Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 3
Between International Law, Kastom
and Sustainable Development:
Cultural Heritage in Vanuatu
Katharina Serrano and Milena Stefanova
Introduction
The Pacific is well known for its cultural diversity, which is expressed through
hundreds of languages, long-standing cultural traditions across largely dispersed
island communities, works of Pacific art, and land sites of unique cultural impor-
tance for Pacific people. With the intensification of globalization in post-colonial
times, social, economic and political transformations within Pacific societies have
often resulted in economic overexploitation of cultural heritage with little tangible
benefits for Pacific indigenous people (Jones 1998 ). Over the last couple of
decades, there has been growing recognition of the economic, environmental and
social importance of cultural heritage and increased attention to its protection in
international, regional and national agendas.
National legal systems in the Pacific are characterized by legal pluralism, by
which we mean the “coexistence and interaction of multiple legal orders” within a
given social context (Meinzen-Dick and Pradhan 2002 : 4). For the majority of the
population, which has little contact with the state, customary governance continues
to play an important role in maintaining law and order at the local level (Jowitt 2009 ).
International law, as yet another pluralistic dimension, plays a substantial part in the
attempt to overcome the lack of overt institutional support for the enactment of
legislation that provides for a homogenous preservation of cultural heritage sites
across the Pacific. The new legal pluralist theory has acknowledged the role
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