The UNESCO courier; Vol.:52, 7; 1999 · para in Tangail distri c t , central Bangladesh. There are...

Focus

Tourism and culture :rethinking the mix

theC o u rie rJuly/August 1999

n REVAMPINGASIA’S SCHOOLSn HUMANITARIAN

INTERVENTIONnWAR COMICS:

THE NEW REALISM

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C o n t e n t sJuly/August 1999

PEOPLE AND PLACES

3 Dancing with the rivers Text and photos by Gilles Saussier

EDITORIAL

11 For a new beginning

PLANET

12 The silent casualties of war Paul Richards and Louise Sperling

15 C o l o m b i a : the seeds of return Leticia Reyes

16 S o m a l i a ’s bitter harvest Dan Kiambi

WORLD OF LEARNING

17 Asia takes a crash course in educational re f o r m Matthew Pe n n i n g t o n

ETHICS

5 7 Humanitarian intervention:a contro v e rsial right Olivier Corten

59 The first lessons of Ko s o v o Mario Bettati and Olivier Corten

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

61 War comics: the new re a l i s m Antonio Altarriba Ordóñez

CONNEXIONS

65 M o rs e : the end of an era ? Tony Smith

TALKING TO…

69 Oswaldo de Rivero :debunking the myths of ‘ d e v e l o p m e n t ’

FOCUS

2 1 Tourism and culture : rethinking the mixMore and more tourists are visiting monuments and

exploring different ways of life. In some cases, the boom

in tourism can reinvigorate local traditions. In others,

tourist overload is clearly harming host communities.

Should culture be protected from tourism? What can be

done to foster a mutually beneficial relationship

between the two?

Detailed table of contents on page 21.

C o v e r : Tourists on the A c r o p o l i s, A t h e n s. © Jobard,Sipa press, Paris

http://www.unesco.org/courier

July/August 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 3

P E O P L E A N D P L A C E S

nIn the space of a single day, their land,home and belongings might be erodedby wat e r , and their live l i h o o d , e ve n

their lives, lost. But this does not deter ane s t i m ated five million Bangladeshis fromsettling on chars, t e m p o r a ry alluvial islandsmade up of sand and laye rs of silt depositedby the country ’s three major ri ve rs , t h eB r a h m a p u t r a - Ja m u n a , the Ganges and theMeghna.“Land is rising and disappearingall the time. I have shifted my home 20times,” says Akbar Ali Khondokar, a 73-year-old man living on the island of Jigat o l ain the Jamalpur district of northern Ban-gladesh.

Of the three ri ve rs , the Brahmaputra-Jamuna is the most unpredictable. It changes

DANCING WITH THE RIVERSw Gilles Saussier

Dire poverty has driven some five million Bangladeshis to migrate to “ c h a r s ” , islands that areperiodically submerged by the country’s mighty rivers

Newly emerged grazing land on the north side of Sandwip island in the Bay of Bengal.

w Gilles Saussier is a French documentaryphotographer. These photos and a longer version of theaccompanying article appear in his book Living in theFringe (Figura Association, Paris, 1998).

To reach the market place on the mainland,char-dwellers have to walk miles over the dry riverbed of Jamuna river (Tangail district).

4 The UNESCO Courier - July/August 1999


c o u rse constantly, and we aves around theinnumerable chars, d e t e rmining all aspectsof life on these islands. In March and A p ri lthe Jamuna is almost dry,whereas from Juneo n wards the flood season starts and thewater level can rise as much as six metres.T h eaverage life span of a char is from 10 to 25ye a rs. Once a c h a r is submerged, p e o p l esettle down on the neighbouring islands andwait for the water to recede. But if the charis fully eroded, months or ye a rs may passbefore they can go back to it.

Paying taxeson underwater land

In some cases it was several generat i o n sago that the poorest of the poor fled themainland and opted for a no less uncert a i nexistence on the chars. “Land is fresh andf e rtile on the char. The harvest is betterthan on the mainland,” s ays Keru Ta l u k d a r ,a peasant now settled on the island of Ruli-para in Tangail distri c t , central Bangladesh.

There are no precise statistics on thechar population of Bangladesh. So preca-rious is the fate of the chars that there isusually no post offic e , health centre or eve ne l e c t ricity on any of these islands.The char-d we l l e rs depend on boats to commute to themainland, which can be between two andeight kilometres away.

For the char people, land is the main

Barkat Ali Mandol

Gabshara Char,Bhuapur Thana,Tangail district

I am 95.I was born on this char. When I was a

child many trees grew on the char and it was

like the mainland.I went to school naked. We

did not wear as many clothes as today;habits

were different. The char was eroded when I was

between 5 and 7.Since then I have moved my

home more than 7 times. The char was more

stable when I was young. Until I was 45, I

moved only twice. When I was living in the

shade of my father, life was very easy. But when

I started to live alone, life became very tough.

Before we ate our own rice. Now I have to buy

rice because of floods and erosion.I lose my

harvest almost every year.

C O U N T RYI N F O R M AT I O NPeople’s Republic of BangladeshCapital:DhakaArea:148,393 sq.kmPopulation:127.5 millionLanguages:Bangla,English and ChakmaLiteracy rate:38.1%Main Religion:IslamCurrency: Taka (US 1$ = approx.45 Takas)Prime Minister:Sheikh Hasina Wazed

India

India

Bhutan

BANGLADESH

Dhaka

Chittagong

Khulna

Bay of Bengal

Brahmaputra

Ganges

resource but it has no permanent bounda-ri e s. They keep property title deeds andeven pay taxes for land under water in thehope of cultivating it again one day, once theisland re-emerges. Since there is no admi-n i s t r ation on the islands, the char-dwe l l e rssettle land disputes among themselve s. O nthe Jamuna ri ve r , they even sell and bu yland under water in the hope that it will sur-face again. For example, the char of Ruli-para re-emerged 25 years ago and peoplecontinue to live there today.

Human live s ,h owe ve r , are rarely lost onc h a rs along the Ja m u n a , unlike those onthe coastal belt, because dwe l l e rs can fore-cast floods several days in advance by obser-ving weather conditions. The char peopleconstantly keep monitoring the water leve land when the ri ver starts to rise during themonsoon season they leave the islands withtheir belongings and return only after thewater recedes.

‘Apart from the cyclones,life is sweet on the chars’

Children and the elderly are part i c u-larly vulnerable during these times, as pro-blems of storing and cooking food, and ofd rinking wat e r , can lead to malnutri t i o nand diarrhoea.The dry season also bringst r o u b l e : a large part of the ri ver dries up, a n dt r avelling between chars or to the main-land becomes extremely difficult over thesandy ri ve r b e d . The char-dwe l l e rs mustwalk as many as eight kilometres carryingtheir produce under the scorching sun. B u tthe char people accept loss and uncert a i n t yas part of their live s. “When at last ourhouses become decent and the land growsf e rt i l e , erosion comes and we have to begi nall over again,” explains Hayat u n , a wo m a nfrom Rulipara char.

For those living on chars in the Bay ofBengal, the threat comes from the nearbys e a .B e t ween 1960 and 1992 no fewer than12 cyclones devastated the coastal region.The most tragic were in 1970 and 1991killing respectively 300,000 and 138,000people.But the char-dwellers take the riskbecause “The air is healthy.There is enoughroom to breed cattle.In one year I can eatmore fish here than during a whole life onthe mainland. A p a rt from the cy c l o n e s ,l i f eis sweet on the chars ,” s ays Fazlur Rahmanwho lives on the Dhal char, one of theoutermost islands of the Bay of Bengal. n

+ …l Useful website

www.pixup.com/lof.html



A newly settled landless family cooks food on Gazaria island at the mouth of the Meghna estuary (Bay of Bengal).

Char-dwellers plough newly emerged land on Rulipara island (Tangail district).



Jotish Chandra Koibarta

Chachra,Lalmohan Thana,Bhola district

I am around 60 years old.I was born in

Chachra, two miles from the present bank,but

since then it has been eroded,and now the

place is in the middle of the river. I lost my first

wife and four sons in the 1970 cyclone. I do not

remember the name of my wife, but the names

of my elder sons were Horimohon and

Kalimohon. They were 15 and 13.When the

storm began we took shelter on a high point

next to a pond.And when the waves became

higher and higher, I succeeded in tying myself to

the top of a pile of bamboos.

I saw my family being washed away before my

eyes.

Villagers walk along an embankment as they return to their villages devastated by the 1991 cyclone.(Bay of Bengal).

A young char-dweller crushes beans with his feet.



“The river breaks this way and wanders that way;that is its game,” say the char-dwellers.Below, a poor landless peasant.

Golapjan

Patila Char,Fasson Thana Char,Bhola district

On Bhola island we were landless.

A landlord from our locality, Osmanganj,settled

us on Patila Char 20 years ago. Here our

homestead was eroded four times. We lost many

trees from erosion. The sea is very near now and

I am afraid of the high tide when it rolls. It

sounds like a bellowing buffalo. In the 1991

cyclone I sheltered on an artificially raised

mound where a land-owner kept his buffalos.

We had to survive on wet rice and fruits of

kaora trees. We didn’t have a fire until the local

official sent one of his men to bring us a flame.

It was a hard struggle to keep the fire alive.



Char-dwellers living on a flood-shelter in the middle of the Jamuna-Brahmaputra river watch the coming of a monsoon shower.



Halimon

Shaheber Alga CharUlpur ThanaKurigram District

I was born in Tangail District in 1896. I came as

a 15-day-old baby with the first migrants to this

char. Then it looked different from today: it was

covered with trees and a type of grass called

catkin;there were wild animals. British people

came to hunt on the char. They stayed in

temporary camps.

Because of erosion I have shifted my home

more than 10 times. I remember that during my

childhood harvests were good. There was

happiness and peace on the chars. Now, there is

nothing.Before, there were rich and poor people

too, but the poor had,at least, some way of

earning their living. Now, most of us are poor.

People have to go work on the mainland to

survive.



Footprints in fresh mud on newly emerged and disputed land on Shahjalal char, Bay of Bengal.

In a sand-storm,char-dwellers push a three-wheeled rickshaw loaded with rice bags over the bed of the Jamuna during the dry season in Tangail district.

E D I T O R I A L


w The year 2000 must be a new beginning for us all. Together we can transform theculture of war and violence into a culture of peace and non-violence.This transforma-tion demands the participation of each and every one of us. It must offer young peopleand future generations the values that can inspire them to shape a world based on jus-tice, solidarity, liberty, dignity, harmony and prosperity for all.The culture of peace canunderpin sustainable development, environmental protection and the well-being ofeach person.w In November 1997, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the year2000 as the International Year for the Culture of Peace. UNESCO is responsible for co-ordinating the activities of the Year worldwide.w A group of Nobel Peace Laureates who met in Paris to celebrate the 50th anniver-sary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights drafted Manifesto 2000 for aCulture of Peace and Non-Violence1. Made public in Paris on March 4, 1999, theManifesto is open to signature by people all over the world.The goal is to present 100million signatures to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2000.

w Manifesto 2000 for a culture of peace and non-violenceRecognizing my share of responsibility for the future of humanity, especially for thechildren of today and tomorrow, I pledge in my daily life, in my family, my work, mycommunity, my country and my region, to:–1 Respect all life. Respect the life and dignity of every person without discrimina-

tion or prejudice.–2 Reject violence. Practise active non-violence, rejecting violence in all its forms:

physical, sexual, psychological, economic and social, in particular towards the mostdeprived and vulnerable such as children and adolescents.

–3 Share with other s. Share my time and material resources in a spirit of generosityto put an end to exclusion, injustice and political and economic oppression.

–4 Listen to understand. Defend freedom of expression and cultural diversity, givingpreference always to dialogue and listening without engaging in fanaticism, defa-mation and the rejection of others.

–5 Preser ve the planet. Promote consumer behaviour that is responsible and deve-lopment practices that respect all forms of life and preserve the balance of natureon the planet.

–6 Redisco ver solidarity . Contribute to the development of my community, with thefull participation of women and respect for democratic principles, in order to crea-te together new forms of solidarity.

You can sign Manifesto 2000 on the Internet:www.unseco.org/manifesto2000

or send a signed copy to:International Year for the Culture of PeaceUNESCO,7 Place Fontenoy,F-75352 Paris 07 SP FranceFax: + 33 (0) 1 45 68 56 38

1.Among the first signatories were Norman Borlaug, Adolfo Perez Esquivel,the Dalai Lama,Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, Mairead Maguire,Nelson Mandela, Rigoberta Menchu Tum,Shimon Peres, Jose Ramos Horta, Joseph Rotblat,Desmond Mpilo Tutu,David Trimble, Elie Wiesel,Carlos Felipo Ximenes Belo.

I pledge in my daily life,

in my family,my work,

my community,my country

and my region,t o. . .

FOR A NEWB E G I N N I N G


P L A N E T

nMoved by the human tragedy of war,we often overlook one of the othermajor casualties—the env i r o n m e n t

a n d , more specifically, a gri c u l t u r e . G l o-b a l l y, the number of armed conflicts hasbeen rising steadily since 1945, r e a c h i n gan estimated 30 major and 80 to 100 minorconflicts today.

Unlike high-tech wa rs involving we l l -armed industrial countries,many of theseconflicts are low-intensity insurrections inrural areas, where farmers are the victims.Here, directly or indirectly, local seed sys-tems may come under stress or even col-lapse. Apart from jeopardizing immediatefood needs, the very sustainability of localagriculture can be threatened,with poten-tially serious consequences for the va riety ofgenetic resources.

B i o d i ve rsity is often assessed in terms ofthe number of existing species. B u t , at leastfor crop plants, the genetic va ri ation withinspecies is equally import a n t . A l t h o u g hthere are half a million flowe ring plant spe-cies, (only half of which have been namedand descri b e d ) , 95 per cent of human calo-rie and protein requirements come from amere 30 of the 7,000 edible plant speciest h at humans plant or collect. And morethan half the global energy intake comesfrom just three major crops—ri c e , w h e atand maize. Genetic va ri ation enables fa r-m e rs and agricultural scientists to conti-nue to adapt these key crops to changingcircumstances—critical for our long-termsurvival.According to the Food and Agri-culture Organization of the United Nat i o n s(FAO), there are as many as 100,000 dis-tinct varieties of Asian rice (Oryza sativa)alone.

But what happens to seed systems whenthey are repeatedly disrupted by war? Far-m e rs use several kinds of seed from

different sources.They are mainly va ri e t i e staken from their previous harve s t s , a d a p-ted to local conditions and managed overm a ny generat i o n s , or seeds from otherregions obtained through small local mar-kets or by exchange. Fa rm e rs also use va ri e-ties developed by research in national orm u l t i n ational centres and purchasedannually through formal supply networks.

Vulnerable local seed varieties

Conflict affects the supply of thesekinds of seeds in different ways—and withdifferent long-term consequences for bio-diversity. For the formal (non-local) varie-t i e s , the supply of seed may dry up in timesof conflict, for example because transportroutes are disrupted, or because the pesti-cides and fertilizers needed to grow thesevarieties have become unavailable.This iswhat happened in Rwanda, when the for-mal potato system stopped functioningc o u n t rywide around 1991-1992—althoughdirect combat only spread two years later.

U s u a l l y, when peace return s , t h e s e

f o rmal va rieties become available onceagain and there are few new va ri e t a lc o n c e rn s. The war in Bosnia caused ab r e a k d own in the supply of crops. But itnow appears that there were relatively fewa d ve rse genetic consequences. This isbecause fa rm e rs were using regi s t e r e dva rieties supplied through formal channels.Registered seeds are likely to be backed upin collections in a number of countries. Am u l t i n ational seed business caught in a wa rzone simply withdraws for the time beingand continues its business elsewhere,withits seed collections intact.

More vulnerable in the long term arethe local va ri e t i e s. These may be ancientva ri e t i e s , often unrecorded and at the heartof complex social interactions. Local or fa r-mer-managed seed systems tend to bedecentralized and small scale. The seedscan be obtained from small open markets,or as the currency of gift-giving, loans andexchange among people with firm socialbonds.

In many A f rican countri e s , up to 90 percent of the seeds planted in any normal ye a r

THE SILENT C A S UA LTIES OF W A Rw Paul Richards* and Louise Sperling**

By destroying local seed supply systems, warfare in the developing world jeopardizes the crop biodiversity on which sustainable agriculture depends

w *Technology and Agricultural Development Group,Wageningen Agricultural University, The Netherlands;**Senior Scientist,International Centre for TropicalAgriculture, The Hague, The Netherlands.

A store-room in Kenya’s national gene bank,where 27,000 samples of genetic material from a wide range of crops are kept.


P L A N E T

comes from informal sources. Even wherepurchase (for example, from local mer-chants) is an important part of an inform a lseed system, it is rarely backed up by thekind of specialist seed research fa c i l i t i e sfound in more developed economies. I nwar-affected Sierra Leone, for example, arecent study showed that the informal sys-tem was responsible in normal ye a rs forabout 80 per cent of seed supply for themain staple, ri c e . Most informal transac-tions were fa rm e r - t o - fa rm e r , in the form ofgi f t s , p u r c h a s e s , and loans. In Rwa n d a ,Burundi and Zaire, before their respectivewars, over 95 per cent of bean seeds, theirmain protein source, came from informalseed systems.

When rural communities are forced tofle e , the fine web of mutual seed support isw r e c k e d . Refugee fa rm e rs no longer havethe means to repay at harvest the seeds theyb o rr owed from fellow - fa rm e rs in the plan-ting season, so the system breaks dow n .Without the security of peace, rural com-munities cannot hold the markets to bu y

and sell seed. And fa rm e rs no longer knowt h at what they plant can indeed be harve s-ted in four, nine or 18 months’ time (thecycles of beans, p o t atoes and cassava , r e s-p e c t i ve l y ) . Seed may be totally lacking, o rfa rm e rs may be unable to access it, b e c a u s e

social ties are ru p t u r e d , or because they arejust too poor. In some cases, fa rm e rs underfire may have stored appropri ate seed, bu tsimply cannot plant it. A l t e rn at i ve l y, s e e dm ay be ava i l a b l e , but of poor quality.

Genetic loss, then, is most likely whenconflict is concentrated in remote ru r a lareas,where it is fairly widespread geogra-phically, and when it lasts for several yearsin succession.This was the case in Angola

and Mozambique,where isolated and vul-nerable rural populations lost many plan-ting seasons.War has affected fourteen A f ri-can countries during the 1990s,with ruralp o p u l ations most heavily dependent onlocally adapted seeds being the majorcasualties.

Some countries are especially rich inlocal va rieties and the wild relat i ves of cropspecies. The breakdown of local seed sys-tems in these countries can cause irrever-sible damage to the global genetic resourcesof food crops. For example,major wars inGuinea Bissau, Liberia and Sierra Leone,along with lesser insurrections in Casa-mance (Senegal) and Guinea have affectede ve ry country in the West A f rican coastalzone of ancient rice agri c u l t u r e .This regi o nis a key centre for genetic diversity in Afri-can rice (O ryza glaberri m a) , w h i c h , as aresult of recent technological adva n c e s ,c a nnow be cross-bred with Asian rice, one ofthe wo r l d ’s key food crops. It will be of glo-bal significance if this under-collected andlittle-studied African crop is a casualty of

War has affected fourteenAfrican countries during the 1990s, with ruralpopulations being the major casualties

When rural communities are forced to flee, they lose their seeds and hence their future source of food.Above, a farmer in Angola,where rural populations have had toforego many planting seasons.


P L A N E T

the regional warfare and massive displace-ment of rural civilians.

So what can be done to offset this kindof genetic disaster? During the T i gr e a nc o n flicts in the nort h e rn highlands of Ethio-p i a , t h at lasted on and off for two decades,community elders organized emergency

seed banks of maize, s o r g h u m ,w h e at ,b a r-l e y, finger millet and teff—an annual gr a s sgr own for its gr a i n . This was mostly toi m p r ove the deteri o r ating seed quality,r ather than because of short supply. I nE t h i o p i a , a country with rich local va ri e t i e s ,plant scientists have invested in crop gene-tic resource conservation and in unders t a n-ding the impact of war and drought on seed

s u p p l y.I r o n i c a l l y, h u m a n i t a rian agencies often

make the situation wo rs e , by responding toseed system breakdown by supplying far-mers with seed from outside the country:Giving “seed and tools” is the standardsecond relief response after food.Seed aid

is usually “exotic”, not tested or suited tolocal conditions and is alien to the culturalmanagement practices of farmers.

In some countries there are nat i o n a le f f o rts to restore crop dive rsity lost due towa r. I n t e rn ational A gricultural ResearchCentres have been restoring bean and sorg-hum genetic mat e rial to gene banks in wa r -t o rn Rwanda and Buru n d i , local va rieties of

b a r l e y,d u rum wheat and bread wheat to Eri-trea and rice seeds to institutes in thetrouble-spots of Liberia and Guinea Bis-sau—and even Cambodia. All these coun-t ries lost their centralized gene bank stocks,although it is not known if there was any lossof dive rsity at fa rm leve l .

To reinforce this kind of wo r k , s o m er e gi o n s , such as the West A f rican zone ofancient rice cultivat i o n , will need specialistmissions to rescue and conserve endange-red local va ri e t i e s.This will mean gat h e ri n ginformation on cultural and farming prac-tices,too.War threatens not only seeds butalso the knowledge that fa rming popula-tions possess about how, where and whento use locally-adapted local varieties.

It is difficult to estimate the true scale ofcrop biodive rsity loss in wa r - t o rn regi o n s.For several decades, small fa rm e rs havegi ven oral accounts of significant va riety loss.It is only now, with the development of bio-t e c h n o l o gi e s , t h at plant scientists have thetools to measure genetic losses precisely. n

I r o n i c a l l y, humanitarian agencies often make the situation worse, by responding to seed system breakdown by supplying farmers with seed from outside the country

This map shows the main and secondary “centres of diversity and origin”where the world’s most important crop plants were first domesticated.They constitute “genetic reservoirs” since they generally contain a wide diversity of varieties of each plant.The map also shows, in darker shading,countries within which and/or on whose borders there is armed conflict at the present time.

CROP PLANT BIODIVERSITY AND ARMED CONFLICT

1.Central America:maize, beans,sweet potatoes;2 and 3. the Andes:potatoes,beans, peanuts;4.Southern Brazil: manioc;5.Mediterranean:oats, rape;

6. West Africa:millet,fonio,African rice, sorghum,yams,cowpeas, groundnuts;7.Southwest Asia:rye, barley,wheat,peas;8.Ethiopia:rye, sorghum, millet;

9.Central Asia:wheat;10.India-Myanmar:rice,dwarf wheat;11.China: rice, soya,millet;12.Southeast Asia:bananas,sugar cane, yams, rice.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

910

11

12


P L A N E T

n“I grabbed the basket we used for sto-ring beans and maize, threw in acouple of blankets and some nappies

and put one of my children in it,” said a44-year-old peasant woman. “I hoistedanother child on my shoulders and tied apiece of rag to a third and kept him infront of me. I was carrying another childin my belly. We had to spend the night inthe forest. I was knee deep in mud andthe kids were up to their eyes in it.”1

Similar tragic stories could be told bythousands of Colombian families who arebeing forced to abandon their homesbecause of civil war, which is mainlybeing fought between paramilitary forcesand guerrillas. Since 1985, forced popula-tion movement has affected 1.5 million(308,000 in 1998) of the country’s 38million people. More than two-thirds ofthe refugees are from the countryside.

“People leave because they can nolonger live off the land,” said HernánHenao, director of the Regional StudiesInstitute at the University of Antioquia, afew days before he was murdered on May4 1999. “Armed groups use intimidation,threats and massacres to stop the peasantsgoing to the villages to buy and sell.” Oneby one, in families or in groups, peopleare fleeing the countryside. Many die onthe road. Most end up in the poverty-stricken outskirts of the cities. Only fiveper cent organize themselves into new“resettlement” communities or return totheir land.

As farmers leave the countryside,localfood production comes to a halt.Swissaid,a Swiss non-governmental orga-nization working with displaced commu-nities, the Diocese of Apartadó and theInternational Red Cross, is trying to res-tore this production, especially in theUrabá region, one of the hotspots of thecivil war. The first priority is to guaranteefood security by collecting seeds of basicfoodstuffs lost during the war.The second

C O L O M B I A :THE SEEDS OF RETURNw Leticia Reyes

As terror and death stalk rural Colombia, preserving biodiversity is a priority for the food securityof displaced communities

is to re-establish family plots, which aretraditionally tended by the womenfolkand where a wide variety of crop speciesare grown.

The Indians,guardians of biodiversity

Participants in the programme startby making an inventory of lost varietiesand then go looking for them in nearbyvillages. If there has been a massive exo-dus of people,there will be no neighboursand therefore no seeds. The job thenbecomes harder. “In an area where eve-ryone has left, you can lose a variety thata community has been using for centu-ries,” says Hans Wiederkehr, Swissaid’srepresentative in Colombia. A lot alsodepends on how long the population dis-placement lasts. “ N o rth of the Rive rAtrato, for example, not a single one ofthe 47 known rice varieties identifiedthere were left when people returned tothe area a year later.This was long enoughfor rice,maize,bean and plant seeds to belost, because their germination periodvaries between three and six months.Yucca and plantain seeds, however, cansurvive for about two years.”

But how can people recuperate theseeds when they live in an atmosphere offli g h t , f e a r , t h r e ats and death? “ W h atwe’re doing can only succeed because thecommunities retain a basic capacity forself-management,” said Wiederkehr. “Inthis sense, the contribution of the Indians(who were living in the region when theSpaniards came), has been crucial becau-se they’ve turned themselves into whatyou might call ‘guardians of biodiversity’.For more than 500 years, the Indianshave lived like nomads, so they’re verygood at organizing themselves and resis-ting.”

In early 1995, for example, all the 700or so people in the Zenú Indian village ofEl Volao in Uraba left the protected zone.In the second half of that ye a r , S w i s s a i dand the Indigenous Organization ofAntioquia helped launch “ P r o j e c tR e t u rn ” , which included a proposal forsustainable ecological fa rm i n g . Two ye a rsl at e r , t h r e e - q u a rt e rs of the population ofEl Volao had returned and just over halfthe “ b r e a d b a s k e t ” va ri e t i e s — m a i z e , ri c e ,y u c c a , b e a n s , plantains and ya m s — w h i c hexisted before the exodus had been reco-ve r e d . To d ay, more than 150 kinds of

w Colombian journalist

In Colombia,banana seeds can survive for about two years, whereas rice, maize and bean seeds are lost after 3-6months.


P L A N E T

S O M A L I A’S BITTER HARV E S T

w Dan Kiambi

An ambitious international project to maintain crop variety in a war-torn country

In 1989 a scientist travelled from Somalia to Ke n yawith a precious cargo in his luggage—a complete

duplicate set of the 284 samples of sorghum andmaize genetic material from Somalia’s Baidoa/Afgoigene bank. His destination was the Ke n ya NationalG e n e b a n k , where the collection would be conservedalong with 27,000 samples of genetic material froma wide range of crops.

At the time the scientist could not know justhow important this trip was to be. Two years later,a civil war broke out in Somalia.It is still not over,and one of its casualties has been theBaidoa/Afgoi research and conservation centre.The entire gene bank of local plant crop varietieshas been wiped out.

According to a survey carried out in 1996-97, t h econtinued state of unrest in Somalia not only seve-rely damaged farm production,but also led to the lossof some local crop species altogether.This is why theduplicate collection held in Ke n ya became so impor-t a n t . In 1996, with funding from the EuropeanU n i o n , through the Somalia Office in Nairobi, i nc o l l a b o ration with Co-operazione Italiana Nord-Sud

(CINS) and the National Genebank of Kenya,scien-tists from the International Plant Genetic ResourcesInstitute (IPGRI) embarked on an ambitious project.They would reproduce crop seed material from thegenetic samples stored in Ke n ya and repatriate it toSomalia for planting.

The project concentrated on the MiddleShebelle, a fertile flood plain in Somalia, coveringthe three districts of Balaad, Bulu Burti andJowhar. Researchers assessing the effects of thewar found that farmers there had access to a verylimited number of crop varieties. Seeds were oftenscarce and of low quality. Hungry families, toopoor to buy new seed, were eating the very seedstocks they were hoping to plant for food.The warhad destroyed irrigation systems, as well as crucialfarming equipment including milling machines,water pumps and tractors.

After consultations with local administra t o r s,farmers and NGOs working in the area, p r o j e c tscientists introduced 151 sorghum and 14 maizesamples that had previously been multiplied gene-tically by the National Genebank of Ke n ya and air-freighted to the project site. The materials weresupplied to 90 farmers for on-farm trials in nine dif-ferent villages, three in each district. A parallel on-

station trial was set up at the CINS project site atD e g a n l e y, in Balaad, for comparison.

After about a year, farmers had selected 13varieties out of the 165 samples for further trials.If the farmers were happy with the results, theywould adopt them as part of their farming practi-ce. The project also set up a new gene bank ofover 240 samples of the reintroduced seed mate-rial at Deganley, just in case.

But disaster struck again. Rival factions of theSomali warlords attacked the base at Deganley anddestroyed the new gene bank, including some mate-rial collected in Somalia during the project. Th ea t t a c kers stole the centre’s computer with all the dataand software. They also held one CINS expatriatescientist captive for three days before releasing him.

In November 1997, following this attack, theproject terminated its activities in Somalia. It wasnot possible to follow up the on-farm trials to seehow farmers got on with the 13 selected eliteplant varieties. But the results already looked pro-mising and farmers have the seeds. With luck,thebest ones will filter into the farming systems in thecourse of time and help re-diversify the geneticbase of sorghum and maize, if not in the projectsite, then elsewhere in Somalia. n

w Regional Office for Sub-Saharan Africa (Nairobi) ofthe International Plant Genetic Resources Institute.

plants gr ow in the vegetable gardens ten-ded by the wo m e n . Some of them, i n c l u-ding chillies, sweet potat o, basil andpigeon peas, possess considerable geneticd i ve rs i t y.

Recuperating all the seeds is very dif-ficult. The project’s promoters say theColombian gove rn m e n t ’s short - t e rmhumanitarian aid policies often hamperefforts to preserve and restore biodiversi-ty. “The authorities offer ‘improved’seedsand animal va rieties without thinkingabout the harm they might do to localgenetic biodive rs i t y, and especiallywithout taking into account the knowled-ge accumulated by local people over thecenturies,” says Swissaid’s Germán Vélez.“They also encourage the intensive use ofc h e m i c a l s , marketing techniques andone-crop farming ,” he adds.

The projects have developed in verydifferent ways depending on whether theyinvolve people returning to their ownland—as the Zenú Indians did—or goingto “temporary settlements” far from their

original homes, as in the case of theregion’s black communities.The situationof the latter is very precarious. For them,public services, including health, are vir-tually non-existent and food is scarce.Butthese communities, descended from esca-ped slaves (maroons), are good at organi-zing themselves.

