The World Heritage Convention

The website of the Institut Heritage Studies has three reviews of the oddly titled (or translated) 40 Years World Heritage Convention: Popularizing the Protection of Cultural and Natural Heritage by Marie-Theres Albert and Birgitta Ringbeck (De Gruyter, 2015). Some excerpts from Klaus Hüfner's review:

The Convention for the Protection of Cultural and Natural Heritage (World Heritage Convention) was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO in November 1972, but only came into force in 1975. The Convention, to date ratified by 191 States, belongs without doubt to the most successful international legal documents; it enjoys a tremendous popularity not only in Germany but also worldwide.

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The volume consists of seven chapters. The introductory Chapter 1 postulates the preservation of heritage as “an exceptional political, participatory and interdisciplinary act” (p. 2). It follows that it is necessary both in the nomination as well as in measures for the preservation of cultural and natural sites that, “as far as possible, all groups of affected peoples at the local, national or international levels” be involved (p. 3). This demand for critical and constructive participation runs like a red thread through the individual chapters. Another critical remark, on which following chapters go into depth, refers to the Eurocentric predominance. The authors speak of a “glaring imbalance” between the objectives and the implementation of the Convention when one considers the number of inscribed sites in Europe and North America compared to the rest of the world (pp. 5-9). 

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Chapter 3 discusses in more detail the evolution of the World Heritage Convention and the associated perspective changes over time, among which four phases are distinguished, which moved away from the initial strict, conservative interpretation towards a popularization of World Heritage. Already in the first phase (1978-1991) the imbalance between “Europe and the rest of the world” (p. 60) could be seen in inscriptions, which, in spite of the increase in the total number of inscriptions in the following three phases up until 2013, still hovered around 50 percent. In 1994, UNESCO finally adopted a Global Strategy to reduce the geographical and cultural imbalances. It involved the question of “how to integrate the visions of cultural diversity as defined in the Convention in the form of intercultural, religious, authentic or social views of diversity into the overall aspect of heritage” (p. 84). But the imbalance continued, the lack of financial and human resources needed to successfully complete the nomination process being suggested as a key reason (p. 93). 

Environmentalism of the Rich

Public Books recently ran a review by Max Holleran of  Peter Dauvergne's Environmentalism of the Rich (MIT Press, 2016). Holleran writes that the book

traces the shifting tactics of mainstream environmentalism from the radicalism of the 1970s to the corporate partnerships of the 1990s, in which companies accomplished incremental changes through in-house consultations with groups like the Sierra Club. It details how many green groups began as firebrand protectors of the earth, deeply inspired by indigenous movements that opposed the sale and commodification of nature, but have since morphed into something akin to compliance departments for large companies.

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Green movements of the Global North and the Global South are markedly different; within that divide, unique national experiences have produced a variety of environmentalisms, some of which do not even use the name and prefer to align with indigenous rights or class-based movements. The 1970s environmental movement came of age during a time of decolonization, and many pioneers of the movement were allies of nations in the Global South seeking both political independence and more autonomy within the global economy. Dauvergne shows that most resource extraction has imperial roots, when European powers saw the wider world as a zone for the collection, and often pillage, of raw materials. The “green” decolonization movement was fundamentally anti-capitalist; it suffered when many Global North environmentalists chose to advocate for a green economy, rather than a new economy based on rethinking global trade.

Holleran writes that the book argues that increased environmental awareness has not necessarily translated into increased regulation. Rather,

North and South and "sustainable development"

Over at "The View from the South", Charles McKelvey recently posted on the history of the idea of sustainable development. An excerpt:

Vinales Valley, Cuba
(Eco Cuba Network)

The evolution from development to sustainable development was tied to what Pearce and Warford (1993) [World Without End: Economics, Environment, and Sustainable Development, OUP] have called the second environmental revolution.  The first environmental revolution of the 1960s had seen economic growth and environmental protection as irreconcilable opposites, always in conflict.  But the second revolution of the 1980s did not question the need for growth.  Rather, it sought to define how to grow, or how to develop in a form that is sustainable.

The Cuban scholar and environmental specialist Ramon Pichs (2006) [“Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo, 1964-2004” in Libre Comercio y subdesarrollo, La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.] maintains that the turn to sustainable development occurred as a result of the participation of organizations and movements of the Third World in the global process of reflection on environmental issues.  From the point of view of the Third World, the ecological revolution of the 1960s, with its call for conservation and for constraints on economic growth, made sense in the context of the developed societies, characterized by over-production and irrational patterns of consumption.  But limiting growth was not a reasonable approach for the underdeveloped societies, which did not have productive patterns that could provide even basic human needs, as a consequence of the neocolonial situation.  However, the Third World discerned from the outset the importance of the ecological revolution as it developed from the 1960s through the 1980s, given its consciousness of the contaminating effects of the prevailing patterns of production and of the global scope of environmental problems.  Thus, Third World participation in the discussion led to a reformulation of the issue, and sustainable development emerged as a new consensual understanding.