integrado de políticas sociais capazes
de mitigar as tendências sócio-demográficas desfavoráveis que caracterizam a região e a sua população.
Palavras-chave: Património Mundial; Alto Douro Vinhateiro, Paisagem Cultural e Política Pública.
† • Lina Lourenço. Assistant. Department of Economics and Sociology (DES) University of Trás-os-Montes and
Alto Douro (UTAD). Ee-mail: lsofia@utad.pt
‡ • 2. João Rebelo. Full Professor. Department of Economics and Sociology (DES) University of Trás-os-Montes
and Alto Douro (UTAD). E-mail: jrebelo@utad.pt
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Introduction
Nowadays, for a number of reasons,
the state is called upon – almost auto-matically
– to intervene in the cultural
sphere. Thus, in many countries, govern-ment
attitudes and policy priorities as
well as public opinion, have shifted, and
now tend to pay greater attention to the
cultural sphere.
In this paper, the Alto Douro Wine
Region (ADW) has been selected as the
object of study in order to test the above
assertion. The ADW is a living and evolv-ing
landscape whose cultural uniqueness
and value was internationally recognized
in December 2001 by its inclusion in
UNESCO’s list of world heritage sites.
Due to this inclusion Portuguese state
was automatically attributed a reinforced
role in the conservation/preservation of
the cultural landscape. But are the in-struments
in use in the heritage cultural
sector adequate or sufficient with regard
to ADW reality and its specificities
namely its relation with the agricultural
sector and the social life of the popula-tion?
The main aim in preparing this
paper was to assess the degree to which
the means and measures that to date
have served public policy in the cultural
heritage sphere and that have been
widely referred to in the literature, are
appropriate in the case of the ADW re-gion.
To answer this question we estab-lished
an economic basis to ADW policy.
In order to achieve these aims, in ad-dition
to the introductory section, Section
2 provides a review of the theoretical ar-guments
in favor of public intervention in
this sphere; Section 3 looks at the defini-tion
of the ADW as a world heritage site,
while Section 4 provides an analysis of
the role of the state in the ADW with a
view to developing an economic concep-tual
framework that could justify cultural
policy as applied to the ADW. The paper
concludes with some final reflections.
The theoretical argument of public inter-vention
in the cultural sphere
The economic underpinnings of cul-tural
policy contain a series of arguments
in favor of government intervention and
point to a number of different policy in-struments
and measures that can be ap-plied.
First there is the efficiency argu-ment,
the fact that cultural products are
ever more thought of as public goods, and
the recognition that inherently cultural
heritage items generate externalities.
Then there are normative issues to take
into account, including the notion that
cultural products constitute “merit
goods”, and the perceived need to provide
more and better information regarding
cultural conservation. Finally, there are
INSTRUMENTS AIMS
“Public ownership and operation of heritage insti-tutions,
facilities and sites”
The coordination of various policies; also, given the
high costs of heritage goods/services, equity issues
are incorporated in policy (Mason, 1998).
Delivery: direct provision
“Financial support for the maintenance, operation
and restoration of heritage,”
Maintenance of current quality levels; encourage
those initiatives that have the greatest spillover ef-fects;
stimulate new cultural activities (Towse,
1994).
Delivery: financial and tax benefits
“Regulation limiting or constraining private ac-tion
in dealing with cultural heritage,
Promotion of behavioral change (Giardina and Rizzo
(1994); Throsby (1997, 2001)
Delivery: Hard/soft regulation
“Education and the provision of information”. Better conservation decisions (Throsby, 2001)
Important role of information in (a) identification
and documentation; (b) recognition/certification; (c)
stakeholder coordination; (d) education; and (e)
persuasion (Mason, 1998)
Table 1. Heritage policy measures currently in use. Source: compiled by the author.
Lina Lourenço and João Rebelo 423
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equity questions arising out of the differ-ential
access to cultural products that
people currently enjoy.
Regarding the policies that naturally
derive from such interventionist argu-ments,
Throsby (2001:89) identifies four
groups of measures currently in use in
the heritage sphere. Table 1 presents
these policy instruments and their corre-sponding
aims.
Notwithstanding the ostensible auton-omy
of each of the above-mentioned policy
measures, it is generally recognized that
optimum efficacy is best achieved by us-ing
a number of instruments in a com-plementary
way. In brief, public owner-ship
and the management of heritage
institutions provide the basis for direct
state provision of heritage goods/services,
and regulatory measures (such as finan-cial
penalties and incentives) permit spe-cific
types of behavior to be promoted
and/or modified. Though information can
be deployed to coordinate efforts, to
change attitudes and behavior, and to
educate current and future generations, it
can also be used to complement all the
other forms of intervention to which gov-ernment
has recourse.
