Blue Papers

Water Management for Sustainable Development of World Heritage Properties

Tino Mager — 2024-10-07

As climate change and water-related threats like floods and droughts intensify, water management must become a key component of World Heritage management plans. Currently, these plans are not required to address water management even though an increasing number of sites are encountering water-related challenges. A lack of comprehensive data and knowledge sharing hampers efforts to collectively address these issues, posing a risk to the preservation of their Outstanding Universal Value. This article examines the significance of water management for World Heritage Sites, including sites directly connected to water and those facing water-related threats. It presents three examples from Germany to illustrate these challenges and underscores the need for improved knowledge sharing and integration between World Heritage properties and their surrounding environments.

The Promise of Maritime Heritage for Port Cities: Challenges, Concepts and New Approaches

Martine van Lier — 2024-11-21

Maritime heritage – an ensemble of ships, ports, waterways, buildings and maritime skills – is one of the oldest and most vital forms of heritage. It has been key to the growth of port cities around the world. Maritime skills, which include the techniques and materials used to build and use watercraft, from dugout canoes to container vessels, have made it possible to transport goods, animals and people, bringing wealth to deltas and coastal areas. This article argues that maritime heritage holds cultural, historical and environmental value and can drive sustainable spatial and economic development. In the heritage sector, maritime heritage is a relative newcomer compared to built and natural monuments. However, especially in the context of climate change, it offers valuable lessons on adaptation and sustainability. Six examples from the Netherlands demonstrate how preserving maritime heritage can be compatible with climate adaptation and energy transition, including, for example, using wooden fishing vessels and tugboats in cities, towing vessels for slow tourism, and sailing vessels for combined passenger and goods transport. The article calls for additional studies of how the conservation of maritime heritage can encourage sustainable development.

Cultivating Water-Human Intimacy within the Built Environment: Insights from the Master of the Nets Garden

Li Lu — 2024-11-21

Water plays a fundamental role in human survival and well-being. Despite extensive research highlighting the importance of water-human relationships, how to cultivate intimacy between them at the architectural scale remains largely underexplored. This article explores this dynamic through a case study of the Master of the Nets Garden in China. Using spatial, empirical and experiential analyses, it introduces a three-stage framework that integrates both quantitative and qualitative methods and examines various conditions within the garden that foster intimacy between visitors and water. It concludes that spatial conditions within the perceptual sphere of water, enabling diverse experiential modes, are crucial for fostering a sense of intimacy between visitors and water at the architectural level. The article highlights water-human intimacy as a core value of water-centric built heritage. This value remains significant for researchers, spatial practitioners and policymakers, offering important insights for heritage preservation and sustainable development.

Space, Time and Scale: When Geohistory Reveals a Territorial Heritage Based on Water

Lauriane Verhoog — 2024-11-21

The Mozambique Channel separates the island of Madagascar from Mozambique on the African continent, creating a total of 6200 km of coastline. Yet, in inscriptions of national heritage, water is not a focus of discussion nor is it considered. This lack of attention to water-related heritage is surprising given that the cities and heritage sites along the Mozambique Channel emerged from a maritime trade network that existed until the nineteenth century and formed the foundation for the evolution of the two countries. A water-based approach to heritage can help address contemporary challenges involved in the regional expression of heritage as well as the building of a national identity. Focusing on territorial dynamics, this article helps to rethink the role of heritage in creating a water-aware approach to heritage along the Mozambique Channel. It uses a multiscalar and spatio-temporal methodology called geohistory to analyze the development of the two coasts, their development over time and the resulting questions for heritage.

