Cultural heritage can provide a sense of place and identity for people around the world. However, it can also be under threat.
Efforts to preserve cultural heritage are important. This includes preserving relics, languages, and traditions. It also involves educating the public about these issues. The intangible value of cultural heritage has been a challenge to quantify.
Defining Cultural Heritage
When people think of cultural heritage, they usually think of artifacts like paintings and prints, monuments, buildings, and archaeological sites. But in fact, cultural heritage is much more than that. It is a way of life that a community passes on from generation to generation. It includes everything from traditional activities and practices to languages, customs, artistic expressions, values, and more.
It can be tangible or intangible, and it can include both physical objects and non-physical qualities. There are many different organizations that work to preserve and protect cultural heritage around the world, including government ministries of culture, national museums, libraries and archives, intergovernmental organizations such as UNESCO, and nonprofits like the Smithsonian Institution.
Preserving cultural heritage can be a challenging task, and there are many different threats that it may face. Some of these threats are natural, such as weather or erosion, while others are more man-made, such as urbanization or conflict and terrorism.
Identifying Cultural Heritage Sites
A cultural heritage site can be a physical object, such as an historic building, town site, or work of monumental sculpture. It can also be a natural area that is of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science, conservation or human history.
Similarly, intangible cultural heritage can be an ensemble of traditions that includes the beliefs, values and knowledge of a community and its members that have been passed down over time. It can include a dizzying array of activities, including dance, music and food, such as tango and flamenco, Viennese coffee house culture, Azerbaijani carpet weaving, Jewish ceremonial food, Kabuki theatre and polyphonic singing from Central Africa.
UNDP projects identify legally protected Cultural Heritage areas (including sites that have been designated a World Heritage Property), and ensure that project activities comply with the defined national or local Cultural Heritage regulations, protected area management plans and conservation master plans for those areas. Where necessary, UNDP projects support the preparation of an appropriate Heritage Impact Assessment for such areas.
Preserving Cultural Heritage Sites
Cultural heritage sites are important to many people, providing a sense of identity and belonging and connecting them with their ancestors. They also help preserve historical narratives, allowing us to learn from the past and avoid repeating mistakes. Furthermore, they promote tourism and economic growth, allowing individuals to share their culture with others.
Preserving cultural heritage requires a collaborative effort between individuals, local communities, and governments. However, preservation is not without its challenges. Natural disasters, neglect, and the illicit trade of artifacts can all threaten cultural heritage sites.
To address these issues, many organizations, including the U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, work to raise awareness and support heritage protection worldwide. Educational initiatives can also help combat destruction and looting by incorporating cultural heritage into school curricula and university syllabi. Moreover, integrating cultural heritage into social justice initiatives can ensure that all members of a community have a voice in safeguarding their heritage. Lastly, establishing more effective coordination with nonstate armed groups can improve the ability to protect cultural heritage during armed conflict.
Sustaining Cultural Heritage Sites
Cultural heritage encapsulates the past accomplishments of societies, provides people with a sense of identity and belonging, connects them to their ancestors, promotes diversity and tolerance, and helps us learn from history so we can avoid repeating mistakes. This is why cultural heritage is important to protect. But protecting cultural heritage requires a lot of work. It involves the work of antiquarians, historians, philologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, museum curators and archivists. It also requires the cooperation of government agencies, community advocacy, and professional development. It is a challenging task and one that needs all the help it can get.
Sadly, there are many threats to cultural heritage: economic (lack of funding); environmental (such as climate change); human-made threats such as conflict and terrorism; and natural disasters like earthquakes and fires that destroy art galleries and museums (like the recent destruction of Palmyra). This is why we need an international system for safeguarding culture. It should allow for military intervention to preserve movable cultural heritage in zones of conflict, while helping to protect people and their property.