FEATURES NEWS THE RISING NEPAL (DAILY)

Heritage Sites

By Rabi Jung Pandey

NEPAL is a country having international glory for adventure and culture bewilderment. The number of world heritage sites within a small limited area has pointed out the importance and authenticity of its culture, tradition, and ethnicity. These heritage sites have become an indispensable resource for the development and promotion of tourism in the urban as well as rural sector of the country. However, some of the important heritage sites are under threat. If necessary action or well-organised programme for conservation is not initiated, much of our heritage may disappear in the near future.

Inspection

Though some international organisations and national heritage conservation programmes seem to be active on conserving our heritage, some of them are on the list of endangered sites. Recently a high level technical team of UNESCO and the World Heritage Committee inspected the heritage sites in Kathmandu to evaluate the suggestions that was given to Nepal regarding her conservation programme.

The 1972 Convention concerning the Protection of the World Culture and Natural Heritage was adopted by UNESCO in response to increasing threats to sites of cultural and natural heritage, that especially in countries that have neither the financial nor the technical and scentific resources they need to mitigate the dangers. The Convention underscores the fact that physical cultural heritage and, in many cases, natural heritage is non-renewable, irreplaceable resource. More and more sites are at risk of degradation due to direct or indirect result of urbanisation, natural resource exploitation, population growth, pollution and other phenomena of modern industrial civilisation. A site’s physical and cultural integrity also faces an array of indirect threats: atmospheric pollution, traffic, vibration, encroachment and intrusive commercial development.

As such site management must take into account the local and national plans, forecasts of demographic growth or decline, economic factors, traffic projections and industrial zoning and preventive measures to mitigate various types of man-made and natural disasters. Successful protection and maintenance of World Heritage require continuous assessment, inventory, information management, research and administration. It is the process that guarantees a World Heritage site’s survival as a sustainable resource.

In the past, the study of tourism was commonly, thought to be a superfluous activity. Tourism was simply defined as an activity dependent on three operative elements: discretionary income, leisure time, and social sanctions permissive of travel. However, at present the research has touched upon these elements and their possible impact on host communities. In the recent decades the tourist activity and their impacts have become a matter of great attention to the changing world.

To preceive tourism as a cultural industry is to acknowledge the natural environment, built environment, icons, and attractions of destinations as part of the cultural package. As tourism develops into a major international as well as national industry, questions and debates about sustainability, authenticity, social impacts, indigeneous cultures and so on reflect the cultural dimension of tourism. The planners need to identify and address the acceptable and unacceptable forms and limits of tourism. They also need to answer, whether these new forms of tourism, specially rural tourism or indigenous/ethnic tourism, ecotourism, and even adventure tourism, intrude the destination community.

Tourism and preservation may appear to be strange bedfellows, but with proper management they are a winning combination. Sustainable tourism can bring improved income and living standards for the local people. It can revitalised local culture, especially traditional crafts and customs. It can stimulate the rural economy by creating demand for agricultural products and inject capital in the rural areas.

With tourists, becoming increasingly attracted to environmentally sound holidays, the adoption of sustainable practices enhances the corporate image. But most important for World Heritage, the sustainable tourism contributes to the conservation and protection of natural and cultural features, generates additional finance and fosters greater public and local awareness of protected areas and environment. The simple fact is that preservation pays. Sharing heritage with visitors means reaping the economic benefits of tourism. Only proper planning, management and control can ensure that a World Heritage site will live up to its commercial potential and survive intact into the future.

Technically, heritage tourism is defined as the phenomenon in which the cultural, historical and ethnic components of a society are harnessed as resources to attract tourists, as well as develop tourism industry. However, this has often been criticised in many parts of the globe for converting local cultures and lifestyles into ‘commodities’ for sale to foreign audiences. It is also argued that cultural commodification contributes to the detraction of social customs, the alienation of residents and the creation of homogeneity between places. Sometime planners warn that the economic allure of tourism and the need to cater to tourists is a key reason for the ‘mythic reconstruction’ of places and the falsification of histories and identities.

However, it has been widely accepted that when cultural event is co-opted with destination area by tourism, it becomes a consumer product. A number of important points have raised to throw light on the wider context of the heritage commodification (conservation and development) process.

Firstly, communal assertions of identity, increasing local appreciation of heritage and civic awareness have contributed to the ‘new urban renaissance.’ Changes in the urban cultural landscapes are best understood as the outcome of multiple factors will interact with one another. So it would be an oversight to consider local cultures passive, and proclaim tourism as the most important agent of social change.

Secondly, heritage has not been considered as a relic but a dynamic and multi-purpose resource or a form of capital that has moulded and transformed for diverse audiences. The commodification process has helped balance between visitors and the local community by fulfilling the needs of residents that could have been either in marginalised or totally neglected form. It has become possible for the heritage entrepreneur to serve multiple goals at one time without alienating any particular group of people.

Unquestionably, heritage conservation leads to changes in the identity and land uses of certain other places. However, an alternative way to view these changes would be to say that ‘zones of discard’ are revalued in the name of urbanisation and converting them into useful environments for visitors and locals.

Imperative

Heritage tourism products are geared towards global audiences as well as home communities, and it is imperative to explore the heritage development process as traversing (or attempting to traverse) the tourist-local divide. Heritage development takes various forms in different places depending on the success of the planning authority or entrepreneur in bridging the tourist-local rift.

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