The Venetian Arsenal: Water, Culture and Heritage

Federico Camerin — 2024-11-21

The Venetian Arsenal, one of Europe’s oldest shipyards, played a crucial role in the development of Venice. Although it now hosts events for the renowned Biennale, since the partial departure of the military, the site has offered little value to the communities in its vicinity in part because citizens have not been included in heritage management decisions. A recent draft agreement signed in 2022 to expand La Biennale’s activities threatens to further exacerbate livability problems faced by local communities. However, the agreement’s early stage presents an opportunity to repurpose the Arsenal in response to Venice’s many problems, including mass tourism, the need for more housing, the ecosystemic loss in the Venetian Lagoon and the ongoing privatization of public spaces.

Building a Lasting Water Community

Ismail Widadi — 2024-11-21

This year’s 10th World Water Forum (10WWF), with the theme “Water for Shared Prosperity,” highlighted the need to identify and promote the collective values of water, along with heritage structures and practices. I was invited to give an opening speech at the official side event (SE37) of the UNESCO Chair Water, Ports and Historic Cities titled “Promoting the Values of the Subak System for Sustainable Water and Heritage Management.”

Editorial Issue 2/2024

Carola Hein — 2024-11-21

In recent years, community engagement has become a cornerstone in peace-building, decision-making and sustainable development. It also plays an increasingly significant role in heritage management and the processes involved in heritage listing. The 1972 World Heritage Convention, Article 5, proposed adopting a policy of integrating cultural and natural heritage in the life of communities. In 2007, “Communities” was added as the “Fifth C” to the Strategic Objectives to “enhance the role of communities in the implementation of the World Heritage Convention” (UNESCO 2007). The 2011 UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach further strengthened commitment to community engagement by emphasizing the importance of community values and the need to learn “from communities about their histories, traditions, values, needs and aspirations, and by facilitating mediation and negotiation between groups with conflicting interests” (UNESCO 2011). This shift reflects a broader recognition that effective heritage preservation requires integrating local knowledge, practices and cultural values.

The Antalaotra People of Madagascar: Made and Unmade by the Sea

Lauriane Verhoog — 2024-11-21

The territory of Madagascar emerged from the unification of formerly independent kingdoms. These kingdoms were geographically distinct, with one main inland kingdom and several coastal ones. The “Kingdom of Madagascar” emerged in the nineteenth century from political conquests made possible by the trade effervescence taking place along the nearby Mozambique Channel, creating an islandbased unity. The Antalaotra people, or “People from the Sea,” who lived in the Comoros archipelago and the northwest coast of Madagascar, acted as a bridge between the different territories. Over a period of five centuries, they laid a common cultural foundation for a Malagasy society. Their regional trading culture allowed them to penetrate the inland kingdom through economic and cultural exchange. However, their contribution to an emerging national heritage was quickly suppressed and by the nineteenth century the Antalaotra had disappeared in Madagascar as a community. Today, Madagascar’s national identity continues to emphasize the former inland Merina Kingdom, land of the Merina people, making national disparities significant in every aspect, especially culturally. Successive national governments have ignored the role of coastal heritage in the forging of national identity. This article dives into the past and inheritance of the Antalaotra people to argue for the inclusion and acknowledgment of their coastal heritage as part of the national identity.

The Ghats in Dhaka’s Monsoon-Fed Landscape

Salma Begum — 2024-11-21

Addressing Dhaka’s severe lack of public space in a deltaic landscape, this article considers fluctuating pocket spaces overlooked in planning and policy. It focuses on ghats, liminal zones between land and water, and a common Asian cultural landscape element. It explores their role as vital yet undefined and informal hubs of community life. The article documents social practices in these small, flexible areas carved out within a larger context. Examining specific pockets along the Turag-Buriganga and Balu Rivers, and the Banani-Gulshan-Hatirjheel Lake area in Bangladesh, it reveals how local communities adapt to changing water levels and urban dynamics. Each of these areas represents different degrees of urbanization, showcasing unique responses to environmental challenges. Emphasizing festivals like mela taking place in the ghats and hydrological movements, the inquiry considers the cultural significance of the ghat water landscape. The article takes the innovative strategy of providing an atlas created for this project that presents a place’s intricate story in a synoptic composition.

