Posted on February 14, 2011
In the mid-1980s, the city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) in western India had just learnt that it had a new set of regulations, and that these would apply to heritage buildings and historic wards. They were Mumbai's first set of heritage and conservation regulations, for built structures, and it took a while for people to get used to the idea. The city's heritage committee had struggled for several years to sensitise a wilfully stubborn urban administration to the need for such regulations, and now that this landmark step had been taken, the next job was to broadcast what the regulations meant and why they were important so that (it was hoped) city residents could take action directly and save neighbourhood structures and landmarks, whether imposing or humble.
Among those who very quickly realised the importance of the new regulations was the building industry. In a city whose population density was among the highest in the world, the 'builders' - as they were called - were a commercial tribe viewed with some suspicion. They operated in a grey zone of law, possessed and made summary use of political connections, created shortages to exploit them, and were seen to make liberal use of strong-arm methods to meet their objectives. Being shrewd, canny and quick to spot roadblocks, the builders employed architects who were expected to work the same way - exploit loopholes in the law, be adept at squeezing extra commercial space out of structures whether old or new.
But regulations were regulations and the newly empowered heritage committee soon found itself being asked by building contractors to look at technical drawings, especially those for the 'redevelopment' of older structures. Could they kindly examine the drawings, the committee would be asked, and advise the contractor (or 'architect') on whether there was enough 'heritage' included in them so as to not fall afoul of the new regulations? And if there wasn't, could the committee please point out where 'heritage' could be added on to a facade or a section! Surprised and even a little amused, the committee quickly realised, as the number of such requests grew, that just as important as having regulations was the need for education about the ideas they embodied.
Twenty-five years later, Mumbai is a giant megalopolis. The centre of India's enormous financial markets and commodities trade, the city's magnetic influence is felt across India. It accounts for large proportions of India's tax revenue and makes a disproportionate contribution to the country's GDP. New Delhi, the pampered capital, controls the spending of public monies; Mumbai's market mind encourages the creation of private wealth, and there lies the essential difference between the two cities. With commercial and residential skyscrapers in every ward - 40-storey giants are common now - the city's built heritage and the histories they represent have quite literally been diminished by economic growth and the ambitions of the many adherents of the GDP cult.
The 'developing' societies of the Southern world look to neighbours and peers in order to grade their own performance. This is the industrial-political practice. Brazil's relative prosperity is the benchmark for South America; China's is the benchmark for Asia; both India's and China's is the benchmark for sub-Saharan Africa; the Central Asian republics are looking for, and failing to find, appropriate benchmarks; the OECD bloc believes, mistakenly, that it has no need for benchmarks from the 'South'. Misconceptions abound in the landscape of development, more so now than in 1992, when the Rio Earth Summit was held, and very much more so now than in 1972, a year in which 'The Limits to Growth' was published and in which the World Heritage Convention came into being. Development economics, a work-in-progress, is no closer to becoming a science, but the conviction that growth-as-usual harms the planet and people is very much stronger, and is a position that numerous groups and associations have arrived at independently, after examining critically the available local evidence.
Such groups and associations are, sadly, in a minority. Outnumbering them by a magnitude is the cohort which holds irresponsibly the belief that economic growth can be a continuous process and that it can "lift people out of poverty", as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Asian Development Bank, the African Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and numerous right-wing think-tanks have been saying for a generation. They are flat wrong, as all level-headed indigenous peoples and tribes know. What makes this recognition so easy for some and so impossible for others? It is intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and traditional knowledge which makes the difference.
Two trends have come into prominence in the last decade. The first trend is that of resource scarcity. Population growth and rising incomes (also growing inequality of incomes) are increasing the demand for resources - water, energy, food, settlement area, raw materials. Meanwhile, the supply of these resources is increasingly difficult in the face of environmental degradation, land use change, variable weather conditions and costs. The second trend is that of information abundance. Data about our world and human settlements has grown rapidly, and so has the capability to process this information, aided by new technologically-enabled social and academic networks.
Is the second trend being used enough to help mitigate the first, and is such an effort being guided by the application of ICH? The answers are: 'no' and 'we don't know enough'. Thus far, decisions made at country and regional level on these two trends have had mostly to do with financial markets, trade, governance and production. However, the growing impact of the first trend is forcing the rapid adoption of these decision-making tools in other areas, such as resource management. New non-state actors have also come to the fore in their use of these systems (non-government organisations and advocacy groups, for example) that have expanded the typical uses of these systems to new areas. The overlap of intangible cultural heritage and sustainable development - as part of a deeper understanding of what are now called 'anthrospheres' (biospheres and humans' place in them) - is becoming one of these areas.
Such a movement is important because indigenous and rural populations, although often considered stewards of biodiversity, share an unequal position - usually at the lower end - of larger commodity chains of resources. Around the world, the value of resources usually increases along the market chain the further they travel from their areas of origin. That's how the mechanics of conventional economics work. This leads to unequal distribution of benefits and weak incentives for conservation and participatory management. Skewed as it is, this is however a typical situation for many valuable resources coming from tropical forests or aquatic systems around the world, and which often describes the livelihood situation of the inheritors and bearers of ICH. The producer of tropical forest fruits who manages standing forests receives a few euros for a basketful of fruit while a consumer in Europe pays high prices for products which in some cases contain only traces of the same fruit - the 'market' gobbles up the rest, reinvesting some of the profit elsewhere to exploit another inequality.
It is for this reason that the theory and practice of ICH must find a meeting place. It is not proving an easy task. The safeguarding of cultural diversity and of its transmission is what over 130 countries have committed themselves to by signing the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. At the sub-state level, in the provinces and districts, how will this commitment be followed through? What will the state's answer be to people, already bearing the burdens of inequality and the costs of economic 'growth', who see expressions of culture as a potential income generating activity, not as a statement of identity? Who will invest both in the education needed and in the institutions needed? How many states in the 'developing' South will do so whilst already stretched to find resources for poverty alleviation programmes? Those working the field at the intersection of culture, development and poverty know the answer even when their state claims otherwise in intergovernmental fora.
That is why it is essential to see these inequalities for what they are and to discuss them in the effort to reach development - human, not economic - goals. A worthy example can be found in what is now called the economics of ecosystems and biodiversity. This brings together new earth systems science and economics in a concerted effort to influence protection of ecosystems at all levels by explaining the monetary benefits of their preservation. Valuing the benefit of ecosystems to human settlements and populations, and the costs of inaction are turned into numbers that policy-makers, citizens and businesses relate to and understand. ICH needs just such a revolutionary approach now for it to gain the recognition due to it as a central element of adaptation to climate change, economic instability and food-fuel shortages.
Rahul Goswami was an examiner for Unesco's 2003 Convention, and during 2009-10 examined nominations to the Convention's Lists; social sector consultant to the National Agricultural Innovation Project, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, for a crop cultivation knowledge sharing initiative; research associate of the Centre for Communications and Development Studies, a civil society resource centre which works to document and analyse social change and development equity in India.