Preservation of biodiversity hangs by a thread

At the end of 1998, 3,500 A f r o -Colombian peasants, refugees in the tow nof Pava r a n d ó , began talks with gove rn-ment officials to fund their return home.Since then, they have launched a “ Fo o dS e c u ri t y ” p r o gramme with support fromS w i s s a i d . The menfolk go to nearby com-munities in search of seeds, while thewomen distri bute them to the ve g e t a b l eg a r d e n s , identify medicinal plants andexchange know - h ow.The women know allabout crop cy c l e s , soil quality and espe-cially the needs of the fa m i l y. S e veral foodcrops have already been harvested thanks

to teamwork and preparat o ry wo r k s h o p s.Committees have also been set up to lookafter seed storage. But the security situa-tion is ve ry serious—12 peasants we r emurdered by a group of paramilitaries onA p ril 7 1999—and leaving the settlementsis become increasingly dangerous.

The fact is that in Colombia preserva-tion of biodive rsity hangs by a thread.W h at ’s more, both Indians and peasantsh ave only ve ry slender chances of beingable to return for good to their land (theirrights to which were recognized in 1993)and reclaim their dignity in a countrywhere fundamental rights are violated ona daily basis and where violence is des-t r oying the links between land, c o m m u n i-ties and traditional resources. M e a n w h i l e ,it is reckoned that eve ry hour, o n eColombian family is being forced to leavetheir home. H ow long can this go on? n

1.From Desarraigo y Futuro:vida cotidiana defamilias desplazadas de Urabá (“Displacement andthe Future:the daily life of refugee families inUrabá”).Medellín,Regional Studies Institute ofthe University of Antioquia,1998.


W O R L D O F L E A R N I N G

nA s i a ’s financial crisis may have a silve rl i n i n g, at least when it comes to edu-c at i o n . In the wake of the crisis that

began in 1997, the limping Southeast A s i a nt i g e rs are shoring up their educational sys-tems to make their economies strongerand more resilient to the type of fin a n c i a lshock which has left the region reelingfrom recession.

In T h a i l a n d , a constitutional overhaul isleading to the biggest shake-up of the edu-cational system since the days of absolutem o n a r c hy. Indonesia has introduced ane m e r g e n cy scholarship system. M a l aysia is

ASIA TAKES A CRASHCOURSE IN EDUCAT I O N A LR E F O R Mw Matthew Pennington

Southeast Asia’s booming economy for decades masked deficiencies in educational systems. Butnow, in the wake of financial crisis, the region is bent on getting smarter faster

launching its first computerized “ s m a rts c h o o l s ” .And Singapore has begun a cam-paign to teach innovative thinking.

Despite differences among the Sou-theast Asian countries,a few main threadsrun throughout their approaches. F i rs t ,these countries recognize the need for aquantum leap in basic education and skillsstandards in order for the labour force toregain competitiveness. Second, rote lear-ning is giving way to a new call for creativet h i n k i n g . F i n a l l y, in Thailand and Indo-n e s i a ,a u t h o rity over curricula and spendingis being decentralized to make educationmore responsive to local needs.

Even before the crisis,it was clear edu-c ational systems in many cases were laggi n g

behind economic development in SoutheastA s i a . For three decades these countries hadridden the crest of export - o riented eco-nomic growth. An important pillar of thegr owth was cheap, unskilled labour.H owe ve r , in recent ye a rs countries likeChina,Viet Nam and India have undercutthe cost of labour in Southeast A s i a .This leftSoutheast Asia less competitive in prov i-sion of bargain-priced labour for basicmanufacturing. Meanwhile,skills trainingwas not keeping pace with the globalmarket,making it difficult for these coun-t ries to compete in high added value indus-tries such as information technology (IT).

In Thailand and Indonesia, though allthis was apparent prior to 1997, g ove rn m e n t s

w Bangkok-based journalist,with additional reportingby Jeeraporn Chaisri

In Singapore, where most children receive 10 years of state schooling,the accent is now being put on more creative thinking and learning.

w Bangkok-based journalist,with additional reportingby Jeeraporn Chaisri.



called a new educational constitution,i n c o rp o r ating the ri g h t , e n s h rined inT h a i l a n d ’s new “ p e o p l e ’s ”c h a rter adoptedin late 1997,of eve ry Thai to 12 ye a rs of stat e -paid education—compared with the curr e n taverage in practice of 5.3 ye a rs.

During the 30 years up to the financialc risis that began in July 1997, as per capitagross domestic product quadrupled in real

t e rm s ,p ri m a ry school enrolment grew fromaround 70 per cent to 90 per cent.Secondary school enrolment rose from 40per cent to over 70 per cent.

But fundamental problems have pers i s t e dwith the education system, in which one ine ve ry four children aged between six and 17 isstill not in school, and modes of teachingappear increasingly outdat e d . Rote learn i n gp r e vails and to the minds of altern at i vee d u c ationalists in T h a i l a n d , this cultivat e sobedience to authority rather than stimulat i n gindependent thought. Most critically in thee yes of economic planners , the Thai wo r k f o r c eis under-qualified and lacks technicale x p e rt i s e .

E ven before the crash, c o n c e rns we r egr owing about T h a i l a n d ’s ability to shiftfrom a labour-intensive to a moretechnology-based era.“We were reliant one x p e rtise from abroad,” said SombatS u wa n p i t a k , the Thai gove rn m e n t ’s directorof non-formal education development.

According to a 1996 gove rnment surve y,t h r e e - q u a rt e rs of the workforce aged over 21ye a rs had no secondary educat i o n . At theupper end of the educational scale there wa sa dearth of intern ational-standard science

dragged their feet about addressing thed e fic i e n c i e s. It was easier to put off much-needed reforms then because the economieswere gr owing quickly, overall standards ofliving were improving and there was littlepressure on gove rnments to undert a k ei m p o rtant reform .M a l aysia and Singaporeh ave generally been forward-looking whenit comes to educat i o n .The fallout of the cri s i shas increased their resolve to develop eve nmore sophisticated educational systems.

Thailand revamps its constitution“ T h e r e ’s a link between our educat i o n

and economic models,” s ays Professor S.G o p i n at h a n ,S i n g a p o r e ’s National Instituteof Education (NIE) dean, in reference tohis country ’s educational system. “ O u re c o n o my has been based on export - l e di n d u s t ri a l i z at i o n , which requires reasonablye d u c ated and obedient labour, as well ascapital and markets. But the new economicparadigm will be value-added in an entirelydifferent kind of way : the ability to useknowledge and data.”

In Thailand an ambitious educat i o nr e f o rm bill, which lays the foundations forthe most radical shake-up of the pedagogi c a lsystem since the Bri t i s h - e d u c ated KingRama VI (1910-25) introduced compulsorye d u c ation to the country, is set to beapproved by parliament.

Deputy Education Minister SomsakP risanantakul calls it a “ t u rning point forThai society”, t h at will lead to less stat edominance of educat i o n , and more publicp a rt i c i p at i o n . It amounts to what is being

and engi n e e ring gr a d u ates coming out of au n i ve rsity system traditionally oriented toproducing gove rnment bu r e a u c r at s.

This reality, d ri ven home by the cri s i s ,has gi ven additional impetus to the reformb i l l , seen as the foundation for deve l o p i n gthe quality education Thailand needs.Passed by the lower house of T h a i l a n d ’sparliament in March, it marks a shift in

p ri o ri t i e s , increasingly evident acrossSoutheast A s i a , t owards learn e r - c e n t r e de d u c at i o n , which lays gr e ater stress onc r e at i ve and analytical ability than on rotel e a rn i n g . “The majority of teachers are usedto standing at the front of the class andgiving a lecture,” s ays Dr. Rung Kaewdang,s e c r e t a ry-general of the Office of theN ational Education Commission. “ N owthere will be a shift towards assistingindividual pupils and group learning.”

Young Thais seem to approve .“ S t u d e n t sshould learn how to be independent andc o m p e t i t i ve ,” s ays Ms. C h a n t h i m aS u j j av i r a k u l ,2 2 , an accounting student atBangkok Unive rs i t y.They should be “ r e a d yto learn for themselves.”

Implementing legi s l ation expected ove rthe next few ye a rs will devo l ve bothacademic and financial power to schoolsand local authori t i e s , s cything theresponsibility of ministry officials inB a n g k o k . Dr Rung argues that bypromoting more direct invo l vement ofparents and gove rn o rs in management ofs c h o o l s , the reforms will ensure gr e at e raccountability—and sidestep large-scalecorruption. For example,before the crisis,

In Indonesia,the financial crisis has led to a sharp rise in school dropout numbers.

T H A I L A N D ’ SN AT I O N A LE D U C ATION BILLKey measures of the new “education

constitution”:

l Right to free, 12-year state education

l Education to be “learner-centred” and

promote democracy and human rights

l Special education for persons with

physical,mental and learning difficulties

l Greater recognition for non-formal

education and lifelong learning

l More local content in school curricula

l Three ministerial-level organizations to be

integrated into one ministry

l Decentralization of financial and

administrative responsibilities

‘ The main risk (of failure) is the old bugaboo ofThailand—political instability, but with the new constitutionin place it feels more secure.’



the ministry of education was embroiled ina scandal over the procurement ofc o m p u t e rs , which became a nat i o n a lpolitical issue.

M e a n w h i l e , giving more responsibilityto teachers for devising their ow nc u rri c u l a — r ather than sticking ri gidly tothe national curriculum—should in theorymake education more sensitive to the needsof local communities.This is a pri o rity forthe estimated 550,000 of the populat i o nfrom hilltribe minorities living along themountainous borders with Laos andM ya n m a r , whose education lags badlybehind that of lowland Thais.

H owe ve r ,e d u c ational experts wo rry thec o u n t ry could be trying to embark on toom a ny changes at once. “ I t ’s a massive task,to streamline the ministri e s , to undert a k ed e c e n t r a l i z ation of the system, to gi ve

j u risdiction to communities which have noe x p e rtise in managing schools, and on top oft h at , s t ri ve for academic excellence,” s ay sGary Suwannarat,a staff consultant to theAsian Development Bank in T h a i l a n d .“ T h emain risk (of failure) is the old bugaboo ofThailand—political instability,” s ays Jo h nM i d d l e t o n ,World Bank senior educat i o nadviser in T h a i l a n d . “But with the newconstitution in place things feel moresecure.”

Indonesia decentralizesIn Indonesia, political reform since the

fall last year of the military ruler of 32 ye a rs ,President Suhart o, has gi ven momentumto changes in the education system. G a i n sd u ring Suhart o ’s reign—when educat i o nwas the corn e rstone of development policyand the proportion of the populat i o n

without pri m a ry schooling shrunk fromaround three-quart e rs to one-third—areunder threat.

A 13 per cent contraction in thee c o n o my in 1998, causing a sharp declinein urban family incomes and their ability toc over the modest expenses of stat es c h o o l i n g, presented education authori t i e swith their own crisis—to prevent massdropouts.

The most wo rrying rise in dropouts hasbeen in urban areas, where they have tri p l e dlast year in secondary schools,particularlyamong gi r l s. According to a World Banks t u d y, female enrolment in junior secondaryschools in Ja k a rta dropped by 19 per centin 1998/99.

In the cri m e - ridden Indonesian capitalthere has been a clear increase in streetchildren cleaning windshields, b e g gi n g, a n dselling newspapers. “ Jo c k e y s ” hang aroundroad intersections leading into the centralbusiness distri c t , to earn cash by offering tobe passengers for car dri ve rs who risk a fin eif they go into the congested city centre inan empty ve h i c l e . “The overall effect, o fc o u rs e , is that these kids are going now h e r enear schools,” noted Stephen Hill, UN E S C O

representative in Indonesia.In an effort to prevent mass school

d r o p o u t s , the Asian Development Bank(ADB) and the World Bank have pumpedover $300 million of loans into a five - ye a rscheme to provide scholarships to some fourmillion students from poor families acrossIndonesia at risk of ditching secondarys c h o o l , as well as 140,000 block grants toschools reeling from a drop in real terms of

Thailand is in the midst of the most far-reaching educational reform in over 70 years.

Selected indicatorsIndonesia Malaysia Singapore Thailand World average

Population (1997)(millions) 200 21 3 61

GNP per capita (1997)(Purchasing power parity $) 3,450 10,920 29,000 6,590 6,330(world rank) 67 29 1 41

Adult literacy rate (1995) 83.8% 83.5% 91.1% 93.8% 77.4%

Public expenditure on education (1995)(as % of GNP) 1.4 5.3 3.0 4.2 4.9

Total enrolment inhigher education (1995)(as % of total school-agepopulation) 11 11 34 20

Sources: UNESCO, UNDP, World Bank.



state funding.According to a recent WorldBank report , e ven before the cri s i s , m a nyschools needed books, supplies andsubstantial maintenance, with gove rn m e n tgrants to pri m a ry schools amounting to lessthan $0.40 per pupil per year.

The scholarship scheme has beens u p p o rted by a major state-backed “ S t ay inS c h o o l ”c a m p a i g n , with adve rts on TV withthe catch phrase “aku anak sekolah”—“I’ma schoolkid.”All funds are being dispers e d ,when possible, directly to student andschool accounts held at post offices acrossthe country, in a bid to cut out onadministrative overheads and “leakage”.

E d u c ation minister Juwono Sudars o n ohas conceded in a recent interview that gr a f tis a problem—and that from 10 to 15 percent of the funds are likely to be written off.C o n c e rns have also been voiced aboutdelays in disbursement.

The ADB is upbeat about thes c h o l a rship scheme, which it sees as lay i n gthe gr o u n d work for a radicald e c e n t r a l i z ation of education financing inthe future. An official monitoring report ofthe scheme concluded that 81 per cent ofthe $2.50 per month scholarships havereached the poorest students in the firs tye a r , and virtually all have received thecorrect amount of money.

G ove rnment officials sound a morecautious note, seeing the scheme as a stop-gap measure. But the process ofd e c e n t r a l i z ation of authority for schoolbudgets and management appearsi n e v i t a b l e .“ D e c e n t r a l i z ation is a must,” s a i dDr Indra Djati Sidi, director-general ofp ri m a ry and secondary educat i o n ,a d d i n g

t h at educational programmes devo l v i n gmore authority to districts for teachertraining and construction of schools hadactually started two ye a rs ago. “ W h at thecrisis has done is speed up the process.”

The education ministry appears set onretaining control of the core nat i o n a lc u rriculum and exams, but acknow l e d g e st h at districts have a better idea of thee d u c ational needs of communities thano f ficials in Ja k a rt a .The gove rnment policyintroduced in the early 1990s to allow 20 percent local content in the school curri c u l u m —essential in an ethnically and geogr a p h i c a l l yd i ve rse country of 200 million people—remains hamstrung by a lack of local capacityto go beyond the ri gid national curri c u l u m .

Malaysia and Singapore:smart schools and creative kids

M a l aysia and Singapore have pressedahead with ambitious plans to change thewhole concept of schooling.

M a l aysia embarked this ye a r , a l b e i tfalteringly, on a “smart schools”project top r ovide the country with the innovat i ve ITe x p e rts and computer-savvy wo r k e rs oft o m o rr ow, in what the gove rnment istouting as a unique part n e rship between thestate and private sector.

A consortium of 12 mainlym u l t i n ational IT firms have been chargedwith devising systems and software to equip90 fully computerized schools. Some 30 percent of the designated schools are in ru r a lareas.

“If we don’t go hi-tech and embraceb r a i n - i n t e n s i ve industri e s , then Malay s i awill be left reliant on labour-intensive

i n d u s t ri e s ,f o r e ver a developing country,”declares Dr Rojani Abdul Hamid of theMalaysian ministry of education

The idea is for the consortium to designa “total solution” for computerized schools,including electronic teaching mat e rials aswell as systems for student assessment anda d m i n i s t r ation and management. C h i l d r e nwill be able to study at their own speed, a n dtake exams—accessed online from acentralized database—when they are readyt o. “ C o u rs e wa r e ” on CD Rom will bep r ovided for four subjects: science andt e c h n o l o g y, m at h s , English and BahasaM e l ayu (the national language of Malay s i a ) .

The ove rriding aim is to provide theskills base for the planned MultimediaSuper Corri d o r , an IT industrial hub whichwill stretch 50 kilometres south from thec a p i t a l , Kuala Lumpur—the centrepiece ofPremier Mahathir Mohamad’s dri ve forM a l aysia to achieve developed nation stat u sby 2020.

Computer industry sources say theeconomic crisis and problems ofc o o r d i n ating the pri vate sector consort i u mhas caused delays.The education ministry

has stepped into the breach, devising interi mcomputer lesson plans and other teachingm at e rials to ease the still-underequippedschools into the IT era.

Singapore meanwhile has announcedplans to invest over $2.6 billion into bu i l d i n gand upgrading 290 schools over the nexts e ven ye a rs , on its relentless quest to improvean education system of already remarkablee f fic i e n cy.The majority of children amongthe Singaporean population of 3.5 millionpass through 10 ye a rs of state schooling.

But these achievements belie insecuri t yabout the innovat i ve ability of Singaporeans t u d e n t s. Last ye a r , the NIE, which isresponsible for all teacher training, a d o p t e da new programme that represents a seachange in the approach to classrooml e a rn i n g .I t ’s called “teaching thinking” a n dis designed to encourage what was oncetaboo—students coming up with their ow ni d e a s.

According to the NIE’s ProfessorG o p i n at h a n ,Singapore has previously reliedon content mastery or the “pedagogy of thewo r k s h e e t ” . But the global economy of thefuture demands something more.“ We needa learning environment that allows forflexibility and collaborat i ve learn i n g,” h esays. n

In Malaysia,schools are being equipped with computers through a state partnership with the private sector.

‘Decentralization is a must.What the crisis has done isspeed up the process.’


Tourism and culture : rethinking the mix

FOCUS

Tourism and culture :rethinking the mixContents22 Is cultural tourism on the right tra c k ?

Mike Robinson

24 The pioneersRoy Malkin

26 The globalization of tourism

1 People and tourism28 The Himalayas: m a s ked dances

and mixed blessings Myra Shackley

30 M a s t e rs in their own tepeesGarry Marchant

32 Ecotourism without tearsSylvie Blangy

34 Pe r u ’s ‘meet the people’ toursLeticia Gonzáles de Remoué

2 S a f e g u a rding heritage35 Heritage and tourism:

will market forces rule? Valérie Patin

37 Pompeii puts its house in ord e rMartine Jacot

38 Learning holidays: a thumbnail guideGarry Marchant

40 Pe t ra ’s new invadersChristophe Ayad

42 Ve n i c e : coping with culture vulture sAntonio Paolo Russo

44 Luang Pra b a n g : a ghost town returns to life Francis Engelmann

47 A slow rescue for Moro c c o ’s earthen citadels Mohamed Berriane

49 C e n t ral Euro p e : castles gear up for business Cynthia Guttman

51 The right road for CompostelaLucía Iglesias Kuntz

3 Reflections53 Club Med: an empire built on the sands

Amy Otchet54 Philosophy of a guidebook guru

Tony Wheeler

56 To w a rds an ethics of tourismCynthia Guttman

The world’s leading category ofinternational tra d e, tourism isi n c reasingly offering a range of

c u l t u ral pro d u c t s, f rom visitingmonuments to the discovery of uniqueways of life. This growing trend fuelledby a quest for cultural enrichment can

e n c o u rage the revival of traditions andthe re s t o ration of sites and monuments.But unbridled tourism can have theopposite effect.

H e re there is a real dilemma. Is therenot a risk that the boom in cultura lt o u r i s m , by the sheer weight ofn u m b e rs involved, may harbour the

seeds of its own destruction by ero d i n gthe very cultures and sites that are itsstock in tra d e ?

Our introductory section explore sthis dilemma along with the origins andg rowth of cultural tourism. Part 1p resents case studies showing whatindigenous communities are doing to

c o n t rol tourism in their lands.In Part 2 we examine the world of sitem a n a g e m e n t , w h e re the track re c o rd isat best mixed. In conclusion, t w op rominent personalities in the touristbusiness defend mass tourism, while itsadvocates and other key players enterthe final stages of drawing up a globalcode of ethics for tourism.


w Director of the Centre forTravel and Tourism at theUniversity of Northumbria,UK

Is cultural tourism on the right tra c k ?w M i ke Robinson

Tourism has long been assumed to promote cultural understanding and peace, but in fact it often chips away at cultures and leads to confli c t

Among the Toraja people of Sulawe s i ,I n d o n e s i a , not all was going well with touri s m .In fact, resentment became so great over the

way in which sacred funeral ceremonies were beingadapted to meet touri s t s ’ needs that in the lat e1 9 8 0 s , a number of Toraja communities simplyrefused to accept tourists.

The Toraja example highlights the dilemma thatfaces contemporary cultural touri s m . On the onehand tourists increasingly seek exotic and oftenunique cultural spectacles and experi e n c e s , and arewilling to pay a premium to do so. But on the otherh a n d , the ve ry presence of tourists can chip away atlocal culture and essentially re-invent it to fit theexigencies of the tourism industry.

The result is that host communities find cultureand traditions under threat from the purchasingp ower of the tourism industry. Neither are touri s t sbetter off from the cultural viewpoint. Instead ofgetting rich and authentic cultural insights ande x p e ri e n c e s ,t o u rists get s t a ge d a u t h e n t i c i t y ;i n s t e a dof getting exotic culture,they get kitsch.

With nearly one billion intern ational trips expectedin 2000, the impact of tourism on culture has becomeso palpable that the question arises as to whether ornot we can continue along the current path withoutsomething having to gi ve . More than eve r , we mustfind a way to achieve sustainable cultural touri s m .

S u rp ri s i n g l y, and in contrast to the attention gi ve nto the natural environment in the sustainabled e velopment debat e , ve ry little energy has beend e voted to this end.A major reason for this lethargya p p e a rs to lie in our basic assumptions about touri s m .

The predominant notion is that touri s mg e n e r ates cultural harm o ny.This idea deri ves fromthe romantic (and elitist) traditions of travel in theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is todaye n s h rined in the World To u rism Organizat i o n ’smission stat e m e n t , which includes the goal offostering international peace and understanding.

But claims that tourism is a vital force for peaceare exaggerat e d . Indeed there is little evidence thatt o u rism is drawing the world closer together.T h et ruth is that a host of cultural conflicts havedeveloped around tourism.

Little thought is gi ven to the fact that touri s mis one globalizing influence which can initiat ed r a m atic and irr e ve rsible changes within the culturesof host communities. U n f o rt u n at e l y, while the idea

that we should respect cultures and cultural rightsm ay be present, the idea that we should s u s t a i ncultures is not fully deve l o p e d . Nor is there any clearindication of which cultures we are speaking of

Perhaps the most obvious conflict is betwe e nt o u rist and host.This is in part engendered by thefundamental difference in goals: while the touri s tis engaged in leisure, the host is engaged in wo r k .While the tourist arri ves with loads of expectat i o n s ,m a ny of the local stakeholders often have no ideaof what to expect.

Another source of conflict is between the oftenp e rs u a s i ve and economically powerful deve l o p e rsand operat o rs of the intern ational (though mainlyfirst world) tourism industry and the host country.To u rism can turn local cultures into commodities,t h at is, consumer items much like any others.R e l i gious ri t u a l s , ethnic rites and festivals continueto be reduced and sanitized to conform with touri s te x p e c t at i o n s , resulting in what one scholar hasdubbed “reconstructed ethnicity.”

An unequal relationshipPa rt of the conflict stems from the fact that

p a c k a ging culture begins well away from the culturals i t e . Cultures are reduced to a two - d i m e n s i o n a lworld carried by glossy brochures presenting idyllicl o c ations and generally reducing distinctive culturesto superficial and readily substitutable narratives.

The flow of tourism receipts is mainly to thed e veloped world—where the majority of touri s mbusinesses are locat e d — c r e ating a perm a n e n tbackdrop for conflict.

Another level of conflict is found among differents e c t o rs of the host community. For example, l o c a l sworking in the tourism industry might have differentgoals from those of agricultural wo r k e rs in the samec o m m u n i t y. Access to tourism employ m e n t ,w h i c hin developing countries also means often access tor e l at i vely high wa g e s ,m ay be skewed to certain socialand ethnic groups.

The attraction of generating hard curr e n cyr e l at i vely quickly and often with minimal inve s t m e n tcompared to, s ay, establishing a manufa c t u ri n gi n d u s t ry, is a powerful argument for gove rn m e n t sof both developed and developing nations seekingto develop tourism.

H owe ve r , the va rious levels of touri s m - r e l at e dcultural conflict force us—or should force us—to

Choose yourcompanions, thenchoose your road.

Arabic proverb

July/August 1999 -The UNESCO Courier 23


question the very foundations of cultural tourism.A c t i ve collaboration with local cultures must be at

the centre of any efforts to promote sustainablecultural touri s m . H owe ve r , to date the extent ofc o l l a b o r ation remains narr ow and almost a tokena f t e rthought following environmental and economicc o n s i d e r at i o n s. One study has shown that in NewZealand Maori economic invo l vement in the touri s mi n d u s t ry amounted to less than one per cent.

Though definitions might differ, I would arguet h at at its heart sustainable cultural tourism recognizesthe value of cultural dive rs i t y, and needs to prov i d elocal cultures with a forum in which they canp a rt i c i p ate in decisions that affect the future of theirc u l t u r e . In other wo r d s , host cultures should bee m p owered to say no or yes to touri s m , and in thel atter case, to set guidelines for tourism if they so wish.

There are examples where the redistri bution andow n e rship of resources are being addressed in touri s min such a way that indigenous peoples are begi n n i n gto move from being the prov i d e rs of culturale x p e riences for touri s t s , to having an ow n e rship andmanagement role in touri s m . (See pages 30-33).

Such examples are encouragi n g, though still fewand far betwe e n , and even then, largely shaped byf i rst world value systems. It is the allocation ofcultural rights and subsequent respect for andprotection of those rights which underp i nsustainable development and should underpin thenotion of sustainable touri s m .Those cultural ri g h t sneed to be accompanied by rights in other areas.A rmed with land, resources and intellectual propert y

ri g h t s , communities and cultures can not onlyinfluence the direction and pace of touri s md e ve l o p m e n t s , but also provide or withhold consentfor them.

Except for some rare cases, I am not at allc o n fident that at present we are on the right trackat all.The tourism industry and the gove rn m e n t sand organizations which empower it cannot, a n darguably would not,engage in dramatic structuraland intellectual reshuffling which would put thenotion of cultural consent at the centre of acollaborative process.

Under the current self-regulat o ry approach, t h ei n d u s t ry can encourage local communityp a rt i c i p ation in the management of touri s mresources and can aim to include non-traditionald e c i s i o n - m a k e rs in the development process.T h eproblem is that it does things in a way that isdesigned to serve both the economic goals anddesires of the tourism industry, and the dominantfirst world value systems which it represents.

One of the implications of a sustainable touri s mc o n s t ructed around the idea of cultural consent is thatt o u rism may be rejected outri g h t . More likely is thatvia more equitable collaborat i o n s , the nat u r e ,e x t e n tand type of tourism development will be adopted tosuit the cultural needs of the host community. E i t h e rway the challenge is to establish mechanisms whichwill invo l ve local cultures and transfer to them the ri g h tto decide on the type and extent of tourism which t h e ywish within the economic, e nvironmental and culturallimits which they have set. n

+ …l An international conference,

Tourism 2000:Time forCelebration, is beingorganized to addresssustainable tourism issues. Itwill be held September 2-7,2000 at Sheffield,UK.For information,please [email protected].

A meeting of two worlds: a group of tourists surrounding Bushmen in Namibia’s Kalahari desert.


A rt , like other potent substances, should beconsumed in moderation.This conclusion isto be drawn from the experience of the

French novelist Stendhal (Mari e - H e n ri Beyle, 1 7 8 3 -1842) who, while visiting Florence in 1817, e m e r g e dfrom the church of Santa Croce in an extremelyshaky condition.

“I was already in a kind of ecstasy,” he wrote,“ b ythe idea of being in Florence, and the neighbourhoodof the gr e at men whose tombs I had just seen.Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty, Is aw it in close-up, I touched it so to speak. I hadreached that point of emotion where the heave n l ys e n s ations provided by the fine arts meet passionat ef e e l i n g s. On leaving Santa Croce, I had palpitat i o n s ;all the life went out of me, as I walked I was afraid Iwould fa l l .”

This is the first description of what Florentinep s y c h i at rist Graziella Magherini named “the Stendhals y n d r o m e ” , a profound psychological disturbancet riggered by exposure to a work of art . Symptoms mayinclude dizzy spells, loss of the sense of identity ando ri e n t at i o n , depression and even physical exhaustion.This kind of cultural ove r d o s e , for which the onlyk n own cure is rest, r e p o rtedly affects a handful offoreign tourists in Florence each ye a r.According toM a g h e ri n i , who has written a book on the subject,1

the ingredients are “an impressionable pers o n a l i t y,the stress of travel and the encounter with a city likeFlorence haunted by ghosts of the gr e at ,d e ath andthe pers p e c t i ve of history.”

Tourism picks up steamThe Stendhal syndrome is not the only

e x p e rience shared by modern cultural tourists andwayfarers of the past.

In fact,there is nothing new about sightseeing.Travel guides proliferated in Greek Antiquity, andthe Hellenistic wo r l d ’s taste for tourist at t r a c t i o n s(m i ra b i l i a) was reflected in the invention of the Seve nWonders of the World.

Neither is souvenir hunting an invention ofm o d e rn trave l l e rs.The Greeks who consulted theOracle at Delphi or Dodona, like the medieva lC h ristian pilgrims who trod the highways andbyways of Europe,bore relics in which there was aprofitable trade.

The dehumanizing effects of modern trave l ?Long before cars and Concordes John Ruskin

condemned 30-m.p.h train travel as “a matter . . . to begot through as soon as possible. It transmutes a manfrom a traveller into a living parcel.” And even beforet h at ,William Wo r d swo rth had decried “ p i l grims offashion hurried along in their carriages”.

The tourist as a figure for satire? How about Mrs Clackin Samuel Fo o t e ’s play A Trip to Calais ( 1 7 7 6 ) , who wa samazed at how well the French spoke French?

I n t e r a c t i ve tourist guides? As early as the 1840s KarlBaedeker was urging readers of his handbooks to wri t ein with their suggestions for future issues.

The list could go on.Who was the first cultural tourist? Ulysses?

Alexander the Great? Julius Caesar? Perhaps they, l i k ethe Venetian merchant Marco Polo and the gr e atvoyagers of the European Renaissance who journeyed“to make Christians and seek spices”, were essentiallybusiness trave l l e rs.The gr e at 14th-century Arab trave l l e rIbn Batutah is a stronger candidate. He covered some120,000 km in the Islamic countries and went as fa rafield from his birt h p l a c e , Ta n gi e r , as China andS u m at r a , “for the joy of learning about new countri e sand new peoples”.