Nevertheless the definition of cultural
heritage1 embraces various items. For
example UNESCO (1972) considers as
susceptible of classification: monuments,
groups of buildings and sites “which are
of outstanding universal value”.
Due to this multidimensional concept
we put the question if the above general
conceptual framework about heritage
policy measures currently in use is suffi-cient
to apply to a specific case that is a
“cultural landscape”.
The Main Features of The Alto Douro
Wine Region World Heritage Site (ADW)
Description
In December 2001, UNESCO included
the ADW in its list of World Heritage
sites as an evolving and living landscape.
The “cultural heritage good” itself is Por-tuguese,
and embraces 13 counties (con-celhos)
of the Douro Demarcated Wine
Region, the first such zone to be created
anywhere in the world.
The feature of the ADW that makes it
unique is the way its landscape has been
modified by the terracing that successive
generations of farmers have undertaken
over the centuries, thereby taming a
natural environment that was, and still
remains extremely challenging: precipi-tous
gradients, harsh climate and low
levels of rainfall. Vineyard agriculture
has long predominated and has given rise
to the internationally famous “Port wine”.
The landscape exhibits both natural
and cultural features. The physical envi-ronment
is characterized by steep in-clines,
complex systems of valleys, water
resources limited by the scarcity of rain-fall,
vineyards everywhere, interspersed
with other Mediterranean crops such as
olives and almonds. The rural landscape
has its own particular palette of colors, its
own smells, and above all, its silence. The
cultural dimension of the landscape
draws heavily on the architecture of its
estates (quintas) and smaller outlying
farm houses (casais), the key lines of
communication (the Douro waterway, the
riverside railway, the winding country
roads and paths), the patterns of cultiva-tion
dominated by the limited crops farm-ers
have chosen to grow there, the exten-sive
use of stone-faced terracing to limit
erosion in the vineyards, and the ever-present
chapels and sanctuaries that
frequently dominate the highest points.
UNESCO has summarized as follows
the way in which the ADW’s main land-scape
features comply with key criteria
for selection as a world heritage site:
”The Alto Douro Region has been pro-ducing
wine for nearly 2000 years and its
landscape has been moulded by human
activities.
Criterion (iv) The components of the
Alto Douro landscape are representative
of the full range of activities associated
with winemaking - terraces, quintas
(wine-producing farm complexes), vil-lages,
chapels, and roads.
Criterion (v) The cultural landscape of
the Alto Douro is an outstanding example
of a traditional European wine-producing
region, reflecting the evolution of this
human activity over time.” (UNESCO,
2001: whc.unesco.org/sites/1046.htm).
The landscape and heritage of the
ADW are intimately connected to the
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living conditions and social characteris-tics
of the local population, as witnessed
by the fact that the corresponding prop-erty
rights are distributed among myriad
owners namely private vineyards. In gen-eral
terms, the region is losing population
and that which remains increasingly
dominated by the elderly; aside from
these demographic characteristics, there
is a large section of the population with
little or no schooling. These interrelated
factors impose key constraints on the
types of policies that can be applied to the
ADW world heritage site.
Particularities of the safeguard proc-ess
Compared to other items of cultural
heritage, as a historical monument, the
safeguarding process of a cultural land-scape
presents some pecularities. These
area result of its living and evolving na-ture
and are summed up in the next five
points:
• A living and evolving cultural heri-tage.
The ADW is a living and evolving
cultural heritage and this sets it apart
from other components of our cultural
heritage, such as historical monuments
which are much more rooted in the past,
remaining largely static in social terms
(though our perception of their impor-tance
may change over time), and there-fore
more immutable;
• Multi-faceted heritage product. The
ADW is more a “multi-faceted” complex of
heritage products than a single cultural
product. The shape and dynamics of the
landscape depend (in particular) on the
day-to-day and professional activities and
economic decisions of vineyard owners.
For this reason, in contrast to the purely
heritage items that typically are no
longer associated with the activity that
brought them into being – and therefore
only need to be physically preserved, the
ADW has to be simultaneously preserved
and (re)produced.
• External conditions. A number of ex-ternal
conditions (related to various eco-nomic
pressures, the low profitability of
the vineyard sector, labour supply con-straints,
and the socio-economic profile of
the population) require that the ADW
maintain (rather than transcend) its an-cestral
techniques and practices ;
• Dynamism and development. The
process of conserving the landscape can
neither ignore the productive and heri-tage-
related aspects of the past, nor the
legitimate needs and demands of its pro-ducers.
