Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
nature and of man, and areas … which are of outstanding universal value from the
historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological points of view”. In this, Article
1 of the WHC relates cultural heritage to the wider concept of natural conservation
while Article 2 is more specific in its reference to sites, monuments and groups of
buildings of inter-generational value for people belonging to a particular group,
community or nation.
And yet, despite the rigidness of legal clauses, the UNESCO concept of cultural
heritage has considerably expanded in recent years (Melnychuk
2010
). This devel-
opment is not only related to the World Heritage Committee's decision in 1992 to
add a cultural landscape category to its List or to extend the concept to include
ethnographic or industrial heritage; it is directly related to the simultaneous evolu-
tion of the more comprehensive concept of 'cultural commons', which includes
“living expressions and the traditions that countless groups and communities world-
wide have inherited from their ancestors and transmit to their descendants, in most
cases orally” (Buzio and Re
2010
: 15). The latter characteristic has been formally
recognized through the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural
Heritage, adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on 17 October 2003.
Pacific countries have been rather hesitant in the area of intangible heritage
protection: the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage
(UNESCO
2003
) has (as of August 2010) only been ratified by three countries from
the region: Tonga (2010), Fiji (2010) and Papua New Guinea (2008). At the 34th
session of the World Heritage Committee meeting in Brasilia (25 June-02 August
2010), however, two new Pacific sites have been allowed to join the exclusive club
of WHC protected sites of outstanding universal value: the Bikini Atoll, Nuclear
Test Site in the Marshall Islands, and the Phoenix Islands Protected Area in Kiribati.
For both countries these are the first WHC nominations. Together with the Kuk
Early Agricultural Site in Papua New Guinea (2008), East Rennell in the Solomon
Islands (1998), and Chief Roi Mata's Domain in Vanuatu (2008), there are (as of
August 2010) just five officially recognized UNESCO cultural heritage sites in the
Pacific. Although further sites are awaiting decisions from UNESCO Advisory
Bodies regarding their inscription onto the World Heritage List,
1
the Pacific remains
an under-represented region in terms of nominations and inscriptions of cultural
heritage sites (ICOMOS
2004
). There are various reasons for this, but the fact that
“few of the Pacific Island countries or territories have documented their cultural
heritage places or have legislation to protect them” has been pointed out in recent
regional studies (Smith and Jones
2008
).
In order to eliminate this imbalance, the 2009 Pacific Programme was launched
in 2003 under the umbrella of the World Heritage Global Strategy (UNESCO
2009a,b
). The program's key goals included raising regional awareness of WHC,
enhancing regional co-operation in its ratification and implementation, as well as
capacity building through government and NGO partnerships. The 2004 Action
1
See Tentative List inscriptions in Table
3.1
, Annex.
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