More recent cultural trave l l e rs were the sprigs ofthe English ari s t o c r a cy who went on the Grand To u rof continental Europe, a flexible itinerary usuallyincluding visits to Pa ris and the main Italian cities.w UNESCO Courier journalist

In this 19th-century satirical drawing, women and children kneel in prayer at the feet of threesightseers gaping at the vaulted roof of a European cathedral.

The p i o n e e rsw Roy Malkin

Once upon a time there were tra v e l l e rs. . . .T h e n , in the 19th century, a ferment of social and economic change ushered in the tourist re v o l u t i o n



According to Thomas Nugent, author of The Gra n dTo u r ( 1 7 4 9 ) , this was a custom “visibly tending toe n rich the mind with know l e d g e , to rectify thej u d g m e n t , to remove the prejudices of educat i o n ,to compose the outward manners , and in a wo r df o rm the complete gentleman”. O t h e rs we r esceptical about this optimistic ideology.

In the late 18th century the industrial revo l u t i o nc r e ated a new market for trave l : i m p r oved roadsd r a m atically shortened journey times; i n d u s t ri a lexpansion generated gr e ater wealth and a newr e s e rvoir of potential trave l l e rs in towns and cities;t i m e - r e g u l ated forms of work brought with them theconcepts of leisure and va c at i o n .The modern touri s tis a child of the steam age in Europe and Nort hA m e ri c a .

S t e a m - d ri ven vessels began to link Dover andCalais in 1821, and by 1840 an estimated 100,000t r ave l l e rs were using them annually. In the sameyear the steamship B ri t a n n i a crossed the A t l a n t i cin 14 day s. S t e a m e rs started to ply the Rhine in1 8 2 8 , the Rhône and the Danube a few ye a rs lat e r.A b ove all, the spread of railway systems speeded up,democratized and extended the range of travel.

Going by the bookThe new tourists needed more guidance,

solicitude and organization than their moreindependent and privileged predecessors. By themid-19th century a tourist industry compri s i n gt r avel agents, g u i d e b o o k s , package tours , h o t e l s ,r a i lways and timetables, duly emerged to prov i d ethem with protected modes of trave l .Three keyfigures in this process were the British and Germ a np u b l i s h e rs ,r e s p e c t i vely John Murr ay (1808-1892)and Karl Baedeker (1801-1859), and the Bri t i s htravel agent Thomas Cook (1808-1892).

Dozens of volumes of travel writing existed toa c c o m p a ny the Grand To u ri s t , but they had tendedto be rambling and opinionated accounts of theirauthors’ own travels. For the new kind of traveller,such idiosyncratic writings became obsolete. In the1 8 4 0 s , they were replaced by red-covered Murr ay sand Baedekers , which were standardized in form at ,regularly updat e d , and designed to fit easily intohand or pocket. B a e d e k e r , whose aim was to gi vet r ave l l e rs enough inform ation to dispense with paid(human) guides, made incognito journeys to checkthe reliability of his inform at i o n .He also used “ s t a rs ”to rank sights and hotels. In fact the red guides, l i k esome of their modern successors , h ave beencriticized for presenting a monumental heritage ofs t a rred attractions divorced from the real life of theland and people that had created them and gavethem their meaning.

B a e d e k e r ’s publicat i o n s , which covered most ofE u r o p e , became so popular that Kaiser Wilhelm ofG e rm a ny was quoted as saying that he stat i o n e dhimself at a particular palace window each noonbecause “ I t ’s written in Baedeker that I watch thec h a n ging of the guard from that window, and thepeople have come to expect it.”

The emblematic figure of a tourist industry

organized with bu r e a u c r atic efficiency to satisfy a( r e l at i vely) democratized tourist market is T h o m a sC o o k , who saw tourism as opening unprecedentedo p p o rtunities for people to enrich themselve sculturally and morally by excursions to otherc o u n t ri e s. After starting out in 1841 by organizingcheap train travel for English working men, he soonwent upmarket and by 1865 was escorting to Italy“ c l e r g y m e n ,p hy s i c i a n s ,b a n k e rs , civil engi n e e rs andm e r c h a n t s.”

Cook was often referred to as a gr e at general, t h e“Napoleon of excurs i o n s ” , and military andi m p e rialistic ove rtones of modern tourism (inva s i o n s ,a rm i e s ,hordes) accompanied his career.To u ri s m ,s o m ea r g u e d , was like imperi a l i s m : it might bring moneyand commercial benefits but it would also sustain asystem of exploitation and oppression. C o o k ’s firmb e c a m e , for instance,a crucial agent of British militaryand administrat i ve authority in Egypt. It was said that“the nominal suzerain of Egypt is the Sultan; its realsuzerain is Lord Cromer. Its nominal gove rnor is theK h e d i ve ; its real gove rnor . . . is Thomas Cook andS o n ” .

Cook and his “excursionists” were attacked bytraditionalists as hurried observe rs , v i s i b l er e p r e s e n t at i ves of a modernity that was bri n gi n gi n t ru s i ve crowds into formerly self-sufficient villages,t owns and regions and we aving them into a gr ow i n gweb of alien economic and social forces. M o r es c u rrilously it was implied that the new touri s t s ,“red-nosed people carrying red books in theirh a n d s ” , we r e , almost by virtue of travelling in ac e rtain organized way, not only incapable ofaesthetic response but in some way responsible forp r o faning the sanctity of the monuments theyvisited.Speed was associated with superficiality.

Which brings us back to the Stendhal syndrome.Magherini has described how contact with artisticm a s t e rpieces can bring to the surface repressedemotional experi e n c e s , thus deepening self-k n ow l e d g e . In other words it is a reminder that thelongest journeys are still, as they always were andwill be,in the mind. n

1. La Sindrome di Stendhal, Ponte alle Grazie publishers,Florence, second edition,1996.

Visiting the vestiges of Antiquity in aristocratic style.

J o u r n e y s, l i ke artists,are born and not made.A thousand differingc i r c u m s t a n c e scontribute to them, f e wof them willed ordetermined by the will.

L a w rence Durre l l ,British author (1912-1990)

The globalization of tourism

Americas to Europe:23.6

Americas to Europe:44

Europe to Americas:19.5

Europe to

Americas:65

Africa

to

Europe:

11

Europe

to

Africa:

19

Europe to Middle East:22

Eur

ope

to

Afri

ca:

6.9

Africa to Europe:

3.5

Asia to Europe:14.3

Middle East to

Europe:1.9

Europe to East Asia/Pacific:10.4

Europe to East Asia/Pacific:47

Esat Asia/Pacific to Americas:42

Americas to East Asia/Pacific:20

East Asia/Pacifique to Europe:47

Europe to Asia:10

Asia to Americas:10.1

Americas to East Asia/Pacific:6.2

Asia to East Asia/Pacific:1.3

Major intercontinental tourism flows (millions) 1 9 9 72 0 2 0

Source: World Tourism Organization


The top spenders, 1 9 9 7 E x p e n d i t u res* (US$ billion) The top earners,1 9 9 8 Revenues* (US$ billion)


S u d :v i v re en ville coûte que coûte

If the World To u rism Organizat i o n ’s forecasts areon target, i n t e rn ational tourist arri vals will climbfrom the present 625 million a year to 1.6 billion

in 2020. By this dat e ,t r ave l l e rs will spend over US$2t ri l l i o n , (against US$445 billion today ) , m a k i n gt o u rism the wo r l d ’s leading industry. T h e s eprojections are based on annual gr owth rates of4.3% for arri vals and 6.7% for spending, well abovethe maximum expected expansion of 3% per ye a rin world GDP. Already in 1997, t o u rism receiptsaccounted for a little over 8% of the wo r l d ’s export sin goods and almost 34% of global services export s.

Electronic technology is fa c i l i t ating this gr owth byo f f e ring access to fare and hotel inform ation and onliner e s e rvation serv i c e s. Despite a modest annual gr ow t hr ate (3.1%), Europe will remain, by fa r , the mostpopular destination (it can expect 717 millioni n t e rn ational arri vals in 2020, double the 1998 fig u r e ) ,though its market share will decline from 59 to 45%.G r owth on the continent will be led by Central andE a s t e rn European countri e s , where arri vals areexpected to increase by 4.8% per ye a r. At the samet i m e , almost half of the wo r l d ’s tourists will be comingfrom Europe.G i ven this dominance,it is not surp ri s i n gto find that six European countries count among thetop ten tourism earn e rs and spenders.The UnitedS t ates holds first place in both cat e g o ri e s.

The destinations n 1 9 9 8C o u n t r y / Te r r i t o r y Arrivals* (millions)

n 2 0 2 0C o u n t r y / Te r r i t o r y Arrivals* (millions)

France 70

Spain 47.7

United States 47.1

Italy 34.8

United Kingdom 25.5

China** 24

Mexico 19.3

Poland 18.8

Canada 18.7

Austria 17.3

China* 137.1

United States 102.4

France 93.3

Spain 71

Hong Kong, China** 59.3

Italy 52.9

United Kingdom 52.8

Mexico 48.9

Russian Fed. 47.1

Czech Rep. 44

With a 7% per annum growth in internationalarrivals, the East Asia/Pacific region will overtakethe Americas as the second most popular destina-tion, holding a 27% market share in 2020 against18% by the Americas. But the industry will also bedoing its utmost to court the Asian traveller, sinceEast Asia /Pacific is forecast to become the world’ssecond most important generator of tourists, witha 7% annual gr owth rat e , pushing the A m e ri c a sinto third position. China is expected to becomethe fourth largest source of tourists on the worldmarket, while it is not even among the first twentytoday. Both arrivals to and departures from Africa(and especially Southern Africa), the Middle Eastand South Asia are expected to grow by above 5%per year.

While France has held its place as the topd e s t i n ation throughout the 1990s, it will bedethroned in the next decades, with China(excluding Hong Kong) expected to top the list by2020 even though it is not even featured on it today.Also making an entry into the top ten are theRussian Fe d e r at i o n , Hong Kong and the CzechRepublic.

Despite this gr owth forecast, t o u rism is and willremain the privilege of a few:W TO forecasts thatonly 7% of the world population will travel abroadby 2020—that’s double the 1996 figure (3.5%). n

* Excluding international transport.** Excluding Hong Kong.Source: World Tourism Organization

* I n t e r n a t i o n a l , excluding same-day visitors. **Excluding Hong Ko n g .S o u r c e : World Tourism Organization

*Excluding Hong Kong.**Hong Kong has been a Special Administrative Region of China since 1997.S o u r c e : World Tourism Organization


e x p l o i t at i o n .And it is difficult to see how these changescan be reve rs e d .

In the hope of increasing foreign reve n u e ,t h eH i m a l ayan gove rnments are continuing to opennew areas to tourism each ye a r , generally withoutp r o p e r l y - d e veloped management plans or any ideaof carrying capacity. Since the mid-1990s, India hasopened parts of A runachal Pradesh and new areas ofHimachal Pradesh. Nepal has permitted cross-border trekking to Tibet on its nort h west frontierand allowed freer access to its peripheral Buddhistk i n g d o m s. Bhutan is the only country in the regi o nt h at has opted for a quota system, which is in fa c tseldom fil l e d . In a sign of further opening to foreignv i s i t o rs , the gove rnment of Bhutan has increasedp ri vate-sector part i c i p ation in the industry, w h i l emaintaining strict control over the sector.

In Nepal, the rapid gr owth of trekking tourism hasresulted in better internal air serv i c e s , the opening ofnew local airp o rts and the building of roads, gi v i n glarge numbers of visitors access to monasteries andr e l i gious sites in ve ry remote areas of the country.Awell-heeled traveller wishing to visit the Khumbuor Mustang areas of Himalayan Nepal, for example,can now charter a helicopter to do so, reducing his tra-velling time from several weeks to a few hours. B u th owe ver they are reached, the demand to visit Bud-dhist monastic sites, and in part i c u l a r , to at t e n dmasked dance festiva l s , is on the ri s e , reinforced byconstant media attention in the We s t , from televisiond o c u m e n t a ries to adve rtising commercials.

Such festiva l s , generally held on dates determ i n e dby the Tibetan lunar calendar,usually last for seve r a ld ays and typically include at least one day of maskedritual dances commemorating specific religious eve n t sand performed in the monastery court yard by monks.Some tour companies offer treks carefully timed to


1 People and tourism

Once a region that chiefly attracted inve t e r at et r e k k e rs and climbers , the Himalayas are nowd r awing an increasing number of visitors who

place a high premium on personal enrichment throughcontact with other cultures,a trend that is not withoutm i rr o ring Buddhism’s gr owing appeal in the we s t .Such journeys might invo l ve visiting religious sites,attending festivals or gaining a better unders t a n d i n gof the workings of Himalayan communities.

To dat e , the impact of intern ational tourism on ther e gion has chiefly focused on environmental issues,such as deforestation and pollution, which tend to bemore outwardly visible than the effects on local socie-ties and their cultures. But as tourism to the regi o ncontinues to gr ow—it has doubled over the past tenye a rs to an annual two-and-a-half million visitors — t e n-sions are beginning to emerge between the confli c t i n gaims of intern ational visitors and host communities,p a rticularly at the mainly Buddhist Himalayan monas-t e ri e s , temples and festiva l s.

Once a major force in keeping isolated commu-nities together, these festiva l s ,c h a r a c t e rized by spec-tacular masked dances, h ave in many cases becomecultural products for sale to touri s t s. In recent ye a rs ,their popularity has often resulted in modific ation oftraditional practices, decreased local interest andp a rt i c i p at i o n , c o m m e r c i a l i z ation and economic

The H i m a l a y a s:m a s ked dances and mixed blessingswMyra Shackley

As growing numbers of tra v e l l e rs seek to catch a glimpse of monastic l i f eand traditions on the rooftop of the world, tensions are starting to arisein some communities while others are reaping the fruits of tourism

w Professor of Culture ResourceManagement at NottinghamBusiness School (UK) and author ofVisitor Management; Case Studiesfrom World Heritage Sites( B u t t e r w o r t h - H e i n e m a n n ,1 9 9 8 ) .

Bhutan

India

China (Tibet)

Nepal

KATHMANDU



coincide with the festiva l s.The easier the monasteryis to reach,the more visitors will come, which increasesthe likelihood that their presence will alter the festiva lin some way.Typical problems include inconsiderat ep h o t o gr a p hy and local people being crowded out byv i s i t o rs , although this is sometimes encouraged bymonastic authorities who exploit the chance to makea little money. Selling tickets to tourists and ensuri n gt h at they get pri o rity seating can generate much-needed curr e n cy but also cause local resentment.E ven the structure of the festivals can be altered as ar e s u l t , sometimes by programme changes wheredances are shortened to accommodate we s t e rn e r ’s lowboredom thresholds. Another unwelcome by-pro-duct has been the escalation of a black market in reli-gious art work (particularly in small, p o rtable stat u e sand t h a n k a s ( r e l i gious paintings on silk) and at least onem o n a s t e ry on the tourist beat has had to use its tou-rism revenues to install security screening.

A tourist-driven religious revivalIt is not just the Buddhist festivals that at t r a c t

v i s i t o rs. In lowland areas of Nepal,Hindu festivals andmasked Hindu dances at Bhaktapur also draw touri s t s ,most of whom will combine such a trip with visits tothe World Heritage sites of the Kathmandu va l l e y. I nthe we s t e rn Himalayan kingdom of Ladakh, m o s tpeople are Mahayana Buddhists with beliefs consis-ting of a mixture of Ta n t ric and animistic pre-BuddhistBon influ e n c e s.Their festivals take place in the bleakwinter months when villagers gather together. S t a l l sand a market develop around the go m p a s ( f o rt r e s sm o n a s t e ri e s ) , highlighting the festiva l ’s role in unitings c attered communities, and masked dances are alsop e r f o rm e d .While such events have been visited by we s-t e rn e rs for many ye a rs , a more recent development isthe “ Fe s t i val of Ladakh”held during the first week ofAugust and organized by the tourist office rather thanmonastic authori t i e s , purely to attract visitors.

In Bhutan the state religion is the Drukpa Kagyupaschool of Ta n t ric Buddhism with around 5,000 monksa c c o m m o d ated in fort r e s s - m o n a s t e ries call d zo n g st h at form the kingpin of all tourist itinerari e s.T h e i r

annual masked dance festivals (t s e c h u) are the only timev i s i t o rs may enter many of the d zo n g s.A few ye a rs ago,s e veral of the monasteries were placed off-limits aftercomplaints over abu s i ve photogr a p hy.The effect on theBhutanese tourism industry was so severe that mosth ave now re-opened.The dates and locations of fes-t i vals are now available on the WWW and tours maybe booked via the intern e t .

While the incident points to a gr owing depen-dence on tourist reve n u e , in some cases, i n c r e a s e dp r o s p e rity as a result of tourism has led to no less thana religious reviva l .Tengboche monastery in the Soluarea of the Sherpa country in Nepal is now a pri m et o u rist destinat i o n , housing an active community ofover 40 monks.Yet the monastery was almost desert e din the 1970s when the monks left to work in trekkingt o u ri s m , and destroyed by fire in 1988. M a s k e ddances were only introduced here in 1942 but aren ow seen annually by hundreds of touri s t s — m o r ethan 80 per cent of the audience may be foreign—pro-ducing revenue to keep the monastery going andexpand its activities, which now include a solar-h e ated lodge and helicopter landing pad. C h a r gi n gv i s i t o rs for admission either to monasteries or tomasked dances may also generate funding for essen-tial replacement and repairs to costumes and masks,as well as for monastic education progr a m m e s.

But local complaints about the bad behaviour ofv i s i t o rs to sacred sites are increasingly common, and itseems possible that a tolerance threshold has beenr e a c h e d . Some tour operat o rs have started to publishbooklets about festiva l s , d e s c ribing the rituals andgiving visitors tips on etiquette, such as where to stand,and when and when not to take photos.As tourism tothe region increases—in areas not controlled by aquota system,annual increases of 10 to 20 per cent canbe anticipat e d — v i s i t o rs must learn to better align theire x p e c t ations and behaviour with those of local com-m u n i t i e s. Not doing so can produce resentment—elderly people in Mustang in the T i b e t a n - s p e a k i n gBuddhist kingdom of Nort h e rn Nepal at t ri bute thedrought that has afflicted their kingdom for the past fourye a rs to the malign presence of foreign touri s t s. n

Young monks perform during the Tenchi festival of Lo Manthang in Nepal.Revenue from theevent supports the monastic school.

In Nepal, remote areas are opening up to trekking tourism,a major source of revenue for the country.

H a l f way up theH i m a l a y a s, a gianttwice as high as theA l p s, are orchards likeour own. There are coolf o r e s t s, and the climatenear the lofty peaks isso mild that there areflowers which in ourland would not survive10,000 feet below.

Jules Michelet,French historian

and writer (1798-1874)


In the frozen wastelands of the Canadian A r c t i c,s e veral k a b l o o n a s (Inuit for strangers) clumsilyhack out huge ice blocks and piece them together

to make an igloo under the eyes of an Inuit guide. I nan Australian desert , a young city woman learn sfrom locals to savour an abori ginal delicacy, b e e t l el a rva called witchetty gru b. A small band of visitorsg at h e rs in a rainforest park on Canada’s Pa c i f i cs o u t h - west coast, listening to a nat i ve tour guideexplain how to read totem pole carvings with theirb o g e y wo m e n , thunderbirds and other my t h o l o gi c a lc h a r a c t e rs.

These scenes reflect the gr owing tourist demandto discover and experience abori ginal cultures.At thesame time, they tell a story about control over thegr owing abori ginal tourism niche market. F r o mI q a l u i t , the capital of the new Canadian terri t o ry ofNunavut, to Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, nativee n t r e p r e n e u rs themselves are increasingly show i n goff their cultures—and profiting from it.This standsin contrast to many other parts of the world whereindigenous communities have little control or eve ns ay in tourist inflows that are having sometimeshuge impacts on their cultures and societies.

“While we have played a role in the touri s mi n d u s t ry for ye a rs , we were somewhat margi n a-l i z e d ,” s ays Barry Pa r k e r , president of the CanadianN ational A b o ri ginal To u rism A s s o c i ation (CNATA ) .“ We were thought of in terms of p ow wow s or othercultural celebrations, or as ‘wilderness guides’ forhunting and fishing.”

N at i ve entrepreneurs no longer merely stagea b b r e v i at e d ,s i m p l i fied dance shows for tour gr o u p swhich quickly move on to other ersatz attractions,

or souvenir shops selling mass-produced trinkets.To d ay, indigenous populations are providing trans-p o rt ation services and accommodations while ope-ning galleries, restaurants, theatres and even theirown homes.

Not all abori ginal communities in Canada orAustralia welcome touri s m .H owe ve r ,m a ny see it asan important source of income. C N ATA is “ b o t t o mline ori e n t e d ,” s ays Pa r k e r.“Our business is job crea-tion and revenue creat i o n .” P r o m o t e rs say touri s malso allows abori ginals to teach others about theirt r a d i t i o n s , thus helping strengthen indigenousc u l t u r e .

Aboriginal Business Canada,a federal govern-ment agency, cites tourism development as one ofits top three priorities.There are now about 1,000Canadian abori ginal tourism businesses (i.e., bu s i-nesses that are at least 51 per cent owned orcontrolled by nat i ve people) generating up to some$200 million in revenue per year, according to thefederal gove rn m e n t ’s Department of Indian A f fa i rs.These companies provide about 15,000 jobs sea-sonally and 7,500 year round.

Indigenous tourism has become so economicallyi m p o rtant to both countries that gove rnments andaboriginal peoples have established official groupsto promote and control the industry. Besides theC N ATA , these include A b o ri ginal To u rism A u s-t r a l i a , the National A b o ri ginal and To rres StraitIslander Tourism Industry Strategy (NATSITIS)and A b o ri ginal To u rism British Columbia (AT B C ) .E ven Nunav u t , the new terri t o ry in nort h e rnCanada, has its own tourism body, promoting theEskimo (Inuit) culture.

Fixing snakebitewith seaweed

Australia has about 200 abori gi n a l - o p e r at e dt o u rism bu s i n e s s e s , according to Graeme Pri e s t l e y,who manages the federal gove rn m e n t ’s section res-ponsible for developing aboriginal tourism.Thesebusinesses are generating almost $20 million inrevenue per year,with sales in indigenous arts andcrafts amounting to an estimated $130 milliona n n u a l l y, according to the Australian Office ofN ational To u ri s m . P riestley believes that indige-nous tourism could be a much more signific a n tbusiness opportunity for aboriginal people.

The gr owing revenues going back to their com-munities mark progress for those aborigines whowant to encourage touri s m . But by their standards,more can be done.The Canadian Tourism Com-mission estimates that if aboriginal peoples sharedin the tourism industry in proportion to their popu-w Paris-based travel writer

M a s t e rs in their own tepeesw Garry Marchant

In Canada and A u s t ra l i a , aboriginal communities are taking control of tourism in their homelands.

An art gallery in Darwin,Australia,proudly spells out its aboriginal ownership.



l ation—four per cent of Canada’s total—abori gi n a lt o u rism would bring in about $1 billion annually—five times what it does today—and provide as manyas 40,000 jobs.

L i k e w i s e , despite progr e s s , A u s t r a l i a ’s abori-gines still face several major obstacles to deve l o-ping touri s m .To begin with, a b o ri ginal land claimsmust be legally resolved.Without legal land titles,a b o ri ginal people find it difficult to secure bankloans to start up their bu s i n e s s e s.Also in short sup-ply are the business skills needed to successfullyrun a company.To try to fill these gaps, the gove rn-ment has worked with aboriginal authorities to setup a range of support i ve measures—from indivi-dual grants to training programmes.

Hazel Douglas, a member of the Guguyalanjitribe in the far north of Australia’s Queensland,isfully aware of the difficulties of breaking into thetourism trade. “When I started my business [fiveye a rs ago], people said,‘ O h ,s h e ’s just an abori gi n a l

l a d y, she’ll only last a couple of day s ,’ ” D o u g l a stold The Australian newspaper. Today, her award-winning bu s i n e s s ,N at i ve Guide Safa ri To u rs ,l e a d sgroups across the rugged terrain of the Daintreerainforest, aWorld Heritage site, and Cape Tribu-l ation National Pa r k .While recounting legends andexplaining traditional culture, she takes her gr o u p sinto the bush to show them how to eat the thirst-quenching abdomens of live green ants—high invitamin C. She also teaches them how to fix snake-bite with seaweed and how to listen to the bird callsnear the river to know whether a crocodile lies inwa i t . For Douglas, the tour is more than just a bu s i-n e s s. “The most important thing is to educat epeople about abori ginal culture and to preserve it,”she says.

Pa rt of this educational task lies in dealing withthe stereotypes tourists expect to see during theirvisits. “People still have the impression that we areliving in the past,” says Jeff Watts,a member of theTseshaht tribe in Canada who started his nativeculture tour in Va n c o u ver last ye a r.When tourists askWatts to take them to a native Indian village, heteases them by suggesting they hail down the nextcovered wagon.

The abori ginal tourism offering is considerable.In Canada, the possibilities include digging intotraditional indigenous fare at a Haida longhouse res-taurant serving the likes of toasted seaweed, wildPacific sea asparagus, goat ribs and caribou; livingwith Inuit families at an igloo camp or spending aweek on an Indian reserve sleeping in a longhouse

or tepee; searching for shaggy musk-ox ; or perhapslearning drum dances and native games. In Aus-tralia, one can take tours to aboriginal homelandsto learn how to use a boomerang, listen to nativedreamtime legends, visit an abori ginal emu fa rm ortake a day trip in the scrubs to look for spiny anteaters and kangaroo.

Spirituality isnot for sale

In many cases visitors to aboriginal lands haveto learn to live like locals, far away from modernc o nve n i e n c e s. For example, in Canada, t o u ri s t smay have to accept caribou hairs on their bannockbread, while in remote parts of Australia, accom-modation is in cement floor huts with only basicwashing facilities.

There is often a clash between expectations andreality, with the result that sometimes tourists aredisappointed while their hosts are astounded byo u t s i d e rs ’p e r c e p t i o n s. For example, one tour com-p a ny reportedly received a complaint from a SouthAustralian tourist that the abori gines in theM a nyalluk community wore T- s h i rts and short sinstead of loincloths.

Many aboriginal people are aware of possiblen e g at i ve effects of touri s m . In some instances entirecommunities are off limits. In other cases, nativecommunities are controlling deve l o p m e n t ,p u t t i n gsacred sites off limits and preventing public accessto some ceremonies.

“ E l d e rs generally welcome the opportunity toshare aspects of their cultures with others , but are ada-mant that their spirituality is not for sale,” s ays CNA-TA ’s Pa r k e r.“There are things that are not for othersto see or share.Mainstream tourism needs to know thisto ensure appropri at e , authentic products are deve-loped and marketed with cultural sensitivity.”

E ven more important than the impact of touri s mon the land is its effect on the people.Says Parker:“No one wants to feel like they are fish in a fish bow lor have people invade their space.” n

In Kaan,an Amerindian village in British Columbia (Canada), visitors can learn about thesignificance of totems from local guides.

‘ T h e re are things that are not for others

to see or share.M a i n s t ream tourism needs

to know this to ensurea p p ro p r i a t e, authentic pro d u c t s

a re developed and marke t e dwith cultural sensitivity.’

Travel broadens themind: one leavesbehind the prejudicesof one’s own country,and one is hardlyqualified to take onthose of foreigners.

Michel de Montesquieu,French writer and philosopher

(1689-1755)


In the heart of Ecuador’s rain forest, f o rt y - fiveminutes by foot away from their own village, asmall group of Huaorani, an Amazon indigenous

p e o p l e , built a palm-thatched roof cabin for eight.Fe a ring that too much tourism could disrupt their tra-ditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle and bring in unwe l-come consumer habits, the Huaorani only accept onegroup of visitors per month, for two to six day s.

But during this time, they are gi ven full at t e n t i o n .Community representat i ves greet visitors upon theira rri val and discuss some of their people’s social ande nvironmental concern s. D u ring this first meeting,a per-night fee is paid to the head of the communityfor each visitor and the money is distri buted eve n l yamong all the fa m i l i e s. S a l a ries for the va rious jobs( g u i d e s , m a i n t e n a n c e , canoe paddlers etc) are cal-c u l ated by doubling what a person would earn as alabourer for an oil company, the main altern at i vesource of income.Huaorani guides accompany visi-t o rs on hikes and teach them about medicinal plants,the rainforest’s ecology, their spiritual relationship withthe env i r o n m e n t , and local handicrafts.At the end oftheir tri p,v i s i t o rs are invited to raise awareness in theirown countries about the Huaorani’s efforts to defendtheir land and culture.This initiat i ve has led to dona-tions that have financed training wo r k s h o p s , h i g hf r e q u e n cy radios and solar panels.

The fact that such a vulnerable population living

E c o t o u r i s mwithout tearsw Sylvie Blangy

F rom Ecuador to Namibia, indigenous communities are striking up innovative partners h i p swith tour opera t o rs to promote ecotourism on their own terms—a strategy to bring in

revenue and protect their culture and enviro n m e n tin a region prone to outside encroachment—fromunscrupulous jungle tour operators to petroleumcompanies—managed to set up a project that wona prize for the best ecotourism programme at the1998 Berlin To u rism Expo is not a product ofc h a n c e . It took nine months of planning and ori e n-t ation meetings for the Huaorani to finetune a tou-rism strategy, a task carried out hand in hand withTROPIC Ecological Adventures, a tour operatorwith a long experience in working with indigenouscommunities, notably on bringing the Huaorani’sproblems with the oil industry to intern at i o n a lat t e n t i o n . Not only has this community defined itsown rules for tourism, but it has gained indispen-sable exposure on the international travel marketthrough a fruitful business partnership.

A strong conservationist slant

Just as import a n t l y, the Huaorani have opted fora self-managed community-based activity that repre-sents a potential economic altern at i ve to oil and log-gi n g .M a ny indigenous communities see ecotouri s mas the most rational way of protecting the rainforest,c r e ating jobs for the young and generating reve n u efor educat i o n , community health and transport at i o n .They also see it as a way of maintaining their culturali n t e gri t y. Ecuador is a ve ritable laborat o ry for com-munity-based ecotouri s m , with some env i r o n m e n-talists contending that revenues earned from touri s min the Amazon rainforest could eventually outstri poil earnings.