Therefore, the conservation proc-ess
has to be dynamic, and as a result,
must exhibit greater tolerance towards
the contemporary issues and pressures of
development, as distinct from what typi-cally
happens with other types of heritage
products, in which conservation is much
more static; and
• Multiple actors. The process of simul-taneously
treating cultural heritage as
something to be protected and out of
which value may be generated necessarily
involves more actors – namely both tech-nical
experts and private vineyard own-ers,
whereas in the majority of other cul-tural
heritage cases (where ownership
may be predominantly or exclusively pub-lic/
institutional), only sectoral specialists
are active in policy formulation and im-plementation.
The ADW and the role of the State
Having presented the singularities in-herent
to a cultural landscape, in this
section we draft a table to constitute the
economic basis for heritage policy as ap-plied
to the ADW. In this sense, table 2
summarizes the pro-intervention argu-ments
and the policy forms each might
take.
From the standpoint of appropriate
policy measures, given the public goods
nature of cultural landscapes and the fact
that such items are susceptible of gener-ate
external benefits, the full cost of con-serving
the cultural landscape2 of the
ADW should not fall on the Douro vine-yard
owners. Indeed, they should receive
compensation for the contribution to the
conservation of the cultural landscape
that they make, simply by continuing to
be active in the sector.
In this regard, the most appropriate
means would consist of financial assis-tance,
provided directly through grants
and subsidies, and/or indirectly through
fiscal incentives and tax breaks. In re-turn,
those benefiting would be bound by
Lina Lourenço and João Rebelo 425
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the regulations relating to the conserva-tion
of cultural landscapes.
A further issue raised by public inter-vention,
and of particular importance
with regard to the ADW, relates to the
provision of information to both producers
and consumers:
• Producers. Given the social and
economic characteristics of the ADW’s
population in general, and of its grape
growers in particular, the level of
schooling and training are somewhat
low, and therefore it would be inap-propriate
for them to shoulder the en-tire
burden of choosing the best tech-niques
of landscape conservation (Re-belo
et al., 2001). Thus the provision of
information by public institutions
(central and/or local) should take the
form of training programs for the
Douro population combined with in-creases
in the scientific research un-dertaken
on the problems and potenti-alities
of the ADW.
• Consumers. With regard to the con-sumer,
despite the fact that – in prin-cipal
– the inclusion of the ADW in
UNESCO’s list of world heritage sites
should help substantially in the pro-motion
of the region, there is still very
little information available on the
quality tourism circuit, and there is
generalized ignorance of the range and
scale of the cultural heritage that the
ADW offers (FRAH, 2000). In a sense
this is not surprising, because the
PRO-INTERVENTION ARGUMENTS PROPOSED POLICY MEASURES
1. Market failure
The public goods nature of cultural landscapes;
External benefits: on consumption and on
production;
Direct/indirect financial assistance with the aim of
allowing local producers to share in externalities in
return for submission to public regulation
Impose (obligatory/coercive) regulations so as to
preserve the cultural characteristics of the landscape
2. Incomplete and/or inaccurate information
Training initiatives for the local population; Increase
in local population’s self esteem;
Increase in research studies in/on the region
a) On the part of the producer
Either relating to the best means of preserving the
cultural landscape, and/or due to poor levels of
schooling and/or training
b) On the part of the consumer
Either due to limited knowledge of the cultural
goods available; and/or because of limited public-ity
on the cultural goods available in the “quality
tourism” circuit.
Promotion of education;
Greater provision of information;
Easier physical access;
Expansion of “intellectual” access;
Improved signposting;
More visitor centers “ (centers for “heritage interpre-tation”)
3. Poor living standards of key contributors to ADW landscape production/conservation
The low level of self-esteem may threaten local
residents’ continued involvement in vineyard
production, thereby casting doubt on sustainabil-ity
of the ADW as a cultural landscape.
Measures to promote a generalized redistribution of
income and/or greater equity in the distribution of
regional value-added, with a view to at least main-taining
the status quo, if not actually to improve the
standard of living of the poorest strata.
Table 2. The ADW World Heritage Site: pro-intervention arguments and measures. Source: own elabo-ration.