The Floating Urbanism of Cambodia’s Tonlé Sap

Bruno De Meulder — 2024-11-21

For decades, the floating villages of Tonlé Sap, a lake in Cambodia, have demonstrated ingenuity by necessity and adaptability to the seasonal rhythms of nature. The villages are examples of ephemeral, floating urbanism, a response to discriminatory land tenure practices that is able to adjust to ever-increasing fluctuations in water levels exacerbated by global warming. The villages’ Indigenous knowledge systems and practices (IKSP) display a distinct intelligence, in which water-based modes of living and livelihoods are connected with a resourceful understanding and use of locational assets. Conducting intensive fieldwork by boat and living in the floating villages for ten days in August 2023, the authors gained knowledge of local expertise through observation and informal interviews. They documented livelihoods and modes of settlement that suggest a pause in the neo-liberal market-driven globalism sweeping Cambodia. Here they relate their research to existing literature and studies (primarily ethnographic and policy-oriented) of the region’s unique monsoon culture of floating villages with a culturally specific identity that combines hierarchy and heterarchy.

Settling-on-the-Move: Birsing Char-scapes in the Brahmaputra Valley

Swagata Das — 2024-11-21

Chars are shifting riverine islands. This article focuses on Birsing Char, part of Birsing Jarua Village Panchayat, in the Brahmaputra River near the Indo-Bangladesh border. Generations of families have migrated across this porous border, settling in the Lower Brahmaputra Valley. This migration has intensified the sociocultural othering of Bengali Muslims amid Assam’s identity politics and India’s rising authoritarianism. Through fieldwork and interpretative mapping, the article uncovers forms of alternative knowledge, including local spatial practices and intangible heritage like songs and poetry, threatened by infrastructural development, policies of the Indian government and climate change. It explores how such knowledge can be harnessed and inspire alternative development policy and design in the context of global warming in the Brahmaputra Valley and in Assam’s sociopolitical climate. The case underscores the urgency of recognizing marginalized chars as vital to the region’s water legacy, as they contribute both to local livelihoods and broader ecological systems.

Fluid Ontologies: Colonial Legacies and an Indigenous Oceanic Worldview in the Sulu Archipelago

Di Feng — 2024-11-21

In recent decades in Southeast Asia, dramatic social, economic and political changes have profoundly impacted the lives of Indigenous populations. In Malaysia, the Sama Dilaut, known as the “sea nomads,” are under pressure to abandon their traditional way of living at a time of rapid modernization. Over centuries, the Sama Dilaut have developed a harmonious relationship with their environment, practicing sustainable small-scale fishing methods that have minimal impact on marine ecosystems. In their worldview, humans are not considered exceptional but interconnected with the ocean and species that inhabit it. This contrasts with the Western-centric worldview, where nature-culture dualism prevails, viewing humans as separate from nature and encouraging exploitative attitudes toward the environment. This article outlines and acknowledges the value of the Sama Dilaut culture, knowledge of the sea and struggles against dominant power structures. It advocates for recognizing Indigenous rights to ancestral lands and seas and integrating Indigenous knowledge and communities in conservation practices. These goals are essential for achieving justice for Indigenous peoples and offer significant potential in the search for alternative approaches to combating climate change.

Traditional Water Management in the Thar Desert: The Khadeen of Rajasthan, India

Pierantonio La Vena — 2024-11-21

The khadeen system of the Thar Desert, in Rajasthan, is an ancient technology that takes advantage of peculiar geohydrologic formations to create temporary lakes. A careful water management practice, the khadeen are an example of age-old methods of capturing and using seasonal runoff for agriculture, ensuring water access in arid regions. Khadeen have played a crucial role in supporting agricultural activities since the sixteenth century, offering impressive yields in a water-scarce environment. However, the enduring efficacy of khadeen faces contemporary threats, including mining encroachment, labor outmigration and road development. The delicate balance between preserving traditional knowledge and succumbing to external pressures poses challenges to their cultural, ecological and agricultural significance. This paper comments on the historical, hydrogeological and socioeconomic dimensions of khadeen, emphasizing the importance of their preservation in sustaining communities and ecosystems in the Thar Desert area.