The Cofan indigenous people have developed afairly sophisticated management system in Zabalo,under the guidance of Randy Borm a n , the son of anA m e rican missionary who grew up with the Cofa nand has played a leading role in resisting the effort sof oil companies to prospect on their terri t o ry. I n1 9 9 2 , B o rman established a community-run com-p a ny in Zabalo with ten Cofan associates whoi nvested their labour in building guest cabins. O t h e rcommunity members are paid for doing va rious jobswhile a small co-operat i ve craft store also brings ini n c o m e .These va rious initiat i ves provide the Cofa nof Zabalo with an estimated $500 annually perp e rs o n .The project also has a strong conservat i o n i s ts l a n t : the community has defined separate zones forhunting and ecotouri s m , with fines levied on

w Responsible for theecotourism department at Seca, aFrench consulting firm specializingin the protection andmanagement of natural sites

Caught snapping. Trekkers make their way through the rainforest in Venezuela’s Bolivar State.

+ …l Megan Epler- Wo o d , Meeting the Global Challenge of Community Participation in

Ecotourism: Case Studies and Lessons from Ecuador, U S A I D, The Nature Conservancy, 1 9 9 8l Judy Karwacki, “Indigenous Ecotourism: O v e rcoming the Challenge”, The Ecotourism Society

N e w s l e t t e r, first quarter 1999l The Nacobta Community Based Tourism Association at [email protected],l Andy Drumm, New Approaches to Community-based Ecotourism Management; Learning from

E c u a d o r, Ecotourism, A Guide for Planners and Managers, v o l . 2 . The Ecotourism Society 1998.l The Ecotourism Society (www. e c o t o u r i s m . o rg) provides a wealth of re s o u rces and includes

a virtual “ecotourism explorer path”.



m e m b e rs for taking certain species such as toucansand parrots (particularly coveted by touri s t s ) , or forexceeding quotas in the hunting zones.

Besides the need for a close relationship with ap a rtner who has a sound knowledge of the trave lmarket and a sensitivity toward indigenous com-m u n i t i e s , such projects need at least five ye a rs beforethey can become commercially viable.Training is thebackbone of any succcessful enterp ri s e .E ven thoughthese trips are no-frills experi e n c e s , some basicnotions such as punctuality and hy giene in food pre-p a r ation have to be understood by the community.Just as import a n t , if a real exchange is to happend u ring the tri p, guides have to know how to speak tov i s i t o rs about their lifestyle and natural surr o u n-d i n g s , and realize that they may have to slow dow ntheir pace when leading hikes along rainforest trails.All this requires dialogue and a community that isunited around a respected leader. Although NGOsh ave also assisted communities in developing touri s mp r o j e c t s , e x p e rience shows that they often lackcontacts on the travel market to make these initiat i ve sv i a b l e .

‘Unlike oil,tourism is sustainable’

Other countries and continents are also boostingtheir presence on this niche market which is at t r a c-ting more and more North A m e rican and Europeant r ave l l e rs. Take the case of Ve n e z u e l a . H e r e , o n eindigenous group, the Pemons, does not flinch ataccepting 100 tourists a day who fly in from a beachresort on Margarita Island to visit Salto Angel,thewo r l d ’s highest wat e r fa l l , in the southeast of thec o u n t ry. Besides accompanying visitors to the fa l l sand serving them a meal, the Pemons have alsobuilt a village (an hour by road away from their ow n )of ten traditional cabins for ove rnight gr o u p s.To u-rism revenue (the Pemons receive about $25 per dayper visitor, the total package costing $70) has serve dto set up a school and a health dispensary andmake up for declining state subsidies. A n o t h e rgr o u p, the Ye ’ Ku a n a s , won rights from the gove rn-ment to manage land-use of a forest reserve . Pa rt ofit, beyond a natural barrier formed by a waterfallover the Caura ri ve r , is off limits to visitors , while in

a n o t h e r , they have built guest cabins and deve-loped itineraries for tourists in part n e rship withNatura Raid,an operator based in Caracas.

As awareness of environmental issues has spreadover the past decade,a growing number of travel-lers are looking into how the adventure/discovery-style trips they choose benefit communities. In res-ponse, the latter are joining forces in an effort tobetter promote their projects and design commons t a n d a r d s. In Ecuador, the CONFENIAE, a confe-deration of indigenous groups from the Amazonbasin, has published guidelines for managing eco-tourism.The Ecuadorian Ecotourism Associationhas designed tools for eva l u ating the env i r o n m e n t a lpolicies of tour operators, which are now used inother Latin A m e rican countri e s. In A f ri c a ,N a m i b i af o rmed a national association for community-basedt o u rism (NAC O B TA) in 1995 which groups 41communities from a range of ethnic gr o u p s. It pro-vides advice and training to communities seeking tostart up projects, but also keeps a high profile ini n t e rn ational travel fa i rs. M a ny experts seeN AC O B TA as one of the most rational ways for pro-moting and defending this touri s m , which by nat u r e ,is small in scale and highly personalized.

The challenge today lies in designing nationals t r at e gies that put the accent on training, access tomarkets and capital, and safety norms—issues thatwill be on the agenda of the Ecotourism Society’sgeneral assembly, to be held in December 1999 inQ u i t o, upon the inv i t ation of the Ecuadorian gove rn-m e n t .C l e a r l y, this gesture is another sign that indi-genous groups have gained a voice at national leve l ,and tourism is just one way in which they are beingh e a r d . As one Ecuadorian ecotourism operator putit,“Unlike oil,tourism is sustainable.” n

In good hands: indigenous guides in Venezuela accompany visitors along the Caura river, a tributary of the Orinoco.

The tourist is a child ofthe 20th century whoonly travels to comforthis prejudices.

Joaquín Luna,Spanish journalist


w Peruvian archaeologist

Pe r u ’s ‘meet the people’ tours

The European Union and the Peruvian government are setting up a scheme for alternative tourism that benefits host communities

Pe ru , the cradle of ancient civilizations and thehome of active indigenous communities, i sattracting more and more tourists who want to

get away from the old “See a country in seven day sand nights” package and is putting more and moreemphasis on its cultural and archaeological assets.Until recently, however, key elements like contactwith local people have been neglected.

To put things right, the European Union andthe Committee to Promote Peru (PromoPerú)launched a jointly funded 1m-euro programme in1996 to develop the country’s tangible and intan-gible cultural attractions “from within”.

The scheme, whose joint director is a Belgiantourism consultant, Lieve Coppin, is known asthe “ I n t e gr ated Support Programme for theDevelopment of Tourism in Peru”. It grew out ofa series of seminars involving public and privatebodies, local associations and rural communities.

The job that had to be done was no sinecure.Factors such as terrorism and a cholera epidemicwhich broke out in 1990 and ravaged the countrybetween 1991 and 1993 had reduced Peru’sattractiveness as a tourist destination. Many ser-vice companies went bankrupt and the touristindustry suffered.

After nearly two years of fieldwork which tookCoppin all over the country, six “ d e ve l o p m e n tz o n e s ” were chosen—three in the south (Barrio deSan Blas, U rubamba and Ollantaytambo) and threein the north (Olleros-Chavín,Túcume and Caja-m a r c a ) . A hundred or so proposals were consi-dered from these areas, of which 31 were accepted.

W riting guidebooks, designing posters and lea-fle t s , making maps of the sites and creating Intern e twebsites for communities where sometimes littleSpanish was spoken were some of the most urgenttasks done by the scheme, which allotted betwe e n$20,000 and $40,000 to each project.

The result is tourist packages that strengthencultural identity, respect the environment, active-ly involve local communities and make a profit.Among the tours on offer are “Posada Amazonas”(“Explore the Tambopata jungle with the Ese’ejapeople,” as the brochure says), “Willoc, LivingInca Art and Culture” (“Learn with an Indianfamily about the art of weaving modern tapestrywith ancient ya rn”) and “ Pe ru Llama Tr e k ”(“Villagers and their llamas will take you to thesources of Andean culture”).

Tourism with cultural identity

E l s e w h e r e , the attraction of prestigi o u sarchaeological sites like Machu Picchu has beenused to develop tourism in nearby communities.For example, the salt pans at Maras(“Participatory Tourism in Urubamba”), drawvery few of the many tourists who every day visitthe spectacular ancient Inca city just over an houraway.The project aims to extend Machu Picchu’ssphere of influence to Maras, where visitors cantake part in activities like extracting the salt usingmethods handed down over the generations andwill be guided around by the villagers themselves.

However, in trying to market these tours, theorganizers have encountered a certain lack ofenthusiasm on the part of tour operators whoregard the projects as competition, albeit on asmall scale.Another problem is lack of inspectionof arrangements that might clash with internatio-nal consumer protection laws. To overcome theseobstacles, the flow of information must be impro-ved between local tour operators, foreign travelagents and customers.

The next step is to get the authorities to treattourism as a major economic activity. Only thenwill such projects become part of a medium andlong-term plan through which Peru will be able tofulfil the main goal of the programme, to offer“tourism with cultural identity”. n

w Leticia Gonzáles de Remoué

+ …l South.American.Destination@wanadoo frl [email protected]

The Maras salt pans near Machu Picchu,where tourists can take a quick course in saltextraction.

We find after years ofstruggle that we donot take a trip, a triptakes us.

John Steinbeck,American novelist

(1902-1968)



Visiting archaeological sites, monuments andmuseums is often an ambivalent kind of tou-rism.On the one hand,it is seen as having an

i m p o rtant educational and social function,h e l p i n gtourists to find out more about the culture of thecommunities they visit. On the other, it is regardedas a major ri s k , especially for physically fragile sites(containing cave paintings, for example) whichattract flocks of touri s t s , and sites where touri s tfacilities are few or inadequate.

So excessive exploitation of sites by tourism hasbeen criticized on the grounds that it may rob hostcommunities of their traditional cultural landmarksand destroy the authenticity and significance oftheir heri t a g e . This happens when attempts arem a d e , through superficial presentations or videogames,to cater for visitors who want to be given aquick general picture of the site.

This conflict cannot be solved by cultural mea-sures alone.The growing economic importance ofa r c h a e o l o gical sites, monuments and museumsover the past 15 years as a result of tourist demandmust be taken into account as well.

To cope with the pressure, m a ny countries havemade big efforts to improve and diversify the pre-sentation of their cultural heritage.Museums havebeen refurbished. More than $1.1 billion was spenton doing up the Louvre in Pa ri s. New sites havesprung up, including modern art museums in SanF r a n c i s c o, B a r c e l o n a , R o m e , To k yo, Hong Kongand Bilbao.

Historic city centres have been renovated, andfamous monuments such as the Grassi Palace andthe Ca Rezzonico in Venice have been restored.There has been a sharp rise in the number of bigexhibitions. More than half a million visitors rou-tinely visit blockbuster shows (e.g.Vermeer atThe

Hague, Monet in Chicago, and Cézanne andGeorges de la Tour in Paris). The 1999 Monetexhibition in London broke the record for a tem-porary exhibition, clocking up more than 8,500visitors a day.

These efforts to popularize culture have beenwidely supported by the media. For most visitors,h e ritage has become a fa m i l i a r , easily accessiblecommodity providing surp ri s e s , r e l a x ation ande n j oy m e n t . The substantial gr owth in short - s t aycultural tourism reflects this. Such packages typicallyinclude a reserved ticket for one or more culturale ve n t s , such as an exhibition or an opera, train or airfare, and board—preferably in a charming hotel.

So tourism has been a driving force over thepast 15 ye a rs in taking cultural heritage into theeconomic mainstream. This has brought changesin the way heritage is preserved and deve l o p e d ,including the role played by institutions andi nve s t m e n t .

Pressures to create jobs and income

In most countries with big tourist industri e s ,apart from the United States and Britain, culturalsites have long been run by public institutions, a n dthe money earned from visitors is largely ploughedback into the sites.This funding is sometimes top-ped up by other private and public investment.

In some cases however, the income from thesesites is used for other purposes than their preser-vation and development, as may be justified bythe economic plight of some of the host countries.This means there is an incentive to over-exploitthe cultural heritage while cutting back on theinvestment needed to preserve and present it pro-perly.Worse, it can lead to the building of tourist

w Sociologist,administrator of the international scientificcommittee on cultural tourism ofICOMOS (the International Councilon Monuments and Sites)

2 S a f e g u a rding heritage

Will m a r ket f o rces r u l e ?w Valéry Pa t i n

Tourism can be a boon for a country’s heritage as long as the law of the market is applied in modera t i o n


facilities, especially hotels, whose poor locationand mediocre design seriously harm the qualityand authenticity of cultural landscapes.

Planned management of sites can usuallyavoid such mistakes, though sometimes pressurefrom economic interests means the plans are notcarried out.This has happened with efforts to res-tore and preserve the sites at Angkor Wat, inCambodia, and Petra, in Jordan (see article page40).

The growth of tourism, especially the incomeit provides, has sometimes induced cultural insti-tutions to develop and redirect some of their acti-vities. In France, the National Museums service(RMN), which runs all state museums, was givencommercial status in 1990, enabling it to collectentrance fees, publish art books and sell associa-ted items.The RMN now has an annual turnoverof $125 million and employs about 1,000 people.

In Britain, spinoff income (from heritage-rela-ted items, mail-order and restaurants) earned bythe National Trust, a private body which managesmore than 500 historic buildings and naturalsites, tops $75 million. New York’s MetropolitanMuseum of Art earns close to $110 million. Inmany countries, governments encourage the pri-vate sector to provide funds to support culturalheritage or to set up foundations.

Most of the time, cultural institutions andtourist operators co-operate, via agreements toshare staff training facilities and other forms ofpartnership. But clashes occur too. The Tunisiannational tourist office recently claimed the rightto administer directly all the country’s monu-

ments, museums and cultural sites, since most ofthe income from admission charges and the saleof associated items comes from tourists.The mat-ter was only settled when the president of therepublic stepped in and ruled that this was a jobfor the country’s cultural institutions.

Private and public investment to protect cul-tural heritage (preservation and restoration) isgenerally declining while funds to enhance it areincreasing.1 Cultural sites are coming under gro-wing economic pressure to generate jobs andincome.These days,an economic feasibility studyis often commissioned to back up proposals tofund the development of a site, monument ormuseum.

Furthermore, public funding for preservation

and development now needs simply to be justifiedby the presence of a clear “economic”goal, most-ly based on tourism-related arguments, as in thecase of the European Union’s Leader II, Interregand Phare programmes, which received some$1.9 billion between 1994 and 1999. By compa-rison, over the same period, the Raphael pro-gramme—the European Union’s only projectspecifically designed to safeguard and preservecultural property—drew a mere $38 million.

Heritage supermarketsTourism can benefit cultural heritage as long

as there is a cultural rationale independent of eco-nomic interests, even if it is to some extent adap-ted to these interests.This means having laws andr e g u l ations and guaranteed public funding.Cultural officials must also have a more realisticview of the obligations and benefits of the econo-mics of tourism. This implies greater respect forthe private sector’s management skills, insofar asthe private sector can adapt to the specific task ofrunning monuments, sites and museums whichhave become “consumer goods”.

If the law of the market is applied indiscrimi-nately, it may lead to jazzed-up heritage super-markets which have been standardized and adap-ted to meet consumer demand. And where theauthentic heritage would be ill-adapted to thiskind of presentation, there is nothing to rule outmaking a copy of it, not to protect the original (asin the case of prehistoric cave painting sites), butto increase profits.

This is the idea behind the new seaside resortat Yasmin Hammamet, in Tu n i s i a , where a55,000-square-metre artificial medina is beingbuilt. In it, there will be none of the access,trafficor management problems that exist these days inreal-life medinas. n

A casino-hotel in Las Vegas (United States) recreates an Egyptian setting.

1.This trend is difficult to quantify because financial datado not make it possible to clearly separate fundingearmarked for preservation from funding for development.

Private and public investment to protect cultural heritage

( p reservation and re s t o ration) is generally declining

while funds to enhance it a re incre a s i n g

Pompeii is a mostsurprising sight: thissudden leap across 19centuries astonisheseven the most prosaicand least perceptivepeople.

Théophile Gautier, Frenchwriter (1811-1872)



The Roman city of Po m p e i i , a stone’s throwfrom Naples, was bu ried beneath volcanic ashwhen Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. It was res-

tored pretty much intact as a result of systematice x c avations which began in 1748, but in recentye a rs it has been facing a second, s l ower death at thehands of a host of largely unwitting culprits. Theruins attract a flood of visitors , whose numbersrose from 863,000 in 1981 to nearly two million in1 9 9 8 .There are not enough attendants patrolling thesite to prevent the murals,frescos, mosaics,sculp-tures and other fragile remains from being damaged(or even stolen).The site has been poorly adminis-t e r e d , to put it mildly. The official previously incharge is currently under inve s t i g ation forembezzlement.

On top of this, the ravages of time and theweather have been aggravated by the fact that theauthorities have often opted to continue excava-ting instead of making sure that buildings alreadyunearthed were properly preserved. Forty-nine of

the site’s 64 hectares have now been excavated,but whereas in 1956 visitors could see 64 housesor buildings in the ancient city, for the past fewyears they only been able to see 16 because theothers have been cordoned off for protection.

Concern about the situation is widespread.“At this rate, in 10 years’ time there won’t bemuch to see at Pompeii,” said Andrea Carandini,one of Italy’s most eminent archaeologists, in1 9 9 5 . A year lat e r , the U.S.-based Wo r l dMonuments Fund (WMF) classified Pompeii asone of the world’s most endangered sites. In1998, the city was put on UNESCO’s WorldHeritage List.

Three years ago, a page was turned when arespected expert, Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, wasappointed superintendent of Pompeii.The follo-wing year, the Italian parliament gave the sitea d m i n i s t r ation broad financial independence.Until then, visitors’ entry fees went directly to thegovernment, which allotted varying amounts ofmoney to the country’s archaeological and histo-ric sites.

“Since my appointment, I’ve concentrated onsetting up an independent administration andabove all on trying to prevent damage to thearchaeological monuments,” says Guzzo, who hasintroduced a “theme walk” with arrows to directvisitors around the huge site. He has a budget of$11 million, three-quarters of which comes fromthe sale of tickets and items associated with thesite. However, studies have shown that “saving”Pompeii will cost about $310 million.

Help has been promised or is under way frommuseums and universities in Italy and abroad, aswell as the WMF, which decided last year to pro-vide $600,000 over three years, mainly to fund ageneral assessment of the state of the site and thedrafting of detailed criteria for restoration work.

To further boost Pompeii’s resources, a lawpassed by the Italian parliament in 1997 said“private firms who want to take part in the resto-ration can obtain tax breaks under certain cir-cumstances.” Wild rumours have spread recentlyabout the supposedly “imminent” conversion ofthe site into a “theme park” with guides dressedin Roman togas, but Guzzo has categoricallydenied there are any such plans. nw UNESCO Courier journalist

Pompeii puts its house in ord e rw Martine Ja c o t

Engulfed in volcanic ash 2,000 years ago, the ancient Roman city was slowly dying a second death. But help is on the way

Limiting the number of visitors entering a house at a given time (above, the villa of theVettii) is one proposal currently being studied in Pompeii.

‘At this ra t e, in 10 years’ time t h e re won’t be much

to see at Po m p e i i ’


ART ANDARCHITECTUREl Instituto per l’Arte e il RestauroPalazzo Spinelli offers throughoutthe summer two- to four-weekcourses on Italian art includingfresco, painting, ceramics, stone,archaeological, paper, glass, carpet,textile and wood restoration; studyof the antique trade; drawing andpainting;graphic design; computergraphics; interior design;gardendesign and planning;and Italianlanguage.Website www.spinelli.it;phone (39) 55 246001;fax (39) 55 240709;or write Borgo S. Croce,10 - 50122 Florence, Italy.l The Instituto Allende in SanMiguel de Allende, Mexico, hasshort-term courses in painting,silver work, drawing,lithographyand etching, silk screening,ceramics, multi-media sculpture,traditional Mexican weaving,Mexican art history, Spanishlanguage classes and ironsculpture.E-mail [email protected],phone (52) 415 2-01-90,fax (52) 415 2-45-38 or write Ancha de San Antonio#20, San Miguel Allende,Guanajuato, Mexico.l Wisconsin,USA-basedAdventures in Perspective bringstogether Mayan, Mexican andAmerican artists to teach painting,ceramics, batik making, drumming,cooking and story-telling from theirrespective cultures. Week-longcourses take place at the SianKa’an Biosphere Reserve, onMexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.E-mail [email protected];phone (1) 715 779-9503; or

write P.O. Box 874,Bayfield,Wisconsin,54814, USA.l Sua Bali offers two-week andlonger courses in batik painting,local music, c o o ke r y, h e r b a lmedicine and the Indonesianl a n g u a g e. Classes take place at amini-resort of seven traditionalguest houses in a rural settingsouth of the village of Ubud,renowned for its painting.E-mail [email protected],phone (62) 361 941-050,fax (62) 361 941-035 or writeM rs. Ida Ayu Mas, PO Box 155,Gianyar 80500, B a l i ,I n d o n e s i a

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE WORKl There are numerousopportunities to take part inarchaeological digs. For example,every spring, Current Archaeologymagazine publishes the Directoryof British Archaeology, listing morethan 700 societies, universities andprofessional units. A small numberof these open their archaeologicalfieldwork to outsiders onweekends, or for several weeks inthe summer.Websitewww.currentarchaeology.com;phone (44) (0)171 435-7517;fax (44) (0)171 916-2405; orwrite to Current Archaeology, 9Nassington Road,London NW3 2T, UK.

l Aberdeen University Centre forContinuing Education runs a “fieldschool”in archaeology at threesites in Scotland during July andAugust.

E-mail cce-aberd e e n @ a b d n . a c. u k ,phone (44) (0)1463 718718;fax (44) (0)1463 714794; orwrite to B5 Etive House,Beechwood Park, Inverness,Scotland, IV2 3BW.l In Antigua, West Indies, Betty’sHope, a 350-year-old sugarplantation, is undergoing a multi-year restoration programme.Volunteers take part inarchaeological excavations andarchival research, and learnsurveying and excavationtechniques, processing andcataloguing of artefacts,conservation methods, archivalrecord research and reportpreparation.Websitew w w. i n t e r i m p a c t . c o m / e x p e d i t i o n ,phone (1) 819 682-0562;fax (1) 819 682-8001;or write to Cultural ExpeditionsMEC Canada Inc. Westgate PO 35012,Ottawa,Que. K1Z 1A2, Canada.l In Ecuador, weekendarchaeologists unearth artefactsfrom pre-Hispanic chiefdoms in theGuayllabamba valley. They learnlabeling and washing artefacts inthe lab.E-mail [email protected].(See below Earthwatch entry inFurther Information).l Amateur archaeologists learnabout one of the original NorthAmerican civilizations, the Hopis, i nA r i z o n a . Crews of four (with agraduate student supervisor)photograph and map artefacts,draw stratigraphy, e x c a vate andwa s h , sort and catalogue artefacts.E-mail [email protected].(See Earthwatch in FurtherI n f o r m a t i o n ) .

CULTURE

l Educational programmesrelating to a specific culture canoften be found through a country’sofficial tourism board.(www.towd.com has theaddress of every tourist boardin the world, along with all oftheir branches.)

LANGUAGEl A language stay of two or threeweeks arranged throughEurocentres combines a summerholiday with serious languagelearning,for adults, ages 16 andover. Students stay with a hostfamily and participate in sports,culture and other entertainment.They can learn Japanese inKanazawa, on Honshu, Japan’smain island, French in Paris,Amboise, La Rochelle andLausanne, Russian at the MoscowLinguistic University and Italian inthe Scuola Leonardo da Vinci,Siena.English schools in NorthAmerica are in Washington,DC;New York;East Lansing,Michigan;San Diego, California; Toronto,Ontario; and Vancouver, BritishColumbia. Websitewww.eurocentres.com;phone (41) 1-485-5040;fax (41)1-481-6124; or writeFoundation for EuropeanLanguage and EducationalCentres, Seestrasse 247,CH-8038 Zurich, Switzerland

LIVING INl Asian Overland Servicesoperates a five-day tropicaladventure tour in various parts ofMalaysia.Students live with localtribes to learn how indigenouspeople hunt,trap, fish and gatheredible plants and medicinal herbs.Aborigines give practical lessonson how to build shelters and make

w Garry Marchant

People wanting to spend their vacations in pursuit of culture have a fairly wide choice of options that go beyond mere sightseeing. N u m e rous companies organize tours for lovers ofa rc h i t e c t u re or art. Those who don’t mind roughing it can do volunteer project work, j o i na rchaeological digs or help with cultural studies.

Though not an endorsement of any tour organization or pro g ra m m e, the following sampleincludes just a few of the many options available.

Learning holidays:




a thumbnail g u i d etraps. Email [email protected],phone (60) 03-4529100/4519840;fax: (60) 03-4529800/4514001;or write Lot 39/40c, JlnMemanda 9,Ampang Point,68000 Ampang, Selangor,Malaysia.l Wind, Sand & Stars, a Britishtour company, runs eight-daycamel treks through the Sinaidesert in which tourists travel andlive with local Bedouin.Also eight-day Biblical tours.E-mail:[email protected];phone (44) (0)171 433-3684;fax (44) (0)171 431-3247;or write Janina Macdonald,2 Arkwright Road, London NW36AD, UK.

MUSICl Amateur musicologists can helpdocument Irish musicalcommunities, video-taping andphotographing music performancesand interviewing audiences abouttheir attitudes toward Irishtraditional and Celtic music.Volunteers document festivals aswell as private and pub sessions.Accommodation is in bed andbreakfasts, university dorm rooms,and vacation cottages.Email [email protected].(See Earthwatch in FurtherInformation).l A Sound of Northern Momentsmusic tour of Finland,Denmark,Norway and Sweden includesclassic, choir, opera or jazzprogrammes. The Shaman’s Drumfolklore tour of Finland andSweden focuses on cultural life,folk music festivals, domestic andinternational music,dance andtheatre, both classical and modern.E-mail [email protected];phone (1) 973 729-8961;fax (1) 973 729-6565; or writeScandinavian Special InterestNetwork, P.O. Box 313, Sparta,New Jersey 07871-0313, USA.

FURTHER INFORMATIONl US-based Earthwatch Institutefunds scientific research bycharging members of the public,aged 16 to 85,to help on some130 projects worldwide. Manyprojects are based on culturalthemes, including, for example,documenting Africa’s musicaltraditions and excavating Mayanruins. Teams are small and noprevious research skills arerequired. Participants pay their airfare to the site, room and boardand a fee to join the project.Website www.earthwatch.org;phone, (1) 617 926-8200;fax (1) 617 926-8532;or write 680 Mount Auburn St.,P.O. Box 9104, Watertown, MA02471 USA; also, offices inOxford, UK, Tokyo, Japan andOttawa,Canada.l The Specialty Travel Guide liststour operators around the worldoffering a variety of commercialspecial interest tours and

courses—although these can beexpensive. Websitewww.infohub.com,phone (1)510 505-0931; fax (1) 510 505-0732; or write to InfoHub Inc.,38764 Buckboard Common,Fremont, California 94536, USA.

l The Educated Travelernewsletter also providesinformation on specialty travel.Email [email protected];www.educated-traveler.com; (1)800 648-5168 or (1) 703 471-1063; fax 1 (703) 471-4807; orwrite P.O. Box 220822,Chantilly, Va. 20153, USA.l Tourism Concern,a London,UK-based NGO which campaigns forresponsible tourism,lists travelagents around the world offeringhome stays and opportunities for“real human exchange”. Websitew w w. g n . a p c. o rg / t o u r i s m c o n c e r n ;phone (44) (0) 171 753-3330;fax (44) (0) 171 753-3331;or write Stapleton House,277-281 Holloway Road,London N78HN. n

A botany lesson in the rainforest of Mount Cameroon.



“Petra has changed more in the last 15 ye a rsthan it did in the previous 14 centuries,”s ays Ahmed Salamin, who knows what

he is talking about. He was born in Wadi Moussa,the nearest town to the outstanding Jordanian site,and served as its mayor before becoming assistantdirector-general of the Petra Regional PlanningCouncil (PRPC). Fourteen centuries ago, he says,a series of earthquakes seriously damaged theancient city, once the capital of the kingdom of theN a b at a e a n s , an Arab people who controled thec a r avan trade routes between Arabia and the Medi-terranean before they were conquered by Rome in106 A.D.

To d ay, Petra and those who seek to preserve thesite have nothing to fear from the forces of natureor the Roman Empire.The present danger comesfrom the legions of tourists overrunning the site,whose 800 monuments carved into pink stone we r eincluded on UN E S C O’s World Heritage List in 1985.The number of visitors rose from 100,000 in the lat e1980s to 400,000 six ye a rs lat e r , then declineds l i g h t l y. Recent regional tensions stemming from thecrisis with Iraq and the deadlock in the peace pro-cess have deterred visitors, especially Israelis andA m e ri c a n s , from visiting some Middle Easterncountries.

A comprehensive planConcerned about the influx of tourists and the

chaotic growth of Wadi Moussa, Queen Noor ofJordan sounded the alarm in the early 1990s. Sheappealed to UN E S C O,which sent a mission of expert sto Petra in 1992.The outcome was the ManagementPlan for the Petra National Pa r k , which includes ana rr ay of measures cove ring the conservation and res-t o r ation of monuments, site deve l o p m e n t , t h ei m p r ovement of infrastru c t u r e s ,c h a rting a future forthe area’s 25,000 inhabitants, and protection ofthe environment.

In accordance with the plan’s recommenda-t i o n s , the Jordanian authorities set up the PRPC in1995 to bring together all the official bodiesc o n c e rn e d . Chaired by the minister of touri s m ,t h ecouncil includes representat i ves of the depart m e n tof antiquities, the ministries of planning, finance,l a b o u r , h e a l t h , local gove rn m e n t , and irri g at i o n ,the environmental protection department and localcommunities. Financed by a 25 per cent cut of the

w Cairo-based journalist,special correspondent in PetraA group of tourists are dwarfed beneath the columns of Petra’s majestic Al-Khaznahmonument, reached through a narrow gorge called the Siq.

Pe t ra’s new invadersw Christophe A y a d

Pe t ra was declared a world heritage site in 1985, Since then it’s been an uphill battle to protect Jo rd a n ’s glorious ancient city hewn from pink ro c k



site’s receipts,the council is empowered to reviewand approve all decisions concerning Pe t r a . B u ts e veral questions remain unanswe r e d . Does it haveenough political clout to control all the changes inits 900-square-kilometre area of competence? Howcan conser vation needs and tourism interests bebalanced in a country where tourism accounts forearnings of nearly one billion dollars a year and17,500 jobs?

So far,tourism does not seem to have inflictedirreparable damage on Petra, and the prospect ofincreased revenues has led to some indispensablei m p r ove m e n t s. Under a $27-million pri o rity actionplan set up with the help of the World Bank in1996, construction work has begun on a drainages y s t e m .P r e v i o u s l y, u n t r e ated waste and waste wat e rwere often discharged into the env i r o n m e n t . I na d d i t i o n , t e rraces dating back to the Nabat a e a np e riod have been gradually restored and wadi bedsc l e a n e d . Once the hydraulic work is completed,the authorities will renovate the road netwo r k ,e s p e-cially in the centre of Wadi Moussa, which iscongested with buses and taxis. O l i ve and pinetrees are being planted to stop desert i fic at i o n .R e f o-r e s t ation “will help absorb water in the event oft o rrential rainfall and beautify the site,” s ays Zeidounal-Muheisen, director-general of the PRPC.“Andi t ’s the best way to prevent unauthorized bu i l d i n g .”

