To the north up the Kenyan coast is
Down the coast, in neighboring
And between the two sits Old Town Mombasa and at its eastern tip, Fort Jesus,
an imposing 16th-century structure built by the Portuguese, its multiple
openings offering glorious views of the Indian Ocean, and gentle breezes that
help stave off the coastal heat. But while these streets are busy, too, here in
Old Town Mombasa, it’s mostly locals, unlike in the other two locales, where
throngs of tourists flood the streets.
“We could be as good as
“We are trapped by their rules but there are no funds,” he continued, referring
to UNESCO regulations around the changes that can and cannot be made at and
near World Heritage sites.
Lamu Town, Stone Town and Fort Jesus exemplify the critiques that experts
working in preservation and tourism level at UNESCO’s World Heritage List — a
list of landmarks or natural areas that have been designated by the
multilateral organization as having historical, scientific or cultural
significance. These places include
They contend that being on the list can be a poisoned chalice, of either
overtourism or undertourism. On one side, there is, as Mr. Tolle suggested, an
expectation that being added to the list will somehow be a game changer for the
community, bringing in money not only from UNESCO but also from tourism-focused
investments and infrastructure projects. But Mike Robinson, professor of
cultural heritage at
In addition, the international agency has been blamed for what the Italian
journalist Marco D’Eramo deemed UNESCOcide, when he wrote that being added to
the list is a “kiss of death” and that it “all too often cures the disease by
killing the patient”; that is, in acknowledging that a site is worth
protecting, UNESCO can, itself, drive unsustainable levels of tourism.
Florence, Italy, where the Art for Tomorrow conference is taking place this
week, became a World Heritage site in 1982, and it has long suffered from
overtourism. It was estimated that in 2019, 15 million tourists — 20 times
Florence’s population of 708,000 — visited the city that is home to the Uffizi
Galleries and the Duomo di Firenze.
Aptly, the subject of UNESCO sites will be explored at the conference. The
annual event was founded by The New York Times, and is now convened by the
Democracy & Culture Foundation, with panels moderated by Times journalists.
That conversation will contribute to the debate over the heritage list, around
what the benefits of being on it are, if in some places, the tourism the
designation brings ruins a locale’s charm, while in other cases, inclusion on
the list brings unrealistic hopes for greater change.
A History of Preservation
The idea for the UNESCO World Heritage list, which now has
1,157 sites, grew out of a project to rescue the monuments of Nubia, which
include Abu Simbel, the site of two temples carved into a sandstone cliff in
the Nubian Valley in Egypt in the 13th century B.C. In the 1950s, local
engineers planned to build a dam along a portion of the Nile River to control
flooding and generate electricity.
However, the dam would have flooded the valley and submerged hundreds of
ancient monuments, so the Egyptian and Sudanese governments turned to UNESCO
for help. The resulting project, during which Abu Simbel was moved, in pieces,
up to a higher altitude, helped spark the 1972 Convention Concerning the
Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, which set up the
heritage list.
Interestingly, tourism was mentioned only once in the document that arose from
that convention, in relation to the threat it could pose to sites. “But, of
course, we didn’t have the scope of international tourism then,” said Professor
Robinson, who has done consulting for UNESCO on sustainable tourism, and who
recognizes that tourism — in itself — doesn’t always have to be detrimental.
“Time has moved on, we need to update that to say tourism is not just a threat,
but it’s also a valuable opportunity.”
It is difficult to assess the direct economic impacts of becoming a World
Heritage site. For example, Dubrovnik, Croatia, is on the list, but the city’s
tourist invasion is very likely also related to the its role as a filming
location for “Game of Thrones.”
However, a 2015 report by the United Kingdom National Commission for UNESCO
discovered that Scottish UNESCO projects generated an estimated 10.8 million
British pounds (or $13.4 million) from 2014 to 2015 through their connection
with the heritage list.
That has meant that a number of countries, often in the developing world, want
to get their sites on the list. Professor Robinson said that was partly because
state parties “see it as a way of boosting tourism” and so “the motivation has
shifted from site protection to site valorization.”
UNESCO Looks Ahead
There have been critiques that a change in who sits on the World Heritage
Committee — a group of representatives from 21 countries who have final say
over which sites are added to the list — has led to the list’s being
politicized.
“You do get places moving forward for inscription that the advisory bodies have
recommended not go forward because the care isn’t adequately in place,” said
Susan MacDonald, head of buildings and sites at the Getty Conservation
Institute. “When those places go on the list, when they clearly haven’t got the
right systems and policies and processes in place, there’s always a problem.”
She added, however, that almost 50 percent of the heritage sites were in Europe
and North America, so there was a feeling that the list needed to be more
representative.
UNESCO suggests that representatives to the World Heritage Committee be experts
in preservation and conservation, but leaves the ultimate selection up to the
countries themselves. “So, you started to get this shift from a completely
expert body to one that was sort of a mixture,” Ms. MacDonald said. “And when
that happens, you get lobbying.”
What often is not well articulated to local communities is that when sites —
which include both cultural sites, like the Vietnamese town of Hoi An, and
natural sites, like Yellowstone National Park — go on the list, it is the
obligation of local and national governments of those countries to take care of
everything from maintaining and marketing the site to controlling the number of
tourists who visit.
“Once a site is inscribed, it is first the responsibility of the government of
the country where the site is located to put in place all measures to protect
the site,” said Lazare Eloundou Assomo, the director of the UNESCO World
Heritage Center, which maintains the list.
So, while UNESCO does help countries develop sustainable tourism practices and
give advice, inclusion on the list doesn’t automatically mean solutions in
terms of conservation or community development and investment.
“When you get something inscribed on the World Heritage List, it is not that
the UNESCO police suddenly start coming in,” joked Joseph King, senior director
at the office of the director general at the International Center for the Study
of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, who in the 1980s and
’90s was a consultant for UNESCO. “You’d be surprised at how many people
actually think that is the case like, ‘Why isn’t UNESCO stopping this from happening?’”
People like Mr. Tolle, the tour guide in Mombasa, find the whole process
complicated and bureaucratic, and often misunderstand what becoming a site will
mean for their communities. “They hear about it, and they understand it to be
like the goose that laid the golden egg,” said Ms. MacDonald. “That sometimes
doesn’t trickle down to them, unless governments have been careful to put in
place systems and practices that empower local communities in the management of
the place.”
Covid dramatized that point in places like Ethiopia’s lower
Omo Valley, a region inscribed to the list in 1980. Before 2020, and the onset
of the pandemic and the war in the north of the country, tiny remote villages
like Dildi would get around 15 tourists a day, and the villages became
dependent on the extra cash. But now, according to local Mursi chief Baradi
Birabi, the visitors have all but dried up.
“With the money from tourists we could buy medicine for our people or our
cattle,” he said, as one of the villagers tried to sell a clay lip plate to a
lone Israeli tourist. “But now we have to sell the cattle, so we do hope
tourists will come back.”
That’s a problem UNESCO is trying to work on, including a visitor flow
management tool that will be extended to all sites by 2029, Peter DeBrine, who
works on UNESCO’s sustainable tourism program, wrote in an email.
“Tourism can bring economic benefits to local communities and raise awareness
about the importance of heritage preservation, but it can also have negative
impacts on sites, such as overcrowding, societal changes, damage to fragile
ecosystems and degradation of cultural monuments,” he added. “This is why
UNESCO has strengthened its responses and tools in this area, and that it is
committed to the development of sustainable tourism.”
Source: A World Heritage Designation Can Be a Blessing,or a Curse (New York Times, 25th April 2023)