Traditional Khmer Water Practices: A Case Study of Phnom K’to, Vietnam

Vu Thi Phuong Linh — 2024-11-21

Phnom K’to (Cô Tô Mountain) is the easternmost peak of a small chain of granite outcrops of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. It reveals a long and rich tradition of water management that is often overlooked in present-day development. Although the region is under Vietnamese control, it had centuries of Khmer rule and inhabitation. Today, the marginalized Khmer settlements around Phnom K’to are spread across varied terrain, from rugged mountains to muddy floodplains, with monsoon-fed and flood-cycle cultivation. The Khmer’s traditional water practices were carefully adapted to topography and water variations, forming interconnected habitats and productive mosaics specific to Khmer society. However, their vernacular landscape has been dramatically transformed and recast by modern canals (since the nineteenth century), dike building and granite mining (since 1975), and roads and reservoirs (since the 2010s). Whereas the entire region suffers from the consequences of global warming (particularly floods and droughts) and ecological destruction, there is an opportunity to revisit traditional Khmer water practices to provide insights for reconfiguring the water system. Fieldwork-based drawings, annotated with Khmer terminology, highlight morpho-topological readings of the relationship between water management practices and settlement. The research seeks to uncover opportunities to revisit and revalue such practices to renew stewardship of the territory.

The Longue Durée of Weitian Landscapes in the Yangtze River Delta

Wei Lei — 2024-11-21

The ancient weitian (polder) system in the Yangtze River Delta represents a particular form of water urbanism, integrating productive polders, villages and prosperous water towns (shui-xiang). Over millennia, the hudangweitian (shallow lake polders) transformed the muddy plains around Taihu Lake into a highly productive area. Zhenze, founded in the twelfth century, is an important water town that initially operated within a network of garrisons and trading ports. This case study illustrates the resilience of weitian landscapes and how twentieth-century water management reshaped the small polders into larger wei-qu (polder zones) through a process of lian-wei-bing-wei (joined and merged polders). While urbanization and industrialization continue to erase many historic polders, the region’s water towns are being preserved and developed, largely for tourism. The case highlights both the benefits and shortcomings of the weitian transformations, emphasizing the need for a balanced approach that both facilitates development and preserves the region’s unique deltaic conditions.

Learning from the Hydraulic Heritage of Figuig, Morocco

Ouafa Messous — 2024-11-21

In the face of water scarcity and climate change, the Figuig Oasis exemplifies resilience through the integration of culture, heritage and sustainable development. This arid region has preserved ancient water management practices that have sustained life for millennia, offering a model for achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Figuig’s significance lies in the potential to harmonize traditional and modern water governance systems, optimizing its hydraulic organization as a living cultural heritage to ensure the sustainability of ecosystems in desert environments amid growing water scarcity.

Interview with Feng Gu: Revitalizing and Activating Canal Cities through the Integrated Protection of Water Heritage of the Grand Canal

Feng Gu — 2024-11-21

China’s Grand Canal was the world’s most extensive civil engineering project before the Industrial Revolution. This interview explores how the process of applying for and achieving World Heritage status has led to the improvement of the environment surrounding the Grand Canal and encouraged collaboration among canal cities spanning eight provincial administrations. It highlights the role of water heritage as a catalyst for improving the protection of historic landscapes and waterscapes as well as the Grand Canal’s cultural heritage. It also addresses how these efforts have supported the integrated development of canal cities. The Grand Canal remains a vital link that promotes balanced cultural, ecological and economic development, contributing to the sustainability of various canal cities across northern and southern China.