T h at threat , among others , is associated with theactivities of the Bduls, Bedouin who lived in theruins of Petra until 1985.They farmed in the areaand had their goats graze there before being expelledand rehoused in the village of Oum Seyhoun on theedge of the archaeological park. N ow most of themmake a living from touri s m , renting horses or sellingt ri n k e t s. But the tri b e ’s population has continued togr ow and the Bduls, who believe they have been mis-treated, are cramped in their new village. “Therewere 40 Bdul families in 1985. To d ay there are350,” says Salamin.“The tourist boom has drawn

newcomers from the Aqaba region.If they want tomove here all they have to do is buy land.”

If they can afford it. Land prices have skyroc-k e t e d .T h at is why, s ay the Bduls, they are forced toadd storeys to their houses, which are now visiblefrom the site, where their flocks still gr a z e .They canalso expand Oum Seyhoun, but only on its nort h e rns i d e .The east is set aside for reforestat i o n , the southis occupied by the archaeological site and the westis part of the natural park that is currently beingcreated.This strictly regulated area will probablyc over 264 square kilometres, f o rming a huge bu f f e rzone around Pe t r a .The U. S .N ational Parks Serv i c ewill train a team to manage the area. But the pro-ject is still on the drawing board.

The hotels that have sprung up like mushroomsin Wadi Moussa have also caused degr a d ation to thes i t e .Ten ye a rs ago there were fewer than five ;t o d aythere are around sixty. “The PRPC did not existwhen most of the building permits were issued,” s ay sSalamin. “From now on we are making sure thatnothing which can have a negat i ve impact on Pe t r awill be bu i l t .” He is probably thinking of theunsightly Mövenpick restaurant, l o c ated a fewmetres from the entrance to the archaeologi c a lp a r k , and the six hotels overlooking the site from thevillage of Taybé.The private sector is not the only

culprit.Two large public buildings stand at the leftof the entrance to Petra. One is the Wadi Moussasports hall.The other is the future headquarters ofthe PRPC.

The admission fee at Petra is 20 dinars ($30), a nexorbitant price that does not seem justified andmakes the Nabataean city one of the world’s moste x p e n s i ve sites. Of cours e , some difficulties arehard to avoid: to reach the heart of Petra, visitorsmust take the Siq, a narr ow, 800-metre-long gorgec a rved into the rock that leads to the impressive A lK h a z n a h , a monument with a columned fa ç a d ecut into the solid rock. Congestion seems inevi-t a b l e .To limit it, h o rses are not allowed through thegorge unless they are drawing carriages.

Other improvements have made life easier forv i s i t o rs. Toilets have been bu i l t , the site is keptmeticulously clean, and souvenir ve n d o rs have beengrouped together and will eventually be move doutside the park. On the other hand, the touristinformation centre is too small and is used almoste x c l u s i vely to display the handicrafts made by localwomen under the aegis of the Noor al-HusseinFoundation.Signposting is minimal:there are fewmaps and no explanations.

Under pressure from tourism and in theabsence of a local tradition of site restorat i o n ,c o n s e rvation may be the most pressing issue. I n

Bdul, bedouins who once lived in Petra,now await tourists at the entrance to the site.

‘ F rom now on we are making s u re that nothing

which can have a negative impact on Pe t ra

will be built’

When one travels, oneaccepts everything,one leaves indignationat home. One looks,listens and becomesenthusiastic about themost appalling thingsjust because they arenew. Good travellersare inhuman.Elias Canetti,Bulgarian writer

(1905-1994)


Ve n i c e: coping with c u l t u re vultures w Antonio Paolo Russo

Inundated with visitors,Venice is now trying to scare some of them off.But there are better ways of rescuing the city from tourism

Beauty bears its bu r d e n s , and in tourism noplace illustrates this more clearly than Ve n i c e .So popular a destination has it become that

t o u rism has created a crisis of economic, s o c i a l ,demographic, but perhaps above all, cultural pro-portions. However,it need not be so.

For ye a rs now,Venice has in many ways failed tol i ve up to its romantic image. The centre is soc r owded one can hardly move , shops offer low qua-lity at high prices,and street vendors add an extradecimal place to the price for a Korean tourist sear-ching for a made-in-Korea carnival mask.

Things are not much better for the local

p o p u l at i o n .As services from schools to hospitals areforced out of the city to make way for more cost-effi-cient operations like fast food restaurants and sou-venir shops,Venice is less and less able to hold onto its citizens.The city’s population has now sunk toabout 68,000,only slightly more than a third of whatit was in 1951.This is understandable when onec o n s i d e rs the disadvantages of living in Ve n i c e .R e s-taurant meals are very expensive.The purchase ofa necessity like spectacles can invo l ve an hour’sjourney to neighbouring towns. If one happens toc r ave French cheese, the excursion could stretch totwo hours.

1993 the German intern ational co-operat i o na g e n cy, the GTZ, launched an ambitious pro-gramme in co-operation with Jo r d a n ’s depart m e n tof antiquities. The first on-site training centre isscheduled for completion by the end of 1999.A f t e ryears of work,the centre developed a natural mor-tar which is particularly suitable for the stone atPe t r a . This discove ry seems especially import a n tsince the cement and reinforced concrete used inearlier restoration work have caused damage to theKhaznah and other monuments.These “modern”m at e rials trap water in the monumental stonewo r k ,which is gradually eaten away from within andcracks in some places.

R e s t o r ation is a long job, but tour operat o rs arein a hurry and the scales are tipping in their favo u r.C o n s e rvationists are having trouble making theirvoices heard.The department of antiquities report sto the ministry of tourism, which does not like tosee scaffolding up for a long time. In an effort tostop water seepage into some of the monuments,the authorities have applied sprays that prevent thestone from breathing and may cause the same pro-blems as cement.

Controversial initiatives

That’s not all, say archaeologists,who are par-ticularly critical of the activities of the PetraNational Trust,a private foundation whose mem-bers are prominent figures who want to contribu-te to the enhancement of Jordan’s foremost cul-

tural treasure. Chaired by Prince Raad ben Zeid,a cousin of the late King Hussein, the Trust hascommissioned a Swiss company to build a seriesof dams in the small valleys that give on to theSiq. The purpose is to avoid a recurrence of thetragedy that occurred in 1963, when 21 Frenchtourists drowned as a result of flash floods. The$1.5-million project, which is financed by theSwiss government, damages the site’s integrity,say archaeologists, who would like to restore theNabataean hydraulic system. Experts are alsoupset about the way the same company excavatedthe ancient pavement “with a bulldozer andwithout archaeological supervision.”To cap it all,the Swiss firm coated the Siq’s unpaved surfaceswith a white, powdery substance that has spreadto the walls of the gorge, masking the rock’smagnificent colours.

“We’re not here just to restore four monu-ments, carry out a high-profile operation andleave,” says Helge Fischer, head of the GTZ pro-ject.“Our objective is to set up a Jordanian struc-ture capable of looking after the restoration ofmonuments.” This body, the Conservation andRestoration Centre in Petra (CARCIP), will beindependent of the department of antiquities andstaffed by highly-qualified professionals. So far,GTZ has spent $3.5 million on equipment andtraining six specialized workers, two architectsand two stone-cutters. In the long term, the teamshould comprise ten or more people. But CAR-CIP has not yet got off the ground. n

w Researcher in town planning atErasmus University, Rotterdam(Netherlands) and a specialist on Venice

The sadness of Venicedoes not arousemelancholy; it is anoppression thatoverwhelms the heart;the humid atmosphereweighs upon thelungs, and thetraveller at everyinstant wishes to fleeand breatheelsewhere.

Domingo F. Sarmiento,Argentinian writer andpolitician (1811-1888)



Venice is thus a ve ry good case of unsustainablet o u ri s m . W h at ’s under threat in Ve n i c e , which 250years ago was one of the most powerful and mostp o p u l ated cities in Europe, is culture in the broadests e n s e .Ye s , the issue is heritage preservat i o n . But ina d d i t i o n , both citizens and visitors presumablywant the city to remain a living entity, and not betransformed into an empty stage,where the steriler e p r e s e n t ation of an act of consumption—tou-rism—is performed

One approach is to scare off some of the tou-ri s t s , n a m e l y, the day - t ri p p e rs who, n u m b e ri n gsome seven million per ye a r , pass a few hours inthe city, contribute to congestion at the main tou-rist at t r a c t i o n s , add to transport at i o n , s a n i t at i o nand other problems and spend only a minimalamount of money in the city. To this end, Ve n i c erecently hired Oliviero Toscani, the photographerbehind Italian clothes-maker Benetton’s contro-

ve rsial adve rt i s e m e n t s , to produce a negat i ve publi-city campaign feat u ring images of garbage and deadpigeons.

Smart cards to attract high spenders

H o p e f u l l y, by reducing the number of day - t ri p-pers, the city will not only cut down on associatedcosts, but also hold greater allure for tourists pre-pared to stay a few days—and thus put real moneyinto the local economy. H owe ve r , r ather thanshooing tourists away, a more durable solution is toi m p r ove the supply side of the tourism industryequation by creating a cultural tourism system.

This approach is based on the recognition thatVe n i c e ’s cultural offering is so vast that it can sat i s f ythe demands of a public with quite different

p r e f e r e n c e s. H owe ve r , gr e ater efforts need to bemade to publicize this offering. Perhaps the mostexpedient method is to set up an inform ation tech-nology infrastructure allowing visitors to accessdetails about city sites as well as eve n t s , and tomake advance bookings.

This strategy could include the issuance of am u l t i - s e rvice “ Venice Card” o f f e ring tourists oppor-tunities not available to those who do not book: f o rexample, the right to jump queues; discounts onmuseum entry and transport fares, at restaurantsand in shops; and inform ation about special eve n t s.The card could be delivered, at no charge, to theovernight-stay tourists when they book a hotel.

In this way, s e rious cultural tourists get a betterdeal because they can more easily discover what ison offer, and then arrange their itineraries expe-diently and benefit from discounts. M e a n w h i l e ,the city is better off because it attracts relat i vely high-spending tourists who add to its profits from tou-rism.

Diversifying the economy

I n f o rm ation systems such as these will be gi ve na test run during the Jubilee 2000 celebrat i o n s ,when Italy expects an enormous inflow of tourists.The A L ATA part n e rship of nort h e a s t e rn Italiancities will use an inform ation system designed tomanage and distri bute visitor flow by telling pil-grims how heavily booked cities are. If a city’shotels are full, the system will redirect tourists toother localities for accommodat i o n .This is an emer-gency measure aimed at coping with celebrationsr ather than providing incentives for certain typesof cultural tourism. But it is a first attempt to usem o d e rn telecommunications technology to fulladvantage.

At the moment, within the Venice city adminis-tration,the idea of “soft controls”seems to be gai-ning support. Pilot projects are underway for thecreation of a network connecting cultural institu-tions. Much more needs to be done.

But Venice needs not only to manage its touri s mb e t t e r , but also to dive rsify its economy. In a reviewof sustainable development options for Ve n i c e ,s c h o l a rs Enzo Rullani and Stefano Micelli suggestthat Venice could become the capital of a metro-politan area specializing in producer serv i c e s ,f r o md ata processing to software design and finance;cultural industries such as musical and theatricalproductions; and other activities from research top r oviding convention serv i c e s.This requires a systemof fast transport to reconnect Ve n i c e , an island thatis relatively difficult to get to and from, to the restof the region.

Another vision is that of Venice as the capital ofhi-tech and data processing, overcoming its phy s i c a li s o l ation through electronic accessibility.W h at e ve rapproach is used, it is now recognized that if theculture of Venice is to remain a living entity thecity needs to be refashioned into a place that existsfor more than tourism. n

Rain or shine, Venice is a crowd-puller, but the city is trying to cut down on day-trippers.


Lung Ouane Phothiphanya is tired but happy.In the main room of Wat Xieng Thong, one ofthe most splendid pagodas in Luang

Prabang, the former Laotian royal capital, he hasjust finished his daily rehearsal of traditional pup-pet theatre with a group of young pupils. Now 75years old, he is the only remaining practitioner ofthis art.

“There used to be 12 of us in this neighbou-rhood, but now I’m the only one left. Rehearsalsstarted a couple of months ago, with help fromthe ministry of culture, and I think the puppetswill be saved,” he says as he puts away the twosticks he used to mark time during the show.Nearby, the local children and a handful of tou-rists are still under the spell of the music andgentle movements of these little puppet charac-ters, who range from benevolent princes to villa-ge jesters and fearsome demons.

At the other end of the city, near the TalatDara market, children go in the evenings afterschool and all day on Saturdays to the YoungPeople’s Cultural Centre, where their activitiesinclude music, traditional drawing, weaving, andreading stories. “We’ve still got a lot to do tomaintain the intangible parts of our cultural heri-tage like dancing, music, poetry and puppetry,and develop and pass them on to the children,”says Khamphouy Phommavong, the local repre-sentative of the ministry of culture. “Traditionalmusic is still alive and dance is starting up again.Tourism is helping this to happen.”

A cautious openingLuang Prabang has taken on a new lease of

life.The former capital of northern Laos, on thebanks of the upper Mekong river, it was harshlytreated by the rulers who took power in the 1975revolution, abolished the monarchy and set upthe People’s Democratic Republic of Laos.

Some of the city’s inhabitants were sent to re-education camps. The city withdrew into itself,many houses became derelict, the shops on themain street closed down, the pagodas were deser-ted and traditions faded out. Few tourists ventu-red into what was almost a ghost town. Thingsslowly began to change in the 1990s, as thegovernment—which had sought to introduce “anew way of thinking” and then “new economic

methods”—became more flexible and the coun-try opened up economically.

And now the city, which today has 60,000inhabitants, has come back to life. Since 1995,many small businesses and restaurants have ope-n e d . And tourists have returned to LuangPrabang, increasing from 19,000 in 1996 to44,000 in 1998, according to official figures.Thecity now has 45 hotels, compared with only six in1993.

The authorities have always been cautious,fearing that a too sudden upsurge in tourismwould bring with it drugs,prostitution and dama-ge to the environment. Nevertheless, entry intoLaos has been made easier. Visitors no longerhave to go through government-approved travelagencies or get special permission to drive aroundthe country. Since 1997, entry visas have beenissued on arrival. Also, the decision to declare1999 and 2000 as “years of tourism” perhapsindicates a change of heart by the government, or

Luang Pra b a n ga ghost town returns to life w Francis Engelmann

The former royal capital of Laos is turning back to its traditional cultureand its arc h i t e c t u ral heritage

w The author of Luang Prabang( AS Ap u b l i s h e r s, Pa r i s, 1 9 9 7 ) , and amember of the UN E S C O m i s s i o n sthat prepared the listing of LuangPrabang as a World Heritage site.

Evening prayers for young monks at Wat Xieng pagoda,built in the 16th century.

To those who ask mewhy I travel,I usually say that I know what I amescaping from, but notwhat I am looking for.

Michel de Montaigne,French writer (1533-1592)



at least some people in it. At any rate, officialfigures show that last year tourism became thecountry’s main source of income.

The traditional way of life in Luang Prabang isone of its charms for the alert stroller. N o i s ym o t o r - b o ats on the Mekong have been bannedand have to keep their distance from the city. T h er e l i gious life of the monasteri e s , goldsmiths atwo r k , women we aving among the stilts support i n gthe houses and old ladies taking offerings to pago-das are scenes that captivate touri s t s.

Visitors are more numerous when the city’sfamed religious or ethnic festivals are going on.The main event, the Laotian New Year in mid-April,features parades,dances and the procession

of the Buddha Phra Bang, the city’s spiritualguardian. As well as these festivities, which haverecovered their former spirit,there are a variety offamily celebrations, which passing visitors areoften generously invited to join in.

This cultural renaissance goes side by sidewith the longer-term job of preserving the city’sarchitectural standards, which has been a matterof concern for the last decade. “In 1990, all weplanned was the partial restoration of the oldroyal palace and the city’s finest pagodas,” saysThongsa Sayavongkhamdy, director of museumsand archaeology in the national capital,Vientiane.“Gradually we realized that the beauty of LuangPrabang was something to be seen as a whole—not just the religious buildings but also the housesaround them, and then nature itself, the jewel ofit all.”

A protected zone has been marked out in theold part of the city and a preservation and deve-lopment plan is almost ready. Plans for improvingsewage treatment are on the drawing board. Abroader urban development plan will enable deci-sions to be made about future extensions of thecity and the startup of businesses near the newstadium, just below the old town.

Since Luang Prabang was put on UNESCO’sWorld Heritage List in 1995—600 of its buildingsare classified—many houses have been restoredalong traditional lines. Koutis—monks’ dwellingstypical of the city’s architecture—have been resto-

Vientiane

Luang Prabang

China

Viet Nam

Thailand

Cambodia

Myanmar(Burma)

Gulf ofTonkin

LAOS

One of Luang Prabang’s many colourful festivals: a procession starring a wild boar, the symbolic animal of 1998,celebrates the Laotian New Year.


red or rebuilt in their original form. The finestpagodas have also been refurbished. Most of thesaffron-robed novices who can be seen in andaround them are children of needy families whor e c e i ve secondary education in the pagodasthanks to money donated by the faithful.

The House of Heritage has played a key role inthe successful restoration of Luang Prabang’sarchitectural heri t a g e . It brings together seve r a lg ove rnment ministries and attracts sizeable fun-ding from abroad. “The streets and the quay s i d e sof the Mekong and its tri bu t a ry were restoredfirs t ,” s ays Laurent Rampon, a Frenchman who isone of the three foreign experts working perm a-nently at the House of Heri t a g e , of which he is themain architect. “ We now want to clean and bri g h-ten up the alleyways which lead to important bu i l-dings such as the house of Lung Khamlek.” T h i sbig edifice perched on stilts is one of the rareexamples of Luang Prabang’s pre-colonial ari s t o-c r atic architecture. Some outstanding wo o d wo r kwas crafted during its restorat i o n , which wa srecently completed.

Tight regulationsfor building and restoration

The people of Luang Prabang come to theHouse of Heritage for help and advice on buil-ding, repairing and extending houses in the pro-tected zone. No building work can be donewithout permission from the House,which makessure that projects harmonize with the style of theold town. But the restrictions imposed by the newregulations and concern for the general good arenot always accepted without complaint. Somepeople are benefiting from tourism,but others seethe city’s listing as a World Heritage site as inter-ference in their right to alter their houses as theyplease or, for example, to fill in a pond at the bot-tom of their garden.

Even the bonzes sometimes object to the newrules. “Why do I have to ask someone who usual-ly goes down on his knees before me what colour

tiles I’m allowed to use to mend the roof of mypagoda?” asks one venerable monk who dislikesnot being absolute master in his monastery. Ascheme to help the bonzes will soon be under waywith Norwegian funding. In co-operation withthe Buddhist clergy it will seek to preserve theauthenticity of the religious heritage and revivecertain skills traditionally practised by the bonzessuch as stencil painting, enamelling, giltwork andreligious sculpture.

“ We want to rely on the people and see thatthey benefit from protection of the heri t a g e ,” s ay sChansy Phosikham, Luang Prabang’s gove rn o r.“ We also have to think about the social and econo-mic development of the whole city.” A small tax ont o u rism activities has been proposed. R a m p o ns u p p o rts it because “it will enable us to subsidizethe use of traditional building mat e ri a l s , which arec u rrently too expensive for many small house-ow n e rs and also sometimes not ve ry good quality.”It remains to be seen whether people will acceptsuch a tax.

Despite the problems, a lot has been achieved inLuang Prabang. Some of it is due to we l l - p l a n n e dforeign help, especially from the European Union,UN E S C O and the French gove rn m e n t .“ N ow - f o r g o t-

ten building mat e rials such as whitewash and tradi-tional plasterwork have been analysed in laborat o ri e sa b r o a d ,” s ays Phommavo n g .“ We ’ ve also been helpedby experts who have worked with us for long per-iods and who we ’ ve gradually learned from.And wec o u l d n ’t have done it all without the tireless help ofY ves Dauge.”

D a u g e , the mayor of Chinon in centralFrance, and a member of the French parliament,has set up “decentralized co-operation” betweenthe administration of the two cities (somethingnew for Laos) and has lobbied for Luang Prabangat international level. He says the Laotians weresuspicious at first, but then came to trust him, asthey have retained control of the operat i o n sthroughout.

Laotian culture ministry officials reckon thatwhat has happened in Luang Prabang has signifi-cantly changed the way people think. It has led to“the drafting of regulations and especially a newattitude by the authorities to the question of heri-t a g e ,” s ays Sayavo n g k h a m d y. “Officials comefrom elsewhere in Laos to see what’s being donein Luang Prabang and to get ideas from it.”

But “the most wonderful thing” about LuangPrabang is “the kindness and generosity of itsinhabitants,” says Santi Inthavong, who has resto-red a former royal residence and turned it into ahotel. “This heritage is so fragile that I wonderwhether it will survive the growth of tourism.” n

Luang Prabang is famed for its traditional houses with wood façades.

‘ We want to rely on the people and see

that they benefit from protection of the heritage’

Only through travel canpeople mature.

Pe rsian proverb



Will tourism save the ksars and kasbahs ofthe valleys and oases of southernMorocco? Perched on rocky crags, these

f o rtified buildings made of compacted eart hmixed with water and chopped straw are a drawfor foreign tourists in search of unusual architec-tural sites. One jumping-off point to see them isOuarzazate in the Atlas Mountains, 200 kilo-metres south of Marrakesh. This remote andancient little town has become a busy touristcentre. With a total 5,502 beds in its officially-approved hotels, it attracts more than 450,000overnight visits every year.

The Ouarzazate region contains 300 of thethousand or so kasbahs that have been identifiedin Morocco. These structures, which come in allsizes, are notable for the beauty of their architec-ture and their imaginative use of space. But theyare also fragile and many of them are extremelydilapidated.

Single-family dwellings in fortified villages orksars, into which there is a single entrance, kas-bahs are remarkable for their defensive architec-ture, usually featuring towers atop each of theirfour corners. The upper parts of some of thesetwo- or three-storey buildings, which have roof-terraces resting on beams made from the trunksof palm-trees, are lavishly decorated.

Fragile and dilapidatedThe earthen building material of these fragile

constructions does not stand up well to theravages of time and the weather. A ksar onlyremains intact for about two centuries. In thepast, its occupants would then leave and buildanother ksar nearby. But social and economicchanges in Morocco and the region at large inrecent decades has dealt a heavy blow to theconstant renewal of the ksars.

The end of the trans-Saharan caravan trade,the disappearance of insecurity, the emergence ofa centralized nation-state and the spread of tele-vision (reception dishes seem to sprout from allthe dwellings) have all helped to overturn the tra-ditional way of life in oasis societies. Nowadays,communities whose members have not emigrated

to more prosperous regions use cinder blocks tobuild small houses outside the old walls andmosques made of stronger material. These buil-dings are too hot in summer and too cold in win-ter, but some of them have basic amenities suchas water and electricity.

However, recent events in the village of AïtBen Haddou, a village about 35 kilometres fromOuarzazate, show there is still hope for the ksars.Thought to have been founded in the 11th centu-ry, Aït Ben Haddou has six kasbahs and some 50

A slow re s c u e for Moro c c o ’searthen citadelsw Mohamed Berriane

Reviving southern Moro c c o ’s ancient fortified villages is no easy task

w Geographer, professor at Mohammed V University, Rabat,Morocco

When the river is in full spate, the fortified village of Aït Ben Haddou is difficult to reach.

Aït Ben Haddou

Marabout

Areaoccupiedby thenewvillage

Formerksar

Wadi ElMaleh

Road

0 400 m


houses, all in ruins. Its inhabitants have movedout and over to the other side of the wadi (river),nearer to the main road. Today 84 families live inthis modern settlement.

A masterpiece of architecture and landscape,the old village of Aït Ben Haddou was included onUN E S C O’s World Heritage List in 1987. It was thefirst ksar to be preserved under a stat e - s p o n s o r e dscheme to save the kasbahs of southern Morocco.The progr a m m e , launched a decade ago by them i n i s t ry of culture and backed by the UnitedN ations Development Programme (UN D P) ,UN E S C O and the World To u rism Organizat i o n(WTO) , aims to foster tourism in the region as we l las saving endangered items of cultural heri t a g e .

Mixed resultsThe job has turned out to be an arduous one.

Standard restoration methods are little use becausethe ori ginal building mat e rials are not ve ry strong.They can only prolong the life of an earthen bu i l-ding for a few ye a rs at most.The only effective way top r e s e rve a ksar like Aït Ben Haddou is to pers u a d ethe villagers to return to live in it and care for it on ad ay - t o - d ay basis.To make it habitable, the ministryof culture has asked other ministries for help. As ar e s u l t , the public works ministry has looked into howto improve access to the village, which is diffic u l twhen the ri ver is in full spat e .The education minis-t ry has approved the building of a Koranic schoolinside the ksar until there are enough children to jus-tify opening a pri m a ry school.The national electri c i t yboard has agreed to install solar energy equipment.

But the number of people invo l ved and the mazeof bu r e a u c r a cy have meant only some of the goalsh ave so far been achieve d . Cleaning and preserva-tion work has been start e d , architectural surveys ofthe village houses have been made and a prov i s i o n a loverall plan has been drawn up.The narr ow streetsh ave been pave d , the banks of the wadi strengthenedand a footbridge built to provide access to the ksar

when the water level ri s e s. R e s t o r ation and renova-tion work has been done on some covered passage-way s , the façades of houses, the mosque and themost lav i s h l y - d e c o r ated bu i l d i n g s.

But the village has not yet come back to life.Its only inhabitants are three families which neverwent away because they were too poor.Developments that might lure residents of thenew village outside the walls to move back intothe old one—such as building an access road anda proper bridge over the wadi and providing drin-king water and electricity—are a long way off.

There are several reasons for this. The minis-tries of culture, housing and tourism are not co-ordinating their efforts.There is also a shortage offunds because of a general decision to cut publicspending. Finally, legal tangles are holding upwork on restoring the houses because the ownersof the kasbahs—several heirs who are mostly jointowners—now live elsewhere in the country oreven abroad.

Because of these problems, the authorities haveo f ficially dropped plans to include Aït Ben Haddouand the kasbahs of the south in the list of local tou-rist “ p r o d u c t s ” .They are deemed too fragile and pre-cious to be able to stand up to mass touri s m .

But the inhabitants of the village have notgiven up hope of getting some income from tou-rism and have taken up where the governmenthas left off. Several foreign films have been madeon the site and the paving of the access track hasspawned a modest tourist infrastructure. Twenty-five bazaars and souvenir shops have been ope-ned, eight of them in the old village, as well asfour café-restaurants which also offer lodging.

Some emigrants who have returned fromabroad have even taken a chance by building acouple of small hotels. Many organized excursionsfrom Marrakesh and Ouarzazate now include a stopat Aït Ben Haddou, which is attracting around 400visitors a day.The money from this has helped theinhabitants of the new village to do up their housesand buy an electricity generator.

Restoration work inside the ksar is slowlygoing ahead, and the local people have set up theAït Aïssa A s s o c i ation for Culture andDevelopment, which keeps a close eye on the res-toration work and takes part in meetings about it.Aït Ben Haddou even seems to have started atrend. In a number of other villages people haverecently started restoring kasbahs and convertingthem into small hotels. n

Classical restoration techniques are of little help in safeguarding the fragile architecture ofsouthern Morocco’s ksars. One solution would be to draw back villagers who have abandonedthese fortified villages.

Many organized excursions f rom Marra kesh and Ouarzazate

now include a stop at Aït Ben Haddou,which is attracting around 400 visitors

a day. The money from this has helped the inhabitants

of the new village to do up their housesand buy an electricity genera t o r.

But I was impelled bya resolute spirit andthe desire to visitthese illustrioussanctuaries washidden in my bosom. .. . And I abandonedmy dwelling just asbirds abandon their nest.

Ibn Batutah,traveller and writer from

the Maghreb (1304-1377)



He never dreamt he would return to a free country.But nearly fifty ye a rs after fleeing his nat i veH u n g a ry, Lazlo Karolyi is now occupying one

wing of the 140-room castle where he lived until theage of 12 before fleeing the advancing Red A rmy withhis fa m i l y. After the 1956 Hungarian upri s i n g, t h ec a s t l e , a 19th-century neoclassical jewel located outsideB u d a p e s t , was turned into a centre for abandonedc h i l d r e n .“There was absolutely nothing left in it,” s ay sKarolyi in a polished British accent. In a pat t e rn foundto different degrees throughout Central Europe,collections were dispersed or simply destroye d .“ Wehad a library of 30,000 French and Latin manuscri p t st h at were bu rnt in the court yard in 1949.My parentsbu ried some silver and china in the grounds when theyleft that we have found again.”Two ye a rs ago,K a r o l y iaccompanied his 88-year-old mother over from theUnited States to attend a charged reinstat e m e n tc e r e m o ny :the Red Star adorning the front of the castlewas removed and proudly replaced with the restoredfamily crest.

Feasibility studiesNow, in his wish to give the neoclassical palace

a fresh lease on life,Karolyi is taking part in a pro-ject that will eventually transform some 30 to 40a ri s t o c r atic residences into a chain of top-notchchâteaux-hotels spanning four countri e s — H u n-g a ry, S l ova k i a , Czech Republic and Poland—a routerunning from the Danube to the Baltic.

Launched in the early 1990s, the initiat i ve is thebrainchild of Christian Dromard, a Frenchmanspecialized in the field of heritage and tourism. Ina context of restructuring in dire economic condi-t i o n s ,t o u rism from the West was viewed as a poten-tial source of revenue for Central European coun-t ri e s , but restoring the regi o n ’s considerable we a l t hof castles could hardly be deemed a pri o rity forfinancially strapped governments.

As part of a Council of Europe working groupon cultural heritage and tourism in Eastern Europe,Dromard put forward a few basic deve l o p m e n tprinciples to partners from the region.“The basicpremise is that the upgrading of the castles had tobe seen as part of an investment and tourist deve-lopment programme that would help to fin a n c er e s t o r ation and gi ve historic monuments an income-

generating activity while playing up their culturalvalue.This was readily accepted.”

As such,with cultural and tourist authorities in eachc o u n t ry,Dromard has spent the past six ye a rs dru m-ming up financial support for his cause while trave l i n gacross Central Europe with experts on restorat i o nand hotel development to select ideal settings.“ H e ri-tage is not a business like any other.The bottom lineis that the historical and cultural potential of the bu i l-dings must be safeguarded,”s ays Karel Nejdl, head ofthe Czech To u rist Board. Feasibility studies we r econducted for a number of locat i o n s.While the firs tchâteaux-hotels will be near capital cities, the projecta i m s , in the long ru n , to bring tourists to regions thatare still largely unexplored by we s t e rn trave l l e rs.

