CROSSING TIME ZONES
Image provided by Global Heritage Fund
There’s a lot of coverage in the media about threats to different ecosystems around the world – not to mention the planet-wide threat of global warming – but except on rare occasions, the threats facing irreplaceable cultural heritage sites tend to garner much less attention.
“Coral reefs, the Amazon, and polar bears are getting a lot more press than cultural heritage,” says Jeff Morgan, executive director of the California-based Global Heritage Fund (GHF), which works to protect and preserve cultural heritage in developing countries. Many such sites are under increasing risk, most often from human-caused factors such as overdevelopment or inauthentic reconstruction.
“Right now the threats are increasing every day,” Morgan warns, citing examples such as the ring of high-rise hotels recently completed around historic Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. A recent GHF report entitled Saving Our Vanishing Heritage estimates that more than 200 of the 500 global heritage sites currently in the organization’s database are under threat due to uncontrolled development, unsustainable tourism, insufficient management, looting, and war and conflict. GHF focuses on sites in developing countries, which typically lack the funding an technical expertise to protect endangered cultural heritage. Such sites have the potential to generate billions in tourist revenue, new jobs, and business and investment opportunities, yet their conservation requires sustained support from outside experts and the global community.
The good news is that travelers and other concerned individuals now have the opportunity to help save endangered sites by participating in GHF’s Global Heritage Network (GHN), an “early warning and threat monitoring system” that facilitates collaboration in the preservation of cultural heritage. Launched today, GHN is a new Internet platform that uses high-resolution satellite imagery, detailed mapping, and on-the-ground reporting to establish a reliable and steady stream of information about hundreds of significant archaeological and cultural heritage sites in the world’s poorest countries. GHN will enable scientists, local community leaders, travelers, and others to work together to protect sites.
Image provided by Global Heritage Fund
GHN’s growing online community enables people from all disciplines and countries to follow, discuss, and contribute up-to-date documentation of threats and conservation efforts at global heritage sites, as well as heritage conservation news and documentation from other sources and publications. GHN then uses this data to “protect, preserve, and sustain each global heritage site through an integrated process of master planning, scientific conservation, community development, and partnerships for co-funding and sustainability.”
The network relies on field reporting of threats by professional site monitors, international experts, local communities, volunteers, and others. Travelers can make a real contribution by documenting problems at sites they visit and submitting photos and stories to the GHN database. “Travelers’ input and photos really matter now because they’re part of a scientific dossier,” Morgan explains. “They’re not just tourist photos.”
People from all walks of life who are concerned about specific sites can use GHN to work together to raise funds and support site preservation efforts. Motivated individuals can become site coordinators who manage a site profile on GHN, reach out to experts, coordinate resources.
“I’ve found in my conservation work to save the 9,000 year old city of Çatalhöyük in Turkey that preserving ancient sites requires the support and involvement of both the local and the world community, and international experts from multiple disciplines, to be successful,” Dr. Ian Hodder, co-founder of GHF and a professor of archaeology at Stanford University, said in a GHF press release.
“I’m hoping GHN will allow people to get together and stay in touch with a site,” says Morgan. ”What happens when outside travelers come in and go, ‘Wow, that’s amazing’ is that local people start realizing the value of what’s in their backyard. Their whole thought process starts changing. That’s the most powerful thing that travelers can bring.”
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