426 Cultural Heritage Policy ...
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ADW is more than just an area of out-standing
natural beauty, and it re-quires
more than just the five senses
to fully appreciate it. Behind the ter-races,
the stone walls and the Medi-terranean
crops, there lies the complex
2000 year history of the peoples that
successively imposed themselves on
the landscape. In order to promote
this physical and social cultural heri-tage,
not only information but educa-tion
is required. Furthermore, a tre-mendous
investment effort has to be
made in better infrastructure and
more helpful signposting so that
physical access is improved. Nor
should intellectual access be ignored:
more visitor centers are required, so
that all aspects of the cultural land-scape
can be more fully appreciated;
local staff need to be recruited and
trained to act as guides and interpret-ers;
the national and regional popula-tion
needs to be more thoroughly in-formed
through education and train-ing
programs. Also, if we understand
“heritage” as a process by which his-tory
and memory are used to construct
contemporary products for a wide
range of distinct clienteles, each with
their own needs, and not simply as a
means of filling leisure time (Vicente,
2002), then that heritage has to be
continually interpreted and reinter-preted3.
However, the continuation of the tra-ditional
cultivation systems is dependent
on two factors: 1) life conditions of the
ADW population and 2) settlement of
young people in the region. In this sense,
these reflections are an argument for
public intervention requiring equity or
income redistribution by the producers.
Nevertheless it is not an argument exclu-sively
for cultural activity due to the
symbiotic relation between this and agri-cultural
activity.
To sum up, we can conclude that the
cultural political instruments more ap-propriate
to ADW are: information provi-sion,
financial support and regulation. As
the literature says, efficiency in cultural
policy is found in complementary use of
various instruments.
Nevertheless, due to the specific fea-tures
inherent in the conservation of
landscapes in general, we can conclude
that in the specific case of cultural land-scapes,
there is a larger role to be played
by the state. The nature of this expanded
state role is less a question of form (given
that the measures it can deploy in this
sphere are appropriate), and rather more
a question of intensity. More specifically,
the state needs to intervene:
• by making more and better informa-tion
available (to enable the public to
“interpret” i.e. more fully appreciate
the cultural landscape they are ex-periencing;
to this end, the state can
(a) improve and increase physical and
intellectual access to public revenues
arising out of the use of such public
goods and (b) more clearly differenti-ate,
in the minds of the public, the
natural and the humanised landscape;
• to improve the co-ordination and com-bination
of the various measures
available to it;
• to improve the integration of cultural
policies with those relating to other
sectors, especially agricultural, since
cultural production is indissociable
from the vineyard economy; and
• in the more accurate and equitable
imputation of costs and benefits relat-ing
to cultural activities, given that
cultural production involves the un-dertaking
of other activities.
Final remarks
The ADW as a living and evolving cul-tural
landscape is the result of various
generations’ arduous work to transform a
rough wilderness in to a singularly beau-tiful
landscape which produces the inter-nationally
famous “Porto” wine.
The cultural landscape preserva-tion/
conservation exhibits public good
properties and has the potential to pro-duce
external benefits related with its use
or with its existence in sustainable condi-tions.
On the other hand, due to the so-cial
characteristics of the ADW popula-tion,
both information and training tend
to be low. Furthermore, we identified
certain problems in preserving the cul-tural
landscape that must be considered
Lina Lourenço and João Rebelo 427
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if we want to establish a rigorous concep-tual
framework as the basis of cultural
policy.
In this paper, we conclude that if the
regulations that restrict agents/owners
actions allow them to protect and value
the heritage, the financial support is the
incentive for these actions and necessary
to cover the cost increase that eventually
can occur. Information is the key instru-ment
both for producers and consumers.
Finally, because of the low profitability
inherent in responsible activity in the
countryside (agricultural activity) there is
also a need to compensate producers.
The intrinsic relation between the cul-tural
and agricultural activities points to
a reinforced role of the state: a) to coordi-nate
measures; b) to distinguish/separate
the costs and benefits of each activity; c)
to adjust the cultural policy in the context
of other sector-based policies.
References
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NOTES
1 Koboldt (1997:52) defines cultural heritage as
“Common understanding of the environment that
has been passed on from earlier generations”.
2 These costs include: (1) the continued use of
building materials and infrastructures that in
other regions could be substituted by cheaper
and/or more effective ones; (2) the use of special-ized
labor; (3) the continued use of antiquated
cultivation techniques that further limit the al-
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PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 4(3). 2006 ISSN 1695-7121
ready limited mechanization possibilities, thereby
contributing to lower productivity and higher
production costs.
3 This corresponds to what Hutter (1997: 8) has
referred to as the phase of “communicative mainte-nance”,
in which constant reinterpretation – consist-ing
of the provision of new interpretations and the
establishment of new relationships between subject
and object – helps the memory to retain the objects
that make up our cultural heritage.
Recibido: 02 de enero de 2006
Reenviado: 06 de julio de 2006
Aceptado: 18 de julio de 2006
Sometido a evaluación por pares anónimos