C e n t ral Euro p e :c a s t l e s gear up for businessw Cynthia Guttman

F rom the Danube to the Baltic, a Fre n c h - b a c ked initiative is drumming up funds to transform a string of palaces into top-notch hotels

w UNESCO Courier journalist

A classical concert in the castle of Szirak,in the Hungarian Tyrol.


“The idea we have been trying to get across is thatmonuments are part of a country ’s tourist offeri n g .A ss u c h , they should be regarded as an infrastru c t u r ei nve s t m e n t , just like the building of an airp o rt or a road.This was the only way that external funding could beobtained for the project,” said Dromard. E x p e ri e n c es h ows that revenue from tourism alone can rarelyp ay off the cost of restoring castles—Dromard setthe average cost at around 30 million French francs ($5million)—hence the need for state funding and long-t e rm development loans. G r a d u a l l y, over the pastd e c a d e , perceiving restoration in the context of eco-nomic development has made its way in intern at i o n a lfinancial circles.

Catering with a local flavourIn the past two ye a rs , the World Bank and the

Council of Europe have made historic monuments eli-gible for financial aid progr a m m e s. As a result, t h eH u n g a rian end of the project recently obtained agreen light from the Council of Europe’s Fund forSocial Development while the gove rnment hasa p p r oved the granting of low-interest loans unders t ate guarantee, also for restoration purp o s e s. In theCzech Republic, if a contract is finalized this fa l l , it willbe the first case of intern ational financing for Czecht o u ri s m . Although sites have been selected in Slo-vakia and Po l a n d ,financing has been slower in gettingoff the gr o u n d ,c h i e fly due to political and adminis-t r at i ve setbacks.

At his end,Dromard and other pri vate part n e rs willfinance the cost of outfitting the castles with modernfa c i l i t i e s ,h i ring British or French decorat o rs and locala rt experts for refurbishing the interi o rs , and fin d i n gm a n a g e rs ,chefs and staff who will understand the artof cat e ring with a personal and local touch. T h einterest for the stat e ,s ays Dromard, is that the operat o ris responsible for the upkeep of the site for a gi ve np e riod of time and eventually sells the business backto the ow n e rs—whether pri vate or public.

Finding new vo c ations for Central Europe’s ri c hh e ritage of castles might be the only way of saving manyof them from decay. M o s t , over the past half century,were stripped of their glamour after being confis-c ated and declared state propert y. A select fewremained open to the public and were furnished tor e flect a particular theme. Po rtraits and religious artwere kept sealed in reserve s. But for the most part ,palaces were transformed into orp h a n a g e s ,b o a r d i n gs c h o o l s , centres for the disabled, retirement homes,summer camps,hospitals or state fa rm s.Some serve das hunting lodges for the nomenklat u r a . Until theearly 1990s, the Red A rmy installed its headquart e rsand barracks in Gödöllö, the Hungarian summerresidence of Emperor Franz Josef and Queen Elisa-beth—Empress Sissi.

After the fall of the Iron Curt a i n , new gove rn m e n t swere faced with restitution claims,but only the CzechRepublic passed a law by which families or their des-cendants could reclaim their propert i e s , on conditionthey had kept their nationality and could prove theyhad not collaborated with Nazi Germ a ny. In the end,only 10 to 20 per cent of the country ’s castles were res-

tituted to their former ow n e rs. But while going backto one’s roots after long ye a rs of exile may bring a senseof justice restored, the responsibility is not a lighto n e .Dr Radslav Kinsky,a medical researcher who fle dC z e c h o s l ovakia in 1958, is now spending his retirementd ays managing Zdar, f o l l owing the restitution of the1 7 t h - c e n t u ry castle to him. S l ated to be on the châ-teaux-hotel circuit, p a rt of Zdar will be transform e dfor this purp o s e , while the family also envisages ope-ning a cultural centre there,gi ven the locat i o n ’s prox i-mity to the chapel of St John of Nepomuk, a Wo r l dH e ritage site. With forestry revenue earned on his6,000-hectare estat e , Kinsky has financed the resto-r ation of the fa ç a d e ,the roof as well as some of the cast-l e ’s frescoes.

Although in Hungary castles are still officially thep r o p e rty of the stat e , the Karolyi family has created af o u n d ation for the restoration of their expropri ated pro-p e rt i e s , and more generally, to promote culturalexchange with we s t e rn Europe. When the stat elaunches a public tender this fa l l , Karolyi hopes to winit and lease the castle for a 99-year peri o d .“ G r a n t e d ,in Hungary there’s a type of nostalgi c, romantic fa s-c i n ation with castles, with associations cropping up tos ave them,” s ays Tamas Fe j e r d y, a historic monu-ments expert and country representat i ve for the châ-teaux-hotels project since its begi n n i n g . More impor-tantly he notes, the country approved its first law onh i s t o ric monuments last ye a r ,which clearly delineat e sthe role of the state in mat t e rs of safeguarding.H i s t o ri cmonuments have beeen placed under the juri s d i c t i o nof the cultural ministry instead of the env i r o n m e n t .Funding has also been boosted.“The new gove rn m e n tclearly considers that Europe’s dive rsity can beenhanced through the promotion of our heri t a g e ,” s ay sFe j e r d y.

This is also one of the goals of the Karolyi fa m i l y.Without any descendants, they are intent on trans-mitting their heritage to future generat i o n s. “ E ven ifwe had developed along the same lines as the We s t , wec e rtainly wo u l d n ’t be living in the castle. It would bea place where national treasures would be on show forthe benefit of all.” n

Dining—for those who can afford it—in the Palota chateau-hotel,located in Hungary’s Bükknational park.

If you haven’t studied,travel.

African proverb



For the last holy year of the millennium,Santiago de Compostela is organizing over one thousand cultural events.

The right ro a dfor Compostelaw Lucía Iglesias Ku n t z

I n v e s t m e n t , political commitment and respect for heritage have turned a religious centre into a cultural attraction for millions of tourists

w UNESCO Courier journalist

“B uen camino!”—“Have a good journeFor centuries, hundreds of thousands ofp i l grims from Denmark, the Netherlands,

Italy, France and Portugal,have used this Spanishphrase to greet each other as they trek along one ofthe nine pilgri m s ’ routes to Santiago de Compostelain northeastern Spain.

In 1999, o f ficials reckon nine million touri s t swill visit the city, where tradition says St Ja m e s(Santiago in Spanish),one of Christ’s 12 apostles,is bu ri e d . Some 150,000 of them will have offic i a l l yqualified as pilgrims by cove ring in a spirit ofc o n t e m p l ation at least 100 kilometres of the journ e yon foot or horseback or 150 kilometres by bicycle.The rest will have come by plane, train, buses orcars,drawn by a $30-million programme in whichabout a thousand events are being staged with fun-

ding from national, regional and local authorities.Light and sound displays,exhibitions and classicaland modern dance performances will make surethat the last Holy Year of the millennium will be amemorable cultural occasion in Santiago de Com-postela.

A second golden ageAccording to a custom which began in the

Middle A g e s , w h e n e ver July 25, St Ja m e s ’s feastd ay, falls on a Sunday, the Pope grants a full pardonto all Catholics who enter the cathedral throughthe Holy Door, which is open only in such years,and then do penance and receive the Eucharist.

Holy years, of which there have been 177 since1428,provide an ideal opportunity to promote thecity as a tourist and cultural centre.The last fifteen


UNESCO AND CULTURAL TO U R I S M

Promoting better co-operation between all the stakeholders of tourism is one of UN E S C O’s

main strategies for bringing about more culturally-sensitive policies in this growth industry.

During the UN-proclaimed World Decade for Cultural Development (1988-1998), t h e

organization struck up partnerships with the World Tourism Organization (WTO) , the Wo r l d

Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UN D P) , as well as private business,

site managers and experts to encourage a more in-depth reflection on how tourism can benefit

or harm heritage and cultures. The goal, beyond promoting research and awareness at all

l e v e l s, is to help states formulate long-term strategies for safeguarding cultural heritage,

giving tourists the tools for better understanding it, and ensuring that local populations

participate in,and benefit from,the development of tourism.

Besides providing expertise for drawing up World Heritage site management plans, UN E S C O

supports a range of cultural tourism projects. O n e, run in co-operation with the Universities of

Venice and Rotterdam, involves setting up a network between 20 European historic cities on

how to better manage tourist flows and present heritage in more comprehensive wa y s.

Another focuses on drafting a code of conduct with private and public stakeholders for the

S a h a r a , an environmentally fragile region where tourism is expected to grow. As part of

UN E S C O’s Memory of the Future project, funds were secured in 1999 from several tour operators,

hotel chains and agencies for cultural heritage programmes in Petra (Jordan), A n g ko r

(Cambodia) and Machu Picchu (Peru).

To u r i s m ,fin a l l y, is about promoting a richer dialogue between cultures.This is the essence of

several international scientific projects,which have all acquired a tourism dimension in the past

d e c a d e : the Slave Route project, in co-operation with WTO, foresees the inventory,p r e s e r va t i o n

and restoration of historic monuments and places of memory linked to the transatlantic slave trade

in A f r i c a , the Americas and the Caribbean; the Silk Road initiative (also in partnership with WTO) ,

is gradually building up cultural tourism in Central Asian countries, and in the process seeking

to revive the memory of strong cultural ties that once linked countries of this region. n

years or so have been a second golden age for thep i l grimage to Santiago (the first was in the 11thand 12th centuri e s ) , which continues to drawcrowds,whether for spiritual or cultural reasons.

In 1991, the Galician authorities launched anambitious programme to boost regional touri s m ,focusing on Santiago and the pilgri m s ’ way. T h eSpanish gove rnment and the eight prov i n c e sthrough which the Way passes spent a lot of moneymarking out the route, p r e s e rving its historical fea-t u r e s , refurbishing hotels for pilgrims and bu i l d i n gf o o t p aths for the pilgrims to use instead of theroads.

P ri vate sector invo l vement was encouraged anda mascot for the Way was created,named Pelegrín.N ational and intern ational publicity campaignswere launched, mostly through travelling exhibi-tions including one called “In the Footsteps ofJames”, which started out from Buenos Aires lastOctober 1 and by December 1999 will have visitedMexico City, Munich,São Paulo, New York,Brus-s e l s ,L o n d o n , Santiago de Chile, D u b l i n , Pa ri s ,To u-louse and Bordeaux.

There is plenty of “ r aw mat e ri a l ” of cours e .T h eold centre of Santiago de Compostela and itsbaroque, neoclassical granite buildings have been

placed on UNESCO’sWorld Heritage List,and sohas the pilgri m s ’ way itself. In 1987, the Council ofEurope classified the entire complex of pilgri m s ’routes to Compostela as a major “European cultu-ral itinerary”,describing it as “a repository of col-l e c t i ve memory crossed by paths which defy dis-tance, frontiers and incomprehension.”

And while maintaining its local atmosphere andi m p r e s s i ve group of monuments centred on thec at h e d r a l , the city has also tried to retain the pat t e rnof urban development which in 1998 won it theEuropean Urban and Regional Planning Awa r d ,the European Commission’s highest distinction inthis field granted every four years. The jury com-mended the radical steps that have been taken tohalt the deteri o r ation of the old quarter and thesuccessful integration of new buildings and infra-structures.

“The old city is now untouchable,” s ays Cri s t ó-bal Ramírez, head of the Jo u rn a l i s t s ’A s s o c i ation ofthe Road to Santiago. “Subsidies have enabled arange of architectural work to be carried out tomaintain 17th- and 18th-century façades and stru c-tures as well as the interi o rs of houses and otherbu i l d i n g s.To d ay, e ven if they only want to change at a p, ow n e rs have only four or five models to choosefrom.”

With more than a dozen cultural events a day,including round-table discussions, c o n f e r e n c e s ,s h ow s , lectures and concert s , Santiago is decked

out in all its fin e ry. B e t ween now and the end ofthe ye a r , its streets, restaurants and more than8,000 hotel rooms will be filled with pilgri m s ,b a c k-packers and other visitors. Then, just before mid-night on December 31, the Holy Door of the cat h e-dral will again be sealed with cement and bri c k suntil the next “holy year”,2004.

But the celebrations will not end with the cen-t u ry, because Santiago has been designated byEuropean ministers of culture as one of the nine“cultural capitals of Europe” for the year 2000,along with Avignon (France), Bergen (Norway ) ,Bologna (Italy), B russels (Belgi u m ) , C r a c ow( Po l a n d ) , Helsinki (Finland), Prague (Czech Repu-blic) and Reykjavik (Iceland).

Stones can’t talk, but Galicia is a land oflegends. On the Portal of Glory, the Romanesquefaçade of Santiago’s cathedral,there is a carving ofthe Prophet Daniel which features what is reckonedto be the first smile in Romanesque art. From hispedestal, Daniel seems to be looking down at thet o u rists and—he too—wishing them “ B u e ncamino!”. n

+ …l www.xacobeo.es‘ To d a y, even if they only

want to change a tap,o w n e rs have only four or five

models to choose fro m ’

Santiago deCompostela is an olivegrove with olive treesmade of stone. It’s asif the sea had spilledover onto the earth.

Antonio Cuéllar Casalduero,Spanish writer (1930)



He built an empire on the sands of some of thewo r l d ’s most beautiful beaches by wheelingand dealing with kings and presidents. H e

made a fortune by selling a sun-splashed brand ofhedonism with the trademark bikini-clad couple fro-licking along a lick of white sand. Meet Gilbert Tri-g a n o,one of the two men responsible for starting thewo r l d ’s most famous network of resort s , the ClubM e d i t é rranée—better known as the Club Med.

At the age of 78,Tri g a n o ’s club-days are over bu the has found a new role as a consultant to govern-ment officials on the tourism industry, which maysend shivers up the spines of those devoted to thenew school of cultural tourism. Club Med’s hall-mark lazy get-away in which visitors need notexchange money, let alone venture to a local res-t a u r a n t , is often cast as the dark side of the industry.“It’s become a sin just to use the expression ‘masst o u ri s m ’ ,” s ays Tri g a n o, “ but that ’s what we arefaced with. Should we be nostalgic and try to returnto the past when people didn’t travel in groups orshould we try to better control the flows?”

The spirit of the timesI r o n i c a l l y,Trigano cannot help but hark back to

Club Med’s early days in the 1950s, when ther e s o rts consisted of tented camps on pristine beachesof the Mediterr a n e a n . “The real success of the clubm ay not have been in the quality of the services bu tin the way it represented the spirit of the times.We[ Trigano and his business partner Gérard Blitz]were young men, survivors of the war.We made aprofession out of offering others what we wanted forourselves: a chance to discover the sea, to breathedeeply and live healthily. There was an incredibledesire to discover new things in life and new people.”

Trigano maintains that the same trends areintensifying today.Yet there is a hollow ring to his talkabout discove ring other cultures.The clubs are andhave always been removed from surrounding life.The flash of these pleasure domes often seemsindecent in poor countries. “It is very easy to criti-cize along these lines,” s ays a visibly aggr avat e dTri g a n o, but the bottom line is that tourism bri n g smuch-needed money and jobs.

“Besides do you really think that anyone canu n d e rstand the culture of a country like Mauri-tius after visiting for eight or 15 day s ,” s ays Tri g a n o.“ People at the club basked in the sun of Spain.They tasted the tomatoes of Tunisia and the gri l l e dmutton of the Berbers in Morocco. They didn’tdiscover these countries but they did get a taste ofthem.”

According to Tri g a n o, it would be irr e s p o n s i b l efor the club to dive any deeper into local culture.“ I nIndonesia,I used to pay actors to stage traditionalm a rriages because I was furious that people wa n t e dto penetrate Buddhist temples to see a ceremony.This would have been totally inappropriate.”

Trigano has just returned from Pa l e s t i n e ,enchanted by the cultural heri t a g e . Yet he isalso concerned,explaining that the impendingrecognition of the formal state of Palestine willunleash a wave of tourists. “Now is the time toa c t ,” s ays Tri g a n o. “It would be a bit far-fetched forme to play the role of the moralist”and tell the Pa l e s-tinians what to do, he say s. “It is a lot more plausiblefor me to offer my experience as to how a ‘good idea’can get out of hand.”

“My role used to be to look for isolated sites ofexceptional beauty,” s ays Tri g a n o, and then deve l o pthem by brokering deals with the gove rnment tob ring electri c i t y, d rinking water and even small air-p o rt s. “It is possible to discover and develop asite without destroying it,” he insists. But what ofplaces like Cancún in Mexico, the Moroccan beachr e s o rt of A g a d i r , or Tu n i s i a ’s Isle of Je r b a . In allthree cases, Club Med was the first to lay thef o u n d ations for the tourism industry. I n d e e d ,w i t ha certain pri d e , Trigano explains that when heand his team arri ved over 30 ye a rs ago, “ t h e r ewas nothing.”Yet he is also the first to admit that“they are now concrete horr o rs.” Was thisinevitable? “Not entirely,” he say s. For Tri-g a n o, the error lies not in developing a sitebut in ove r d e veloping it—and to avoid this,“ a u t h o rities must have the courage to issuel aw s ” to regulate the industry ’s gr ow t h . “ I ’ mnot ashamed of anything I have bu i l t ,” s ay sTri g a n o. As for the others. . . . nw UNESCO Courier journalist

An empire built on the sandsMass tourism is unavoidable and even desirable according to Gilbert Tr i g a n o, one of the Club Méditérra n é e ’s founders

3 R e fle c t i o n s

w Amy Otchet


“Bali was wonderful until your guidebookcame along,” said a member of thea u d i e n c e ,d u ring a talk I gave recently about

the pitfalls of touri s m . “ W hy are you sending allthose visitors to Burm a ,d o n ’t you know how horri b l ethe gove rnment is?” q u e ried another, r ather angri l y.

Questions like these are raised almost eve rytime I speak about my life as a guidebook publisher.According to this line of reasoning, I should beashamed of myself for helping to ruin dozens ofplaces round the wo r l d , not to mention propping upa string of corrupt regi m e s. In my view, the situat i o nis rather different.

When my wife Maureen and I foundedLonely Planet Publications over 25 years ago theworld was, from a tourism point of view, a muchless crowded place. I can easily measure thatgrowth by simply glancing at my bookshelf—ourfirst South East Asia on a Shoestring guidebookcovered the region in 144 pages. The latest 10thedition takes 936 pages to do the same job, and ifyou added up the individual guidebooks we havefor countries in the region they would tot up toover 5,000 pages, an information overload novisitor would contemplate carrying around.Maureen and I put that first regional guidebooktogether in a backstreet Singapore hotel room.Our entire staff could fit into one car to go out forlunch.Today they’re scattered around four officeson three continents and it would be standingroom only in a 747.

Has big tourism ruined Bali?We started with a ve ry simple philosophy : we

were the small-time operat o rs who couldn’t competehead on with the big publishers in London or NewYo r k . So we would produce guidebooks to the placesnobody had ever thought of writing about. In retros-pect it was an amazingly clever idea. By the time the“big guys”had woken up to the tourist boom that wa staking off from airp o rts all over the world we hadc a rved out a name for ours e l ves as publishers for thenew destinations suddenly topping the statistics lists.This hard-won reputation gave us the stature tom ove on to the more established and familiar touri s td e s t i n at i o n s.To d ay, h owe ve r , there are no undisco-vered corn e rs. Name the destination and there areprobably half a dozen guidebooks about it.

So have we “ruined” Bali and dozens of otheruntouched paradises? Have we demolished pristi-ne cultures by drowning them in a never-endingflow of tourists? Absolutely not. For a start we’reonly one influence amongst many. If guidebookswere the huge influence many people seem toassume they must be, airlines would be welco-ming me aboard with open arms and upgradingmy tickets. In fact I’m just another anonymous“bum on a seat”.

While many places have taken off as touristdestinations during the last 25 years, Bali offers afine example of how the boom arises. Turn theclock back to the 60s and you find a virtually tou-

w Publisher of the Lonely

Planet guidebooks

P h i l o s o p h yof a guidebook guruw Tony W h e e l e r

The man behind Lonely Planet, a guidebook series originally designed for tra v e l l e rs eager to quit the beaten tra c k , defends his re c o rd

THE EXPANDING GUIDEBOOK MARKET: ASAMPLING OF THE LEADERSThe classic: In 1926, Brittany became the first of Michelin’s fine print green guides, a collec-tion that now counts over 100 titles and is translated into nine languages including Japaneseand Hebrew. In 1997,the French publisher launched a more upbeat weekend escapade series,which now counts 40 titles and is translated into English.

Still a bargain: First published in 1957,Arthur Frommer’s acclaimed Europe on $5 a day is stillgeared to the value-conscious traveller. Only the figure in the title changes with the times—up to $50 a day in 1999.Guides are published to over 25 countries and so far only translatedinto Portuguese.

More upscale: Not for the backpacker market, Insight guides were launched in 1970 and nowcover 77 countries. Translated into 10 languages, including Chinese, Russian and Thai.Bestsellers include guides to Australia,Canada, India and Thailand.

Asia first: Launched in 1973 with Across Asia on the cheap, Lonely Planet has expanded itsoffer to 250 guidebooks. Bestsellers in English include guides to Southeast Asia, WesternEurope, India and Australia.So far, only translated into French.

Humour and value: Initially turned down by 19 publishing houses in 1973, the Guide duRoutard, a series valued for its refreshing, humorous approach and lists of good value hotelsand restaurants, now boasts 75 titles—all updated every year.

Steady growth: Rough Guides entered the market in 1982 with a title on Greece and havesince grown to a collection of over 100 guides that pride themselves on providing in-depthcoverage with a writer’s touch.Bestsellers are not guides to countries but to the Internet andevents of the millennium. Translated into 12 languages.

Show and tell: In 1992, the French publisher Gallimard inaugurated a new guidebookconcept—Eyewitness Guides—in which illustrations such as 3D and cutaway views ofpalaces, monuments and museums take on just about as much importance as the text.The full-colour, glossy collection now counts 90 titles with translations into 13 languages, includingChinese and Polish. n



All travel has itsadvantages. If thepassenger visits bettercountries, he maylearn to improve hisown, and if fortunecarries him to worse,he may learn to enjoyit.

Samuel Johnson,Englishscholar and critic (1709-1784)

rist-less Bali—not because we hadn’t published aguidebook about the island Jawaharlal Nehru, thefirst prime minister of independent India, dubbed“the morning of the wo r l d ” . In fa c t , t h eIndonesian government was distinctly unwelco-ming to all overseas visitors. But even the subse-quent change in government did not suddenlyopen the floodgates of tourism. Bali didn’t takeoff as a major international destination until air-lines started scheduling regular flights, until bighotels were built, until the island’s small, specia-list image and reputation was disseminated to amass audience.

Has this leap to big tourism ruined Bali? Well,first of all tourism is not the only agent of change.Recent Asian economic mayhem apart , I n d o n e-s i a ’s economy has been on a roll for the past 20 ye a rswhich Bali has clearly been a part of, whether it’sbeen the green revolution doubling rice output orthe cottage industry clothing manufa c t u ring making“made in Bali” a familiar label wo r l d w i d e . C u l-tural changes have also taken root independently ofthose linked to touri s m .I t ’s hard to believe that tou-rism has a tenth of the influence of the Hollywoodvideos now found in even the most remote cor-ners of the world.

Tread lightly and be culturally aware

So tourism is not the only agent of change buthas it had such a terrible impact? Clearly, i t ’s broughtin a lot of money.We old Bali hands may regret howmuch noisier, h ow much more crowded andmodern the island has become. However, I doubtwhether you’ll find many Balinese complaining.Park the motorcycle and go back to walking to themarket? No thanks. Flick the lights off and go backto oil lamps at night? Not a chance. And mosti m p o rtant of all, go back to the days when harve s t swere uncertain and rice shortages were a regularoccurrences? Well would you?

Progress does not necessarily take a toll onculture. In fact it’s often quite the opposite, andagain Bali is a fine example of the positive effects

of tourism. The island’s much-vaunted artisticskills were essentially moribund when the firstWestern visitors turned up in the 1930s. Theyprompted a revival but nothing compared totoday’s artistic boom. Sure there’s a lot of massmarket art being churned out but that’s just abroad foundation for a smaller output of higherquality work. In Bali tourism has contributed tochange but this change has certainly not ruinedthe place. The dancers may be performing fortourists in hotels rather than the nobility in thepalaces but they are still dancing. Quite possiblythey wouldn’t be if there weren’t such a highdemand among visitors.

I believe guidebooks have played a positive partin that change and in part that ’s because guidebooksh ave changed as we l l .The modern guidebook is fa rmore than just a list of hotels, restaurants and “ h owt o ” i n f o rm at i o n . We firmly believe that betteri n f o rmed visitors are not only better visitors but alsovisitors who enjoy themselves more. If you knowsomething about the dance, the music, the cere-monies, the architecture, the food, the customs—central elements of a culture—you enjoy the placemore. I think we’ve always been aware of that andlooking back at our early guidebooks I’m encou-raged to see that we’ve always stressed the impor-

tance of fitting in, treading lightly and being cultu-rally aware. We now have much larger budgets towork with and can afford to put more time,energyand expenditure in producing sections on specialistcultural issues. Of course we ’re not alone in this acti-vity, other guidebook publishers are equally awaret h at a modern guidebook has to be much morethan simply a manual for the practicalities of trave l .

In countries like India with a wide range of reli-gions some understanding of that rich backdrop canmake the travel experience immeasurably more ful-filling and our India guide includes a section intro-ducing the country’s varied range of religions. In ar e gion like T i b e t , where religion underpins eve ry ele-ment of everyday life, our guide tries to introduceBuddhist iconogr a p hy, the importance of pilgri-mages and the monastic lifestyle.

The evidence that modern travellers demandthis sort of coverage is easy to measure. Sure there’sa lot more tourism these days but the gr owth in gui-debook publishing has far outstripped the expansionin the number of travellers.

Tourists appreciate that a good guidebook canbe a money- and trouble-saver that quickly pays fori t s e l f, but they’re equally aware that it can make theirt r avels a more rewarding experi e n c e . I firmly believethat travel and culture can live together,and goodguidebooks can help make that a reality. n

On Kuta Beach in Bali (Indonesia),a tourist indulges in a massage offered by a local woman.

We old Bali hands may re g ret how much noisier, how much more

c rowded and modern the island has become. H o w e v e r,

I doubt whether you’ll find many Balinese complaining


To w a rds an ethics o f t o u r i s mw Cynthia Guttman

With pre s s u re on sites and cultures set to rise in the coming years, initiatives are multiplying to reduce tourism’s negative impacts and promote awareness at all levels

As glossy travel catalogues thicken by the yearand U.S. companies take reservations fromcitizens hoping to become the first touri s t s

in outer space,concerted efforts are on the rise tomake the industry—and the traveller—more res-ponsible.

O ver the past few months, the World To u ri s mO r g a n i z ation (WTO) has been consulting NGOs,businesses and gove rnments to draw up a GlobalCode of Ethics for To u rism that will be presentedto its General Assembly in Santiago, C h i l e , in Sep-tember 1999.“There are many vo l u n t a ry codes ofconduct produced by associations and companiesbut there is really a demand from all the part n e rs inthe tourism industry for one simple reference thatcould be a base for all other initiat i ve s ,” e x p l a i n sW TO secretary-general Francesco Frangi a l l i .S u c hcodes aim to put forward guidelines that prov i d ethe industry and other stakeholders with an ove r a l lf r a m e work for applying sustainable tourism prac-t i c e s.

The first article sets the tone: “The actors intourism development and tourists themselves areduty-bound to observe the social and cultural tra-ditions and practices of all peoples, including nat i o-nal minorities and indigenous people.” The codecondemns the “exploitation of other people in anyf o rm , notably sexual”and stresses that tourism poli-cies should benefit local communities, c o n t ri bute top r e s e rving and embellishing heri t a g e , and allowtraditional crafts and folklore to flo u ri s h .A mecha-nism of implementation will be proposed for solvingpotential conflicts betwe e n , for instance, a tour ope-rator and a host community.

Contradictory interestsWhile the World Council of Churches and other

a s s o c i ations started to draw attention to the des-tructive impact of tourism on local cultures in thelate 1960s, it is only over the past decade that thesubject has turned into a much broader debat e ,p a rtly dictated by the steady gr owth in the numberof intern ational trave l l e rs. For the first time, in A p ri l1999 tourism was featured on the agenda of theUnited Nations Sustainable Development Com-m i s s i o n , which gat h e rs eve ry year to discuss fol-l ow-up to the Rio Earth Summit. R e p r e s e n t at i ves ofi n d u s t ry, local gove rn m e n t s , NGOs and tradeunions broadly agreed that mechanisms had to beput in place to ensure that tourism deve l o p m e n twas sustainable—i.e. t h at long-term social and env i-ronmental benefits are placed ahead of short-termgains—and underlined the critical role that local

governments have to play in defining projects andassessing to what extent they benefit their consti-tuencies.

Underlying these trends is the notion that tou-rism cannot be simply considered as a commercialactivity gove rned by market cri t e ri a .“ N ational tou-rism policies have to be developed by multidiscipli-n a ry teams that not only include tour operat o rs bu talso archaeologi s t s , a n t h r o p o l o gi s t s , h i s t o rians andg e o gr a p h e rs ,” s ays Doudou Diène, of UN E S C O’sDivision for Intercultural Projects. This strategy isbeing promoted with WTO. C o n t r a d i c t o ry interestsm ay often be at stake.“ T h e r e ’s a strong lobby seekingto cut down prices and taxe s ,” s ays Hervé Barr é ,o fUN E S C O’s touri s m , culture and development pro-gr a m m e . “On the other hand, c u l t u r e , from an eco-nomic standpoint needs the price of entry tickets tobe high enough in order to cover costs.”

‘Respect makes for the best of encounters’U l t i m at e l y, both pri vate and public sectors have arole to play in safeguarding heritage and culturesand also in educating visitors. In 1988, the Wo r l dTr avel and To u rism Council launched a video seri e saimed at airlines and schools starring a cartoon cha-racter who returns from extinction to help creat eawareness of the impact of tourism on the env i r o n-m e n t .The British NGO To u rism Concern has pro-duced its first inflight video that highlights concern sGambians have about touri s m . It has also made avideo for secondary schools, which examines thec o u n t ry as a destination through the eyes of adve rt i-s e rs ,t o u rists and local people.“ U l t i m at e l y, we ’d liketo believe that someone going on holiday could makereal choices by taking the most ethical product, bu tt h at ’s still a long way in coming,” s ays Pat ricia Bar-n e t t , head of To u rism Concern .

There are signs of change.At the World To u ri s mFair held in March in Pa ri s , the French tour opera-tor Atalante presented the “ Tr ave l l e r ’s Ethical Char-t e r ” .A f firming that “respect makes for the best ofe n c o u n t e rs ” , it provides advice on photogr a p h i n g,d r e s s , gi f t s , t i p p i n g, e nvironmental protection andways to help the local economy.

Atalante is the first to know that educating thet r aveller is not so simple, no matter how much pre-p a r ation is invested in a tri p.A few ye a rs ago, b e f o r eleaving on an excursion to Ethiopia’s Omo Valley,Atalante obtained tacit approval from trave l l e rs thatthey would not take pictures of local tribes ri g h tupon arri va l . On the spot howe ve r , a few could sim-ply not refrain. . . . nw UNESCO Courier journalist

He that traveleth intoa country before hehath some entranceinto the language,goeth to school, andnot to travel.

Francis Bacon,English philosopher and

man of letters (1561-1626)


E T H I C S

H U M A N I TA R I A NI N T E RV E N T I O N :A CONTROVERSIAL RIGHTw Olivier Corten

The crisis in Kosovo has fuelled the debate between supporters and opponents of the right ofhumanitarian intervention. The contributions below were made at the beginning of June 1999

nThe term “ ri g h t ” or “ d u t y ” o f“ i n t e rvention”—to which the wo r d“ h u m a n i t a ri a n ” was soon added—wa s

coined in the late 1980s by Mario Bettat i ,Professor of Intern ational Public Law at theU n i ve rsity of Pa ris II, and by the Frenchpolitician Bernard Kouchner, one of thef o u n d e rs of the aid organization Médecinssans frontières (Doctors without Borders ) .

As Kouchner put it, they were takingissue with “the old-fashioned theory of stat es ove r e i g n t y, used to fend off criticism ofm a s s a c r e s.”The idea caught on quickly,especially with the emergence of a newworld order in which values like democracy,

the rule of law and respect for human ri g h t swere supposed to be top pri o ri t i e s.The needto help peoples in distress would mean thate ve ryone had a “duty to assist a people ind a n g e r ” which would ove rride thetraditional legal rules.

Despite the generous intentions of itsadvocates, the fuzziness of such a rightimmediately raised questions and evencriticism. Was it simply a moral right orwas it a principle to be incorporated intointernational law? For centuries, interna-tional law has been based on the soverei-gnty of the state.As a result,a state is onlybound by a legal obligation—especially byan obligation to protect human rights—ifit has agreed to it by ratifying a treaty orby adhering to an existing customaryrule. Human rights have widely varying

legal status all over the world,and personsare better protected in some countriesthan in others.

A challenge to sovereignty

S overeignty also means that a coun-t ry which has violated human rights can-not be prosecuted unless it accepts orhas accepted the authority of a court .Except by going through regional bodiessuch as the European Court of HumanRights and the Inter-American Court ofHuman Rights, it is thus ve ry hard to geta gove rnment convicted of human ri g h t sv i o l ations by an intern ational court . A n de ven if a conviction is obtained, there isno way of guaranteeing the sentence willbe carried out. S overeignty has prove d

w Lecturer at the Centre for International Law and forSociology applied to International Law, at the FreeUniversity of Brussels

The first case of armed intervention on humanitarian grounds by Western countries was in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq.


E T H I C S

incompatible with the existence of a kindof worldwide “international police force”.

The doctrine of “the right to interve-ne” is an attempt to challenge this tradi-tional legal structure by calling into ques-tion the very concept of sovereignty it isbased on.The power of the state, it says,must yield to a “principle of extremeurgency”—the need for a minimum pro-tection of human rights.

H u m a n i t a rian aid must therefore bed e l i vered without regard to nat i o n a lf r o n t i e rs , or whether or not a countryhas pledged to respect a ru l e , the juri s-diction of a court or the powe rs of ani n t e rn ational police force. It is no longertenable to bow to legal formalism which,as Kouchner say s , is tantamount toaccepting that it could be “ p e rm i s s i b l e ,albeit discreditable, to massacre one’sown people.”

M a ny legal experts have strongly cri-ticized the view of traditional intern at i o-nal law held by support e rs of the right toi n t e rve n e . F i rs t , under no circumstancescan a gove rnment claim it is “ l aw f u l ” t omassacre its own population on thegrounds that eve rything that goes on insi-de the country is an “ i n t e rnal mat t e r ” .All states have formally agreed that theyshould respect fundamental ri g h t s , s u c has the right to life and respect for thep hysical pers o n , and that genocide isu n l awful as far as their own people arec o n c e rned and therefore on their ow nt e rri t o ry. They decided in “a sove r e i g nm a n n e r ” to respect these pri n c i p l e s , s othey must respect them in a sove r e i g nmanner too.

Where a massive violation occurs ,retaliatory measures and reprisals can betaken in political, diplomatic, economicand financial ways. An embargo, evenwithout United Nations interve n t i o n ,could be envisaged against a state or agroup which is violating a people’s mostbasic rights. Such a measure, quite a for-midable one, has been used against cer-tain states, including Argentina at thetime of the Falklands war, the SovietUnion after its military intervention inAfghanistan and more recently againstHaiti and Burundi in response to coupsd’état in those countries.

The United Nations Security Councilcan also declare that massive violations of

human rights are a threat to “ i n t e rn at i o n a lpeace and securi t y ” and duly authori z em i l i t a ry intervention (article 42 of theUnited Nations Charter). It has done thison several occasions (see box ) . So on closeri n s p e c t i o n , most of the operations pre-sented as arising from “the right of huma-n i t a rian interve n t i o n ” are actually applica-tions of existing legal mechanisms. It isquite wrong to say that traditional inter-national law is incompatible with effectiveprotection of human ri g h t s. In fact the pro-blem is usually more political than legal, i nthe sense that what is needed is not newrules but the better use of existing ones.

These political obstacles, e s p e c i a l l ythe right to exercise a veto in the SecurityCouncil, mean that nobody is going toclaim international law is perfectly ade-quate to protect human rights. But despi-te the system’s shortcomings, many ana-lysts think that it is less bad than one thatwould include a broad right of humanita-rian intervention.

The principle of non-intervention isthe result of a historic battle waged by theweakest countries. Throughout the 19thcentury, they were subjected to colonia-lism and imperialism, which also madethemselves out to be defending “civilized”values. On many occasions, the humani-tarian argument was used to justify mili-

tary action by Western states against theOttoman Empire, as well as in Africa andthe Far East.

The United Nations Charter did notput an end to such practices, but at leastit gave countries that were attacked theopportunity to invoke the law to opposethe use of force. A return to a situationwhere there was a right to interve n ewhich could, hypothetically, involve sides-tepping UN decisions, would mean theworld’s most powerful states could setthemselves up as sole judges of whathumanity supposedly needs. Once again,might would be right.

Colonial memoriesThe question of double standards is

often raised.How can one claim an actionis humanitarian if it clearly arises fromconsiderations of realpolitik, which are theonly possible explanation why some statesthat violate the most basic human rights

Under no circumstances can a government claimit is ‘lawful’ to massacre its own populationon the grounds that everything that goes on inside the country is an ‘internal matter’

+ …l Fernando Teson, Humanitarian Intervention:

An Inquiry into Law and Morality, New York,

Transnational Publishers, 1988.

l Mario Bettati, Le droit d’ingérence:

mutation de l’ordre international,

Paris, Odile Jacob publishers, 1996.

l Mario Bettati and Bernard Kouchner, Le devoir

d’ingérence: peut-on les laisser mourir?,

Paris, Denoël publishers, 1987.

l Olivier Corten and Pierre Klein, Droit d’ingérence

ou obligation de réaction?,

Brussels, Bruylant publishers, 2nd edition,1996.

ACTION ON GROUNDS OF ‘ H U M A N I TARIAN INTERV E N T I O N ’

The “right to intervene” came to public attention for the first time when military action against Iraq wa s

taken by several Western countries in April 1991.1 The operation was presented as a measure to pro-

tect the Ku r d s, who were being harshly oppressed by the Iraqi authorities. Respect for human rights

would from now on be enforced through action by the “international community”, through the appropriate

institutions or by certain states which were prepared to defend this principle. The United Nations Security

Council,as on all subsequent occasions, declared the situation a “threat to international peace and secu-

rity”.

The same reason was used by the Council to justify Operation Restore Hope in Somalia from late 1992.

Officially, it was meant to put an end to anarchy there and restore conditions in which people could sur-

v i v e. In 1994, France carried out Operation Turquoise in Rwa n d a , ostensibly to protect its inhabitants from

a genocidal war that was tearing the country apart. On similar grounds there have also been military inter-

ventions in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1994-95), L i b e r i a , S i e r ra Leone, Albania (1997) and in Ko s o v o

(1999). n

1 The international action against Iraq after Iraq invaded a sovereign state, Kuwait,is by definition outside thepurview of the “right to intervene”.


E T H I C S

nThe member states of the Nort hAtlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)decided on March 24, 1999 to start the

m a s s i ve bombing of Yu g o s l avia on thegrounds that they were defending Kosova rp o p u l ations of Albanian ori gin in the nameof the unive rsal values of the intern at i o n a lc o m m u n i t y. Olivier Corten believes thatclassic intern ational law, which would haverequired a prior resolution by the UNS e c u rity Council, was ignored on thegrounds that it was outmoded: a double ve t oby Russia and China would have been af o rmal obstacle that was inappropri ate insuch an emergency.

Olivier CortenMaking Kosovo a milestone in the

gr owth of a right of humanitari a n

i n t e rvention may turn out to be ve rye m b a rrassing for its support e rs. It is virt u a l l yimpossible to say that , at the end of the day,the intervention will have improved theh u m a n i t a rian situat i o n .The deport at i o n sand atrocities the Kosova rs of A l b a n i a no ri gin have been subjected to are not adirect result of interve n t i o n , but that isi rr e l e vant because the consequences ofintervention were not only foreseeable butwere predicted by many foreign observers.

And this is the dilemma. Either theWe s t e rn planners have good intentions bu th ave carried them out incompetently,thereby losing all credibility as guarantorsof respect for the law, or else they arec o m p e t e n t , but their motives are perhapsless humanitarian than they publiclyproclaim.The second of these possibilitiesclearly seems to be more likely.W h at ’s more,N ATO ’s passivity in equally seri o u ss i t u ations elsewhere (Angola, A f g h a n i s t a n ,

S i e rra Leone, R wa n d a , Kurdistan) makesit even harder to defend the thesis of“humanitarian”intervention.

This may be why many states refused tos u p p o rt it. The Islamic world has widelycondemned the deport ations and at r o c i t i e sbut has not taken a clear stand on thel e gi t i m a cy of military interve n t i o n .The RioG r o u p, which includes nearly all the Lat i nA m e rican countri e s , has condemned thed e p o rt at i o n s , atrocities and militaryi n t e rve n t i o n , and has called for the UnitedN ations Charter to be respected. M o s tmember countries of the Commonwealth ofIndependent States (CIS, which embracesmost of the former Soviet republics) adoptedthe same position.

I n d i a ’s representat i ve on the UnitedN ations Security Council said on March 24t h at “no country,group of countries or regi o n a la rrangement can arr o g ate to itself the right totake arbitrary and unilateral military action

1 Un droit d’ingérence?, Revue générale de droitinternational public, 1991, p. 644.

THE FIRST LESSONS OF KO S OVOw Olivier Corten and Mario Bettati

Olivier Corten and Mario Bettati agree on some points but differ over the legitimacy of NATO intervention

w Mario Bettati,a leading advocate of “the right tointervene”, is Professor of International Public Law at theUniversity of Paris II.

are let off the hook? The Palestinian situa-tion is the one most often cited in this res-pect. This probably points to the funda-mental problem raised by the “right tointervene”—that it is not clearly defined.

M a rio Bettati (see below) illustrat e s

this ambiguity when he defines “the ri g h tto interve n e ” largely in terms of opposi-tion to a restri c t i ve , ri gid interp r e t ation ofs ove r e i g n t y. “The term just by itself has nolegal content,” he say s. “It only acquiresa ny when it is accompanied by the

a d j e c t i ve ‘ h u m a n i t a ri a n ’ . By virtue of thep u rpose it gi ves to interve n t i o n , the adjec-t i ve removes the unlawful aspect whiche ve ryone associates with it. A law ye rwould prefer the expression ‘ right to pro-vide humanitarian assistance’, w h i c hd e fines the purpose more clearly andsounds less like a subjective and implicitclash—which after all it isn’t—with theanti-colonialist principles of ‘ n o n - i n t e r-ve n t i o n ’ and ‘ n o n - i n t e r f e r e n c e .’ ”1

AmbiguitiesAnd so it is hardly surp rising that this

d o c t ri n e , which might seem at t r a c t i ve int h e o ry, has led to and is still leading tom a ny abuses in practice. The recentexample of the war in Kosovo may be seento embody all the ambiguities of a “ right toi n t e rve n e ” e xe r c i s e d , in the name of thei n t e rn ational community, by a coalition ofthe wo r l d ’s biggest military powe rs. n

The Rwandan case:in 1994, France led Operation Turquoise to protect populations from the genocidal war tearingthe country apart.


E T H I C S

against others. . . . we have been told that theattacks are meant to prevent violations ofhuman ri g h t s. E ven if that were to be so, i tdoes not justify unprovoked militarya g gr e s s i o n . . . .W h at is disturbing is that bothi n t e rn ational law and the authority of theS e c u rity Council are being flouted byc o u n t ries that claim to be champions of therule of law. . . .The Nonaligned Move m e n t[has] repeatedly said that the United Nat i o n scannot be forced to abdicate its role inp e a c e k e e p i n g .”

Opponents of the intervention alsoinclude countries as dive rse as Namibia,South A f ri c a ,L i b ya , Gabon and Iraq. So toclaim that NATO ’s action reflects the willof the “ i n t e rn ational community” as a wholehas ideological ove rt o n e s. In fa c t , m a nyc o u n t ries fear that this kind of precedentwill legitimize a new role for NATO as a“ world policeman” and open the way tos e l e c t i ve actions to serve the interests andmeet the concerns of powerful countri e s.The attitude of NATO member stat e s ,which say that the Intern ational Court ofJustice at The Hague is not competent tohear the complaint lodged with it byYugoslavia,only confirms this fear.

In these circumstances,advocating the

right of intervention risks being associatedwith a return to the gunboat diplomacywhich the authors of the United Nat i o n sC h a rt e r , especially the Latin A m e ri c a n s ,s e tout to eliminate.

Mario BettatiThe intervention in Kosovo both is and isnot a question of the right of humanitari a ni n t e rve n t i o n .To begin with,nobody disputesthat the Serbian regime is guilty of serioushuman rights violations on its own soil, i nK o s ovo. This is grounds for legali n t e rve n t i o n , and the recent indictment off i ve of its leaders by the Intern at i o n a lC riminal Tri bunal for the Fo rmer Yu g o s l av i aresoundingly confirms that.

The nature of the intervention has alsobeen tacitly accepted by the intern at i o n a lc o m m u n i t y.The Security Council refusedon March 26, by 12 votes out of 15, t ocondemn the air at t a c k s. And on A p ril 16,the UN Human Rights Commission, by 44votes out of 51, condemned “ e t h n i cc l e a n s i n g ” , while the opponents of thisc o n d e m n ation had stressed that it would betantamount to justific ation of the bombing.These two votes provided an implicit legalbasis for the bombing. F i n a l l y, t h e

i n t e rvention was not unilat e r a l , as in aclassic colonial operat i o n , but multilat e r a l .

H owe ver the purpose of exercising theright of humanitarian intervention is to helpthe victims. F i rst by staying the hand of theexecutioner. But not only have the victimsnot been protected but the executioner hasgr own tougher: the announced aim of thei n t e rvention and the result achieved by itare poles apart . S e c o n d , by providing freeaccess to the victims so they can be helped.H owe ve r , no humanitarian organization hasbeen able to set foot in either Serbia orK o s ovo.T h i r d , free access is still withoutthe necessary support of an accompany i n ga rmed force, in this case, i n t e rvention onthe ground.

The Kosovo precedent has adva n c e dthe cause of the right to intervene because ofthe indictment, for the first time, of a sittinghead of stat e . It has also made people awa r et h at the right to intervene on humanitari a ngrounds is necessary, but it has shown thatin the field, the present half-measures aregiving a flawe d , e ven false view of itsa p p l i c at i o n . In short , the right has becomemore popular, but the exercise of it to helpthe victims has run into political obstacles.

n

In Blace (Macedonia),refugees from Kosovo await food distribution from the Red Cross.

S I G N S O F T H E T I M E S


WAR COMICS:THE NEW REALISMComic strip authors today are tackling the horrors of war with a critical eye

nAugust 1993. In shell-bat t e r e dSarajevo, three newborn babies, NikeHatzfeld, Leyla Mirkovic and Amir

Fa z l a gi c, are being fed with milk inKosevo Hospital. One is Croat, anotherSerb and the third Muslim.But what doesthat matter? All three of them have losttheir parents. They have come into aworld torn by suffering and they mustendure the same distress. They are chil-dren of war.

w Spanish writer

Thirty-three years later, in 2026, theirpaths cross again. They are now living ina society where religious fundamentalism,b i o l o gical manipulation and histori c a lrevisionism are the pillars of a system towhich they do not belong.They have liveddifferent lives, but their destinies havebeen shaped by their common past, awound that refuses to heal.They are stillprisoners in a ruined hospital.

This is the story-line of Le sommeil dum o n s t r e (“The Sleeping Monster”), a comicbook by the Yu g o s l av - b o rn French art i s tEnki Bilal, published in 1998.Through its

richly textured narrative and drawing thebook broaches several key themes, i n c l u d i n gthe psychological impact of war. After therubble of wa r fare has been cleared away, t h eemotional wounds remain, although theyare never mentioned by the military in theirc o m b at report s. Wa rs play havoc withm e m o ries and feed our imagi n at i o n .F r o mancient times to today’s video games, war-fare has been a common subject of fiction.The “ p o e t i c s ” of destruction dominat e sour my t h s , as a way of sublimating or exor-cising violence. And comic strips are noexception to the rule.

“To cry out in a city whose memory is filled with bombs and death is absurd,pathetic and pointless. . .” writes Enki Bilal in Le sommeil du monstre (“The Sleeping Monster”)published by Les Humanoïdes Associés, Geneva,1998.

w Antonio Altarriba Ordoñez



A quick, superficial look at comicbooks might gi ve the impression thatconflict is their dominant theme. Indeed,some of the best-known series often turnto fighting and brutality to resolveconflicts. Some people think comic stripsare an invitation to aggressive behaviour,even inciting people to violence. In fact,the opposite is true these days. Somecomic books now contain sharp criticismand lucid analysis of war. Gone are thedays when their pages were filled with warpropaganda.

Goodies and baddies

The 20th century has had its fill ofwa rs and hardly anywhere in the world hasbeen spared. H owe ve r , comic books dealmainly with the Second World Wa r , w h i c hhas provided a seemingly inexhaustible

quantity of mat e ri a l . Trailing way behindcome the war in Viet Nam, the KoreanWa r , the First World Wa r , the SpanishCivil Wa r , the A l g e rian war of indepen-dence and the Sino-Japanese wa r.

The setting is often the same: a landdevastated by explosions, burnt-out cities

and ravaged countryside. Only the geo-graphical surroundings change. Throughimpenetrable forests, across arid deserts,frozen wastes or tropical islands, a soldiermakes his way, advancing or retreatingand observing the world around him.With him, the reader can visit countrysi-de which has either been spared mas-

sacres or has suffered their terrible conse-quences. Most authors use a lot of back-ground mat e rial and are scru p u l o u sabout details of history, weapons and uni-forms. They know the credibility of theirstory depends largely on such detail.

War is a subject that lends itself well to

a medium like comic books,just as adven-tures and heroism often do. The charac-ters frequently find themselves in extremesituations. It is at such moments of greattension, when the spectre of death loomsover the protagonists, that courage orcowardice, self-assertion or trauma arerevealed. There’s no room for ambiguity

The characters in Hugo Pratt’s “Desert Scorpions”(1969),which is set in North Africa,feel no sense of patriotism. They are resigned to a situation they find revolting.Awarethat they are victims of interests beyond their control and caught up in the maelstrom of history, they try to make sense of their lives. In this state of general alienation,allpoints of view are comprehensible—or at least justifiable. So soldiers of rival armies end up by fraternizing.As one of the characters puts it,real men have no flag.

“Stormtroopers”(1968),by the Italian artist Bonvi,is one of few comic strips to use war as a backcloth for humour. It deals with German soldiers in the Second World Warand replaces the usual stereotype of discipline and cruelty with one of stupidity and cowardice. Bonvi shows life on the sidelines of war, with troops more inclined tomalinger than to fight.He creates a theatre of the absurd with macabre overtones. The balloon in this frame reads:“Sergeant,I want you to tell the soldiers that when theyattend to their physical needs, they don’t have to stand to attention in the presence of an officer!”

The new authors criticize war by using humour,attacking vested interests and analysing the psychology of the characters



on the battlefield. It’s a place of extremecommitment and fierce loyalty to exem-plary values and attitudes. Even today itcan still provide inspiration for epics.

Goodbye to propaganda

There are many kinds of comic stripsabout war in which the characters per-form heroic deeds in a sequence of adven-tures. Although these stories explain nei-ther the causes of the conflict nor theinterests at stake for each side, the beha-viour of the characters makes very clearwho are the heroes and who are the vil-lains. Pitted against tyranny, injustice andappalling horrors are an almost recklesscourage and spirit of sacrifice. The twosides may be engaged in a conflict bet-ween different sets of values, but whatmatters most is victory.

Over the years, this kind of one-sidedcomic strip, typical of the 1940s and1 9 5 0 s , has run out of steam. C o m i cbooks have freed themselves from theburden of propaganda and have becomemore critical or analytical of people’sbehaviour.

They no longer rely exclusively on theglorification of good guys and condemna-tion of baddies. With the more relaxedinternational atmosphere of recent yearsand as the old conflicts fade into history,“classic” war comic books are now rare. Anew readership has emerged, with a newoutlook dominated by a pacifist culture

The comic strip author who has gone deepest into the causes and effects of war is the Frenchman Jacques Tardi.In his comic book C’était la guerre des tranchées (“Trenchwarfare”,1982),about the First World War, he deals bluntly with the stupidity of a civilian population which was swept along by a tide of patriotic fervour and supported thefighting,and with the agony of a soldier living in a hell of blood and mud in the trenches. He shows the horror unleashed by officers who did not hesitate to sacrificethousands of men in the name of an absurd sense of honour. In this context,German soldiers are victims too. The only possible outcome is trauma, desertion or death.

and not much interested in stories thatpraise patriotism or present the battlefieldas a theatre for courageous deeds andheroic victories. Taking the opposite tackto comic strips that peddle violentconflict, the new authors criticize war byusing humour, attacking vested interestsand analysing the psychology of the cha-racters. Among the most representativefigures of this trend are the Italians HugoPratt and Bonvi, and the French artistJacques Tardi (see illustrations).

This kind of comic strip depicts sol-diers who are paralysed with fear, knowlittle about the cause they are supposed tobe defending, and are mainly concernedwith trying to save their own skin.Homesick, grief-stricken about their deadcomrades and horri fied by massacres,they are also the victims of administrativeincompetence.The enemy rarely appears,

and when he does he’s depicted as a fel-low unfortunate. In comic books of thiskind, the conflict is not a horizontal onebetween two parties but a vertical one,with a hierarchy obliging the soldiers todefend interests that are not their own.

One example is a 1987 A m e ri c a nseries called The ’Nam (Viet Nam),whosea u t h o rs , Michael Golden and DougMurray, presented a detailed and realisticpicture of the Viet Nam War. They toldthe story of a group of U.S. marines whod i d n ’t really understand why the wa rbegan or what they were fighting for, andwho tried to get through it by making

friends with each other. More recently,S a ra j e vo - Ta n go ( 1 9 9 6 ) , by the Belgi a ncartoonist Hermann, revived the argu-ment about getting involved in a war likethe one in Bosnia, where ethnic cleansinghappened because of the feeble diploma-tic efforts of the United Nations and theWestern powers.

The most violent comic strips arenearly always fantasies, with few historicalreferences. It is as if fantasy can soften thecruelty of the scenes or at least set themin a fictional context where there aref e wer ethical requirements. But whenstrips have a historical conflict as a back-drop, authors these days are extremelycritical. Even when the story is set in themidst of a conflict, a u t h o rs like theSlovene Tomas Lavric in his “Tales ofBosnia” (1997) avoid warlike postures.Lavric recounts how, despite the war, eve-

ryday life goes on, with children playingamid the snipers, old people looking forpigeons to feed, politicians putting theirp e rsonal interests first and journ a l i s t strying to exploit the media possibilities ofdisaster. The message is that in general,war should always be condemned, whate-ver its causes or aims.

The historical accuracy of the comicbooks cited here, along with others such asLa guerra civil española (“The Spanish CivilWa r ” , 1978) by Antonio Hern á n d e zPalacios, provides a reliable and congenialbasis for studying history in schools. Pala-c i o s ’s four-part series is scru p u l o u s l y



d o c u m e n t e d . Through the lives of twoyoung men, E l oy and Gorka, r e a d e rs can seea faithful depiction of the main actors in thewar,a reconstruction of some of the majorbattles, the reasons for many troop move-m e n t s , and especially the circumstances,the country s i d e , the dress and the eve ry d ayobjects used in a Spain mired in poverty,where no holds were barred in the stru g g l eto survive constant danger.

Classroom exercises

The opportunity to draw lessons fromthese comic books arises not so muchfrom the pictorial reconstruction of theconflict as from their approach and theway problems are presented. S o l d i e rshandle weapons, but ideas justify whatthey do.The authors present a wide rangeof opinions which can be analysed andassessed in the classroom. One exercisecould invo l ve asking the children toexplain why the characters in the comicstrip behave as they do and to compareeach side’s motives with those of theiradversaries. The children could then goon to discuss whether these differenceswere worth fighting over.

Of course, such situations can only beexplained in a historical context. It mightalso be useful to make the victors and thed e f e ated switch sides so as to see, by reshuf-

Comic strips produced in a number of countries present a biased version of conflicts. One notable example can befound in Chinese comic books of the 1950s and 1960s. With huge print runs and wide distribution,they spread adeceptive view of communist war and revolution

ADVENTURE AND PROPAG A N DA

“Terry and the Pirates”, the cartoon strip the

American artist Milton Caniff (1907-1988)

began to draw in 1934, describes the adventures

of a little boy who travels the rivers and seas of

China fighting pirates and other rogues who are

plundering the region. The main attraction of

these adventure tales is the exotic nature of the

settings and the people living in them. When

Japan occupies China,Terry and his friends turn to

fighting invaders who are not explicitly named.

The story-line changes sharply in 1942 when

the United States comes into the war after the

bombing of Pearl Harbour. Terry signs up at the

Chinese air cadets’ academy and starts wearing a

U.S. military uniform. From now on, his only

enemy is the Japanese army and its many allies.

Oddly though, despite the change of enemy, the

strip kept its old title.

The enemy are no longer pirates but a regular

army. Yet the way problems are presented, the

fling the plot and the outcome, those ele-ments of the dramatic structure that mightjustify the victory of one side or the other.

Analysing this kind of comic book mighthelp va c c i n ate the world against future wa r-like impulses. Comic strips could help us tostay alert and prevent the monster of vio-lence from waking up once again. n

Terry and the pirates by Milton Caniff.

way people behave and the outcome of situations

are virtually unchanged. The Japanese officers and

soldiers are shown with the usual characteristics of

an enemy—not only in their physical appearance

but in their lack of moral scruples. Terry and his

friends hardly change either when they join the

army. They continue hand-to-hand fighting and stay

within the law and above all respect ethical prin-

ciples.

The simplistic, all-or-nothing depiction of the

opposing armies is not due to the causes being

fought for or the historical context but to the diffe-

rent roles the characters play. These are people

who, by their behaviour, justify or debase the cause

of the country they represent. History has entered

the comic strip and adopted its stereotypes.

Although they wear the uniform of the imperial

army, the Japanese remain pirates, an emanation of

the evil that the hero must continue to fight.

Most war comics published in the 1940s and

1950s are based on this allocation of roles.

During these years of patriotic fervour, many

comic strip characters enrolled in the army, inclu-

ding Captain America and Mickey Mouse, and

fought against the Axis forces. The same thing

happened in the 1960s with the Viet Nam War, in

strips like Tales of the Green Beret (1966) by

Robin Moore and Joe Kubert. n


C O N N E X I O N S

nFrom midnight, Ja n u a ry 31, 1 9 9 9 ,i n t e rn ational regulations no longerrequire ships at sea to be equipped to

call for help in an emergency using Mors ecode and the we l l - k n own SOS signal. O nFe b ru a ry 1, the Global Maritime Distressand Safety System (GMDSS), using sat e l l i t eand other high-tech communicat i o nt e c h n i q u e s , replaced a system which sincethe early part of this century has save dcountless ships and thousands of lives.

GMDSS has been developed and pro-gr e s s i vely implemented since 1979.As moreand more ships adopted the new system,coastal radio stations around the world havebeen closing down their wireless telegr a p hy(W/T) services as demand has decreased.

As midnight approached on Ja n u a ry3 1 , m a ny of the remaining stations senttheir final Morse signals in a profusion ofemotional messages, typical of which wasthis from a group of Danish stat i o n s :“Concluding an era of more than 90 yearsof W/T service from Danish coast stat i o n s ,starting in 1909. . . .This is the last trans-mission for ever.”

Thus signed off with dots and dashes theera of Morse telegr a p hy, a medium which inthe 19th century had created a revolution inworld communicat i o n s , s e rving virt u a l l ye ve ry aspect of human activity: g ove rn-ment, diplomacy, business, industry, rail-way s ,n e w s p a p e rs ,m i l i t a ry, and more, p l u sthe needs of ordinary people who wished tosend telegrams.

‘What Hath God Wrought!’Fo l l owing the Italian physicist A l e s s a n d r o

Vo l t a ’s invention of the voltaic pile in 1800,the first means of storing electri c i t y, there wa san upsurge of electrical experi m e n t at i o n ,including many attempts to achieve com-m u n i c ation between distant points usinge l e c t ricity and metal wires. In 1832, S a m u e lF. B. M o rs e , a we l l - k n own A m e rican art i s t ,c o n c e i ved the idea of an electromagnetic

w Consultant Editor of Morsum Magnificat, aninternational magazine devoted to Morse telegraphy.

M O R S E :THE END OF AN ERA?w Tony SmithA world information highway built as a result of the 19th-century century communicationsrevolution came to the end of the road at the beginning of this year. Or did it?

By the end of the 19th century, Morse telegraphy was in widespread use.


C O N N E X I O N S

i n s t rument to achieve this by means of inter-rupted electrical currents corresponding toa prearranged code (see box ) .

In 1843, C o n gress allocated $30,000to test his invention on a 40-mile (65-km)line along the railroad from Washington toBaltimore.This opened on May 24, 1844,with the sending of the apposite phrase“What Hath God Wrought!”,and within ayear pri vate companies came into beingwith plans to run Morse lines to all parts ofAmerica.

In 1866, after several earlier at t e m p t s , asubmarine cable linked Britain and Ame-ri c a . By 1871 a cable had reached A u s-tralia, and well before the turn of the cen-t u ry most of the world was covered by a va s tnetwork of Morse lines.

A new industryThe Morse telegraph created an entirely

new industry which, amongst other things,offered women for the first time an oppor-tunity to take up a respectable career, thatof a telegrapher,outside their own homes.Te l e grams became a way of life for bu s i n e s sand for individuals, and many large orga-nizations had their own telegraph offices.

In 1848, six New York newspapersf o rmed the A s s o c i ated Press, s h a ring news-g at h e ring and telegraphic serv i c e s. T h e yhired their own lines and operating staff,a n dby 1923 AP landlines across North A m e ri c a

totalled 92,000 miles (148,000 km) ser-ving the interests of 1,207 member news-papers.

M a ny famous people started theircareers in the telegraph industry. ThomasEdison, the famous inventor, was an itine-rant Morse telegrapher at the age of 17,

t r avelling thousands of miles throughoutthe United States and Canada, taking jobafter job as his fa n cy, or circumstances,dictated.

Andrew Carn e gi e , the industrialist andphilanthropist, began as a messenger boyand was a telegraphist for twe l ve ye a rs.

HOW IT W O R K E DIn its simplest form,each of two telegraph stations hasa Morse ke y, in effect a simple electrical switch; a bat-

t e r y ; and an electromagnetic receiving instrumentcalled a “ s o u n d e r ” . The two stations,which could be

a few or many miles apart, are linked by a single wirestrung on telegraph poles.A second wire is connected

to the ground at each station and the earth completesthe electrical circuit.

When the key in one station is held down, e l e c-

tricity passes along the line to activate the magnetsin the sounder in the other station. A hinged bar in

the sounder is pulled down towards the magnets,making a loud click as it comes to the end of its

m o v e m e n t . Releasing the key switches off themagnets and the sounder’s bar is pulled up by a

spring to make yet another click.Depressing the key for a brief moment (a dot)

results in two clicks close together. Holding the ke ydown for a longer period (a dash) creates two

clicks further apart. A telegraph operator learned to

distinguish between the dots and dashes sent inthis way and thus read the Morse code.

The code received was transcribed manuallywith pen and paper. Subsequent improvements in

speed and capacity were achieved by the inven-tion of the typewriter, which dramatically increa-

sed receiving capability; and a semi-automaticMorse key which greatly increased the sendingspeed of manual Morse.

The greatest capital expense was the cost oferecting poles and wires hundreds of miles across

country to carry telegraphic tra f f i c . In 1876Thomas Edison invented a “ q u a d r u p l e x ” s y s t e m

enabling a single wire to carry up to two messagesin one direction and another two in the opposite

direction simultaneously. This created extra “ l i n e s ”which did not have to be physically built.

Automatic high-speed sending and receivingmachines further increased the carrying capacity

of existing lines. n

This Morse receiver dating from 1889 is displayed in the telecommunications museum at Pleumeur-Bodou,in France.


C O N N E X I O N S

Gene A u t ry, “the singing cow b oy ” , w h odied in 1998 aged 91, was a railroad tele-grapher in his youth before he became aHollywood star.

In the early days of broadcasting, a tele-grapher accompanied A m e rican commen-tators to sporting events, and special lineswere installed to connect the stadium tothe radio stat i o n .The telegrapher sent shortr e p o rts to the station describing the progr e s sof the mat c h , and a “ s p o rt s c a s t e r ” u s e dthem to provide a “ l i ve ”c o m m e n t a ry on thegame as if he were there personally. Onebroadcaster who worked in this way in the1930s was Ronald Reagan,later Presidentof the United States.

A universal codeThe code used on the A m e rican lines wa s

“ A m e rican Mors e ” ,which is not the same asthe intern ational code we know today.The firs tM o rse line in Europe was between Hambu r gand Cuxhaven in 1847, but the A m e ri c a ncode was not entirely suitable for the Germ a nlanguage with its diacritical letters. A newextended code was therefore devised, i n c l u-ding some new characters and some retained

from the A m e rican code.As the telegraph spread to other

German states and to Austria, each statedevised its own va ri ation of the Morse code,n e c e s s i t ating telegraphic translation to adifferent code by an operator as messagescrossed state boundaries.

In 1851 the A u s t r o - G e rmanic Te l e gr a p hUnion adopted a slightly amended ve rs i o nof the 1847 code for use in all states as partof a unified telegraph system effective fromJuly 1, 1 8 5 2 .The new code spread to otherEuropean countries and was finally adoptedfor unive rsal use in 1865 by the newlyformed International Telegraph Union.

Later, some countries developed theirown versions of the code for internal com-m u n i c at i o n s.A p a rt from the ori ginal A m e-rican Mors e , which remained in use withinthe United States, there are Arabic, Bur-mese, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese,K o r e a n ,R u s s i a n , and Turkish Morse codes,and possibly more.

The European code, which finallybecame the intern ational Morse code, wa sthe chosen communication mode for thenewly invented wireless at the end of the

19th century.A good practical system of signalling

already existed between stations using metalwires to carry their signals.The purpose ofearly wireless was simply to replicate andextend the scope of the Morse telegraphwithout the need for wires between sta-t i o n s. When wireless was found to becapable of sending messages over gr e at dis-tances it was adapted for use by ships at seawhich previously had no means of com-m u n i c ation with land, or each other, e x c e p tby visual signalling when close-by.

Inspiration for wirelessThe most famous early use of Morse at

sea was when the Titanic struck an icebergand sank on the night of A p ril 14, 1 9 1 2 .H e rt wo Radio Offic e rs , Jack Phillips and HaroldBride, stayed by their radio until the lastm o m e n t , sending out CQD SOS messagesin Morse code calling other ships to theirr e s c u e .“ C Q D ” was a recognized mari t i m edistress signal, and “ S O S ” was a new inter-national signal due to replace it shortly.

Their calls were heard 58 miles (93 km)away by the C a rp at h i a, which arri ved on the

A Hungarian plate printed at the end of the 19th century shows the beginning of the Morse alphabet and numerals.


C O N N E X I O N S

scene an hour and twenty minutes afterthe Ti t a n i c sank and rescued some 700 sur-vivors. Over 1,500 people died in the tra-g e d y, including Jack Phillips. B ride sur-v i ved and although unable to walk or stand,spent much of the time over the next fourdays heroically helping the radio officer ofthe Carpathia send a continuous stream ofmessages from the surviving passengers totheir next of kin.

Military useMorse telegraphy was used by military

forces in the Crimean Wa r , and in the A m e-rican Civil War. In the First World War, itwas widely employed in trench wa r fare withbu z z e rs replacing sounders. At the sametime early wireless telegr a p hy sets we r ecoming into use.

By the time of the Second World Wa r ,although wired telegr a p hy was still used,w i r e-less had become the preferred form of militaryc o m m u n i c at i o n . It was also an essential partof clandestine/intelligence operat i o n s ,p a rt i-cularly in occupied Europe where Allied agentsrisked detection,and their live s ,e ve ry time theytransmitted a message to London. M o rse byradio also served as a vital communicat i o n slink for the gr e atly increased use of aircraft inwa rtime operat i o n s.

In most armed forces today Morse is nolonger taught as a standard form of com-munication,although some operators stilll e a rn it as a special skill. In a recent unusuala p p l i c at i o n , Sudan Pe o p l e ’s Liberat i o nA rmy rebels fighting the gove rnment ofSudan have been heard on short wave radio,without Morse keys, vocalizing the code as

“dits” and “dahs”into microphones.

Not quite the endThe invention of radio signalled the

b e ginning of the end for landline Mors e , bu tit took a long time to happen.While long-distance radio services challenged the cablec o m p a n i e s , the advent of the telepri n t e rtook a more immediate effect. B ri t a i n ’s Po s tO f fice officially abandoned Morse in 1932,although its use continued in the UnitedStates and Australia until the 1960s.

The same process took place in other

c o u n t ries although from time to timeu n c o n firmed reports indicate that landlineMorse still survives in Mexico and India.

M o rse at sea has officially ceased, but ithas not yet disappeared. Some stations andships are still actively carrying Morse traffic,mostly in the developing world, but someEuropean stations can also be heard.Thehigh cost of installing new equipment inthe ships is the main reason for the delay inc h a n ging to GMDSS, but also training fa c i-lities have not been able to keep up withdemand.

There is still one major user of Morsecode. Radio amateurs worldwide use it tocommunicate with each other because oft wo adva n t a g e s. It has an intern at i o n a l l yunderstood system of abbreviations whichaids communication between people whoare unfamiliar with each other’s language;and Morse radio transmission is a part i-cularly effective means of getting signals todistant places compared with other radiomodes—the same advantages that made itso valuable for maritime use.

Landline Morse is also kept alive byhobbyists. In America, Canada and Aus-t r a l i a , enthusiasts mount historical display sand communicate with each other usingoriginal keys and sounders via the publictelephone system, dial-up units, a n dmodems. n

+ …l The Internet contains a vast amount of information

about Morse telegraphy. A useful start can be madeat http://www.morsum.demon.co.uk/links.html

I D E N T I F Y I N GO P E R ATORS BYT H E I R‘ F I N G E R P R I N T S ’When Morse is sent by hand,every operator hashis or her own characteristics in the shape ofslight variations in the lengths of dots and dashesand spacing between letters and words. Slight asthey are, when a Morse operator regularly “ w o r k s ”another operator, it becomes quite easy to reco-gnize the style or “fist”of the other.

In the Second World Wa r, the differences inthe sending styles of secret agents were notedby their home stations so that if they were cap-tured false messages emanating from the enemycould easily be detected.The styles of opera t o r son enemy submarines, ships or military unitswere also identified to help track their move-ments on a day-to-day basis. n

The first attempt to lay a transatlantic submarine telegraph cable. Valencia island (Ireland),1857.(Contemporary engraving).

http://www.morsum.demon.co.uk/links.html


T A L K I N G T O …

You say that the development model which has been proposed as a panacea for more than half a century is leading nowhere.Why?

Economic development is one of thegreat myths of the 20th century. In the1 9 7 0 s , people firmly believed Brazilwould conquer poverty and become aworld power. The same thing was saidabout India, Mexico and many othercountries. But the fact is that on the eve ofthe 21st century, more than 100 countrieshave not developed, and only three havemanaged to make a breakthrough—SouthKorea, Taiwan and Singapore, represen-ting less than 2 per cent of the populationof the so-called “developing world”.

Development in general, which hasbeen tried through socialism and is nowbeing tried through capitalism, has nothappened. For the poor countries, thechoice is no longer about how to developbut about how to simply survive the chal-

lenges of the technological revolution anddarwinist global competition.

But some world indicators, e.g.for lifeexpectancy and infant mortality, are improving. ..

The fact is that in the year 2000 about1.5 billion people will be living in povertyon less than a dollar a day and 2.3 billionon less than two dollars a day, and that innearly 100 countries real per capita inco-me has not increased for 15 years. TheWorld Bank’s dollar-a-day poverty lineand the UN Development Programme’sHuman Development Index show theenormous extent of poverty in the inap-propriately-named developing world.Theexistence of vast numbers of people livingin a state of deprivation with such lowpurchasing power means that their coun-tries are “quasi-nations”, unable to carryout any national project and to be part ofthe global economy.

You think many countries are or will soon be “non-viable national economies” or,even worse, “ungovernable chaotic entities”.Why?

Most of these countries suffer fromwhat I call “the virus of economic non-v i a b i l i t y ” — e x p l o s i ve urban populat i o ngrowth and production which is focusedon raw materials at a time when the tech-nological revolution needs less and less oft h e m . The convergence of these twotrends dramatically hinders developmentand creates a structural deadlock whichleads countries so afflicted to “stabilize”the non-viability of their economies. Notall non-viable economies collapse.Countries with the strongest populationgrowth and the least ability to survive are

OSWALDO DE RIVERO:D E BUNKING THE MYTHS OF‘ D E V E L O P M E N T ’

the ones that break down into “ungover-nable chaotic entities” (UCEs).

What are these UCEs like?Basically the government loses control

over large segments of its territory andpopulation. In such economically non-viable countries, poor income distribu-tion, spiralling population growth andtechnological backwardness lead to socialexclusion, which in turn stirs up ethnic,ideological and religious animosity. Largeareas of the country fall under the controlof warlords, drug traffickers, ideologicallymotivated guerrillas or a mixture of allthree. So chaos grows, civil society vir-tually disappears and the populat i o nbecomes dependent on the Red Cross orDoctors without Borders. The country isin a state of permanent destabilization.This what I call an “ungovernable chaoticentity”.

Could you give us some examples?UCEs are in a constant state of inter-

nal violence, where fighting altern at e swith truces, as, regrettably, we have seenin A n g o l a , S i e rra Leone, A f g h a n i s t a n ,S o m a l i a , L i b e ri a , C a m b o d i a , R wa n d a ,B u ru n d i , B o s n i a , C h e c h nya , H a i t i ,Albania and Colombia.

Does this only happen in the countries of theSouth?

There are policies which create exclu-sion in some rich countries of the North.In several U.S. cities, there are neighbou-rhoods which seem as if they’ve beentransplanted from the Third Wo r l d .There’s also exclusion in France. Butthese countries don’t become UCEsbecause the state hasn’t lost control of the

In a recent book El mito del desarrollo ( ‘ The Myth ofD e v e l o p m e n t ’ ) , Peruvian diplomat Oswaldo de Rivero warns thatmany national economies will become non-viable in the 21stcentury and analyses the failure of current development theoriesw h i c h , he says, are taking the world down a blind alley.



territory. Right now, Russia is the onlycountry that can be called developed—because it belongs to the G8 group ofcountries—where there are signs that thecentral government is disintegrating.

Apart from their economies,does anything else make countries of the South non-viable?

Ye s , and this is something I want tolook at in a future book. I think non-deve-lopment and non-viability also stem from acultural problem. In these countri e s — a n dI’ll talk about Latin A m e rica because that ’sw h at I know best—personal relat i o n s h i p sare more important than the rat i o n a lapproach to problems which you find inE u r o p e .A l s o, L atin A m e ri c a ’s a traditionals o c i e t y, without a capitalist spirit of enter-p rise or an inve n t i ve scientific community.Its culture is not based on science, but onl i t e r at u r e , painting and music.T h at can bean adva n t a g e , but development cannottake place in a capitalist economy withouta scientific inclination and Latin A m e ri c ad o e s n ’t have that . In Brazil, Argentina andPe ru , liberalizing the economy wo n ’t auto-m atically sprout a lot of inve n t o rs andm a n a g e rs like Bill Gat e s. These countri e smust find other ways to deve l o p. T h e y ’r enot going to manage it by adopting theU. S . model because they don’t have thesame cultural roots.

You say the coincidence of the technologicalrevolution and the urban explosion is one of themain reasons why development is impossible.Why?

Today’s technological revolution trig-gers off a process of natural selectionwhich leaves by the wayside thousands ofunskilled people and tons of raw materialsat the very moment when an urban demo-graphic explosion is occurring in mostpoor countries. The United Nations andthe Intern ational Labour Organisat i o n(ILO) reckon that if the population ofthese nations keeps on growing, about abillion new jobs will be needed at thebeginning of the next century. How canjobs be found for so many people with thenew technologies? The technologi c a lrevolution and the urban explosion aretherefore on a collision course.

But these two phenomena are virtuallyinevitable. So what can be done?

I don’t think there’s an easy remedyand that’s what shocks people about mybook. You’re not going to get a solutionwhile the urban population keeps growingin the world’s developing countries. In themeantime, there’ll have to be social welfa-

re subsidies and programmes to fightpoverty and create jobs. This isn’t goingto solve the problem, but at least it willlimit the damage.

Will this situation last forever?It doesn’t matter if it lasts 100 years.

Things will only change when the world’sbirthrate falls, which is expected to hap-pen sometime around 2050, but untilthen there’ll be tremendous social andpolitical upheavals in the world. Humanbeings only learn through experiencingdisaster, not through reason or theories.People feel compassion about T h i r dWorld poverty, but they don’t realize the

damage that’s being done. When seriousdisturbances break out,not just ecologicalones but political and social disturbanceswhich also affect rich countri e s , t h e nmaybe we’ll start thinking about a newsystem of co-operation.

You say that if globalization closes the gapbetween rich and poor countries, the result willbe ecological disaster. So is there any way out atall?

The model of consumption in ri c hc o u n t ries isn’t viable for them either in thelong term .Yet they’re trying to pass on thep at t e rn of consumption of about a billionpeople to almost five billion inhabitants of

Reality vs consumer dreams:in Pakistan,a man goes about his daily tasks, heedless of the advertising billboardsabove.



u n d e r d e veloped countri e s. The irony ist h at unemploy m e n t ,p ove rty and exclusionp r e vent such pat t e rns from being adopted.If they were adopted, five billion creditcards would soon destroy the planet’s bios-p h e r e .There wo n ’t be any solution until allhumanity reduces its level of consumptionand income is better shared out by a sys-tem of intern ational co-operat i o n .

In your view, the structural adjustmentprogrammes of the World Bank and theInternational Monetary Fund have not worked.Has the cure been worse than the disease?

In the long term, yes. In the shortterm, they’ve managed to stabilize themacro-economy and curb inflation. Butthey’ve failed in the long term becausethey haven’t laid the foundations for capi-talist development in those countri e s.They adjusted production but didn’tmodernize it. The neo-liberal develop-ment theory says once countries haveliberalized their economies, they mustproduce goods on the basis of the compa-rative advantages they enjoy on the worldmarket. But the only comparative advan-tage these countries have is their rawmaterials. The world economy is deman-ding more and more goods and services

with high technological content, but theu n d e r d e veloped economies are stillexporting relatively untransformed rawmaterials and products with low techno-logical input.

Why has this failure been so resounding inAfrica?

African economies have specialized inexporting bananas, cocoa, minerals andtropical products which,together with the

population explosion, is a deadly trap.The continent is the best example of whatI call the conjunction of two “viruses ofn o n - d e velopment”—the population explo-s i o n and the production of raw materials.IMF and World Bank officials are obses-

sed with the complete deregulation of thee c o n o my, when the real problem ofu n d e r d e veloped countries is histori c a land cultural: their lack of a capitalist spi-rit and a scientific tradition to modernizetheir production.

Do you see any chance of African countriesbeing able to reverse this trend?

For the moment, no, none at all.

You regard development aid as a kind of“Mother Teresa policy”.What do you propose inits place?

International aid is, paradoxically, themost striking indication of non-develop-ment. It won’t solve the problem. But atleast we have to set up systems of interna-tional co-operation and not treat coun-tries as equals when they’re not. Ghana,for example, c a n ’t compete with theUnited States in the global market.Special rules must be set up for develo-ping countries. Such rules used to exist,but they’ve all been dismantled.

You propose setting up a transnationalecological system.What would it be like?

Ecological problems will sooner orlater put a brake on the expansion ofhigh-consumption capitalism which isusing nature as a raw material and slowlyeating it up. The United Nations isn’ttackling the problem very well because itcan’t do so without the help of the trans-national companies, for it is they who aredoing the producing and developing both

AN UNDIPLOMATIC DIPLOMAT

“We must dare to think the unthinkable,” says Oswaldo de Rivero in his book El Mito del Desarrollo( “ The Myth of Development”),1 which has had a big impact in Latin America and will soon be publi-

shed in English.He argues that development does not exist,or at least not as we have understood it forthe past half-century.

De Rivero is a former Peruvian diplomat who was born in Lima in 1936.He is neither a university pro-fessor nor a government spoke s m a n . His opinions are based on a profound knowledge of the internationalscene acquired during more than 20 years’ experience in a broad range of international forums.

He has represented his country at the United Nations General Assembly and on the Security Council;he is a former ambassador to the United Kingdom and Russia,president of the Economic Commission ofthe Non-Aligned Countries’ summit,president of the Group of 77 countries and chairman of the councilof the Latin American Economic System (SELA), a regional intergovernmental body set up to encourage co-operation and integration among Latin American and Caribbean countries. He has also been president ofthe World Conference on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and the United Nations Disarmament Conference andled the Peruvian delegation during the Uruguay Round of GATT world trade negotiations.

A lawyer with a degree from the Catholic University of Lima, de Rivero abandoned his diplomatic careerbecause of “a profound disagreement with the present Peruvian government”. Today he lives in Geneva,where he works as a United Nations consultant, contributes to the Peruvian daily newspaper La República,and is currently writing a new book. n

1 Mosca Azul editores, Lima,1998.

These days, the future of many economies and national cultures isnot decided in government ministries or parliaments but on theinternational financial marke t s

Wrestling with poverty:Rocinha,one of the largest favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.



dirty technologies and green technolo-gies.These firms must be represented in at ri p a rtite intern ational body in whichg ove rn m e n t s , t r a n s n ationals and civilsociety are represented. A solution canonly be based on negotiations betweenthe real players.

How powerful are the transnationals?The rationale of globalization has

s p awned a new faceless non-gove rn m e n t a leconomic ari s t o c r a cy—the transnat i o n a l s.These day s , the future of many economiesand national cultures is not decided ing ove rnment ministries or parliaments bu ton the intern ational financial markets.Only 10 industrialized countries exportmore than the wo r l d ’s 10 richest compa-n i e s.Yet the World Trade Organization dis-cusses intern ational trade problemswithout these companies. At the Rio Eart hS u m m i t , countless plans and measures toprotect the environment were put forwa r d ,none of which have come to fru i t i o nbecause the companies responsible for thee nvironmental damage made no commit-ment to them. The trouble is that thet r a n s n ationals have more and more powe rbut no global responsibility.

How can we get them to assume theseresponsibilities?

It’s clear that international institutionsno longer reflect the new world powerstructure. We can’t go on having diploma-tic get-togethers between representativesof governments without any real power toalter global economic and ecologi c a ltrends. Let’s start by giving the transna-tionals a place and a vote in internationalb o d i e s , because nothing can be done

without them.

This doesn’t guarantee they’ll change theirattitude.

It won’t be easy to change their poli-cies since the transnationals are ve ryshrewd and choosy about how and wherethey invest.What might change their atti-tude is the fact that if globalization conti-nues to create exclusion, they’ll have tostart investing in poor countries to createmarkets there. But they’ve already got anenormous potential market anyway. Theopening up of the Chinese economyb rings the transnationals 300 millionc o n s u m e rs , the equivalent of theAmerican market. India brings in another150 million people with real purchasingpower. So there are still new markets tobe won. . . . And so the process will be along one.

So what can the worst-off countries be offered?Many countries which only produce

raw materials and have a rapidly-growingurban population are having to wrestlewith shortages of water, energy and food.To cope with these problems, what I calla “ n ational surv i val pact” is needed,because without water, food and energythere can be no state or civilized life andno society that can develop. This is thes i t u ation in countries like Guat e m a l a ,Peru and Bolivia in Latin America, andBangladesh, India and even China, inAsia.

What does this “survival pact”involve?A minimum level of development is

impossible without energy, water andfood. How can you educate a child who

A MYTHIN FIGURES “Some truths are unpleasant, but they’re stillt r u t h s,” says Oswaldo de Rivero. Here are some ofthem,extracted from his book.

World poverty. In the year 2020,there will be 3billion poor people in the developing countries, o fwhom more than 800 million will be hungry andhundreds of millions will be unemployed or under-employed.

Transnational companies. About 38,000 trans-national firms and their subsidiaries account fortwo-thirds of world tra d e. The sales of the 86most powerful transnationals exceed the value ofthe exports of almost every country in the world.

Financial marke t s. The international financialmarket is a huge casino which handles a trilliondollars’ worth of transactions every day—nearlysix times more than total direct foreign investmentworld-wide in one year.

I n e q u a l i t i e s.The annual income of the world’s 358richest people is greater than the total income of2.3 billion other people—that is, 45% of theworld’s population.

Food. Almost 800 million people in sub-SaharanA f r i c a , South A s i a ,C e n t ral America and the A n d e a ncountries have no food security.

Wa t e r. Half the population of the developingcountries do not have enough wa t e r. I l l n e s s e srelated to water pollution kill 25,000 people everyday.

Energy. Low per capita consumption of oil fuelplus population growth make a country econo-mically non-viable. High per capita oil consump-tion in every country would make the civilizationnon-viable.

Africa. A total of 162 structural adjustment pro-g rammes have been implemented in Africa (com-pared with 126 in the rest of the world) since1 9 8 2 , reinforcing A f r i c a ’s role as an exporter of ra wmaterials and basic products.After 20 years of thisr e g i m e, Africa starts the next millennium withnational economies which are severely handi-capped in the world economic system.

Raw materials. At the end of the century, t h eamount of raw material per unit of industrial pro-duction is two-fifths less than in 1930. Japan hasreduced its consumption of raw materials by 40%compared with 1973. World demand for hightech products is growing by 15% every year, w h i l ethe demand for raw materials is growing by lessthan 3%. In real terms, prices of raw materials willcontinue to fall at least until the middle of the nextcentury. n

Children of war in El Salvador.



hasn’t been properly fed, how can youindustrialize a city without water,how canpublic utilities work without electricity? Anational survival pact involves seekingsecure supplies of energy, water and foodbecause without them no developmentplan can work. But these days there areno development plans, there’s only themarket. It is thought, absurdly, that themarket will produce development. Butthat has never happened. All the develo-ped countries emerged thanks to protec-tionist trade policies. It’s impossible for acountry to switch from exporting cottonto producing computer chips as a result ofthe invisible hand of the market. Such acountry will need to have an industrializa-tion policy and take protectionist mea-sures, at least temporarily, in order todevelop.

Is there anything constructive aboutglobalization?

The globalization of communicationsis good for the cultural exchanges andcontacts it makes possible and because itfosters a global awareness of human pro-blems and suffering. It’s also positive at apolitical level—here I’m thinkingparticularly of how these days we keep

track of governments that violate humanrights.

But in economic matters, globaliza-tion imposes a monolithic doctrine. Itsells us a development model that is non-viable. Instead of creating a “global villa-ge”, it creates a worldwide collection ofgated communities of wealthy, elegantpeople who share the same lifestyle andpattern of consumption, and destroy the

environment. Behind these ghettos, thereare shanty-tow n s , slums and subu r b swhere water, energy and food are scarce,and crime, unemployment, violence andpollution are rife.

Why do you think your book made such animpact in Latin America?

I think it was successful because a newawareness is emerging. A large part ofLatin America’s political class has suppor-ted the single neo-liberal developmentmodel, but people are starting to have

doubts about it.The book came out justafter the big economic crises in Asia,Russia and Brazil. If it had come outbefore,I would have been called pessimis-tic or crazy.When I had finished the book,people asked me how I was going topublish it when Buenos Aires is full ofMercedes cars and there are dozens ofshopping centres in Santiago de Chileand Lima. But all that’s just a façade. Of

course, if you go to Caracas,Buenos Airesor Rio and stay in the hotel where WorldBank officials stay, you’ll get the falseimpression everything’s fine. But if youventure just a short distance away, you’llsee there are really two countries in one.

So do we have to give up the idea ofdevelopment because it’s a kind of suspectideology?

I’m not against the market economyand I don’t say that capitalist deve l o p m e n ts houldn’t exist.But the laws of the market

“In the 1970s, people firmly believed Brazil would conquer poverty.“ Above, Brazilian miners carrying bags weighing up to 60 kilos.

It is thought, a b s u r d l y, that the market will produce development.But that has never happened.All the developed countries emerged thanks to protectionist trade policies

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fear? A society can neither live like thisnor go forward. Sooner or later, thatyouth of 20 will have to get down to thebusiness of changing the world’s only sys-tem of development because it worksagainst him.

And to a young person in an industrializedcountry, what would you say?

The consumer society inoculat e speople against compassion. I’d tell thoseyoung people to get “ d i s - i n o c u l at e d ”because the way the world’s going, theirchildren and grandchildren are going tos u f f e r. A predat o ry attitude has beenencouraged in human beings, that thestrongest win, consume and then forget. Ithink lots of young people are aware ofthis problem. But most of them live a lifeof instant gratification in a sort of moralvacuum and don’t see any connectionbetween their own well-being and peopledying in Africa.

Isn’t your attitude over-pessimistic?I think we have to see things straight.

That’s why I talked about a nationalsurvival pact. Development technocrats

have come up with highly complex plans,from education to steel production, butthe basics have been forgotten: popula-tion growth, lack of food, energy andwater. Big countries with nuclear wea-pons,like India, Pakistan and China,haveserious water supply problems and haveto import food and energy. They’re giantswith feet of clay.That isn’t development. Iam sending out an alarm signal to alertthe poor countries against being hypnoti-zed by a mirage—the mirage of the tech-nological development that exists in theUnited States and Europe and is virtuallyimpossible for them to achieve. Thesecountries must take survival measures,because otherwise there will be no stablesocieties. You can’t have health withoutwater, production without energy, or lifewithout food. My book is an appeal forthe poor countries to concentrate onthese essentials. This is what must bedone and done properly. n

Interview by Araceli Ortiz de Urbina and Lucía Iglesias Kuntz

UNESCO Courier journalists

are not natural laws. The market can beregulated and geared to making peoplehappy. We can’t use it like the law of gra-vity and say that those who stumbleshould fall, that those who aren’t compe-titive should die. That’s economic darwi-nism. What’s missing really is a moralrevolution. The problem is ethical, pro-foundly ethical and cultural. We’ve had atechnological revolution, but we haven’thad an ethical revolution.

What would you say to a 20-year-old living in adeveloping country?

It depends on which social class theybelong to. If they’re from a rich family,they’ll have no problems, except the riskof being kidnapped. If they’re middleclass, they’ll have to be realistic and stopthinking that when they graduate fromuniversity they’re going to find a job, starta family and live well. I wouldn’t dare tosay anything to a poor person, because inunderdeveloped countries the poor live inhell, the middle class in purgatory and agroup surrounded by bodyguards lives inthe paradise of global consumption. Butat what cost and with what burden of

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Fo c u s :Bioethics: In search of the dream child?n Towards a new eugenics?

n Religious perspectives on genetic engineering

n United States:made-to-measure babies

n China’s state-sanctioned selection

n India: screening out girls

n The United Kingdom: cloning in Dolly’s footsteps

n Germany: laying old ghosts to rest

Features include:

n Life at 20 in today’s Cuba

n Refugee education: learning from experience

n Maladies of the 21st century

n Inside online paedophilia

n Interview with Sunila Abeysekera,Sri Lankan human rights activist

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