This same principle applies equally to cultural heritage sites and landscapes and has long been respected by a small group of professional archaeologists and site conservators. However, recognition of the need for local community involvement in the conservation of heritage sites has only recently begun to develop among national and local policy makers. In part this is the result of the increased international attention drawn to the heritage sites, attendant upon their inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List and their subsequent inclusion on the global tourist itinerary.

At the present time there are 506 sites listed on the World Heritage List out of which 387 are cultural sites. In the Asia/Pacific region, governments, many of which have only recently joined the 1972 World Heritage Convention, are vigorously promoting inscription of their nations' sites on the List. Already there are 81 cultural sites on the World Heritage list in the Asia/Pacific region and the number is expected to grow rapidly.

In addition to inscription on the World Heritage List, the governments of the region are taking a variety of national initiatives to protect their rich cultural heritage. After the economic boom of the last 30 years, there is now the growing recognition that the problem of heritage conservation is not restricted to a limited number of sites of international interest, but is a general concern of national policy and part of the process of sustainable development, built upon each society's unique cultural traditions.

What makes the situation of people living in or near the cultural heritage sites and landscapes of the Asia/Pacific region of particular concern is that, most often these people are the direct descendants of the original builders and inhabitants of the sites themselves. Unlike in some other parts of the world, population replacement by other ethnic groups is the exception rather than the norm for the historic sites of Asia. The implication of this is that, in Asia and the Pacific, it is particularly important to upon the traditional cultural heritage of each locality if future economic and social development is to prove acceptable and sustainable in the long-run.

The people living in historic cultural sites in Asia/Pacific typically find themselves in at least one of the four following situations, with respect to the site. They may be:

1. Urban inhabitants of the historic towns or the centres of ancient cities, such as Kathmandu (Nepal), Lijiang (China), Hoi An (Vietnam) or Vigan (Philippines). In such cases, the local populations often live in -- and may in fact be the proprietors of-- the protected buildings.
2. Communal inhabitants of religious or otherwise public historic monuments who continue to use historic monuments for the purposes for which they were built. Luang Prabang (Lao PDR) and Kandy (Sri Lanka) are examples of sites where such occupation and stewardship of heritage sites is a continuing tradition.
3. Rural inhabitants of cultural landscapes, such as the Rice Terraces of the Philippines Cordilleras, the Tonle Sap floodplains of the Angkor region in Cambodia, Lake Toba on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, Mustang in Nepal, or the Hunza and Swat Valleys of Pakistan. The fact that these people use traditional farming techniques and traditional equipment, is often in large part responsible for maintaining the authenticity of the protected landscape.
4. People who live on or near archaeological sites, often unaware that there is history contained in the ground below them (at least until antique hunters apprise of the fact.) Fortunately, because traditional domestic architecture construction techniques throughout the region typically are non-invasive, the under-ground archaeological remains at such places as Ban Chiang (Thailand), Khar Bulgas (Mongolia), or the Plain of Jars (Lao PDR) are largely intact.

Fortunately, many of the historic sites in Asia have survived throughout the centuries and are still accessible. This happy situation has been due mainly to non-invasive techniques of traditional shallow-fallow farming and pole/pile and wattle/daub construction techniques of traditional domestic architecture. Adding to this there has been rudimentary forms of routine maintenance carried out over the centuries on many of the religious buildings, although in some cases this has resulted in extensive renovation or rebuilding of the structures.

However, the present situation gives serious cause for alarm over the continued preservation of these monuments, landscapes and sites. Among the principle causes for this alarm are:

• Environmental Degradation
  

  Weathering, by natural processes, is always a problem for the preservation of historic sites and monuments, especially in areas prone to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, typhoons and monsoons. As time goes on, the cumulative effect of these natural processes render a monument/site ever-more fragile and in need of additional care and maintenance.
  

  Added to these natural factors are the man-induced factors common to the end of the 20th century: soil erosion caused by deforestation; lowering of the water table, also caused by deforestation and by large-scale water control projects; water and air-borne chemical pollutants. For example, sites as different as the Taj Mahal in India and Angkor Wat in Cambodia are today seriously threatened principally by these man- induced environmental factors.
  

• Agro-Business
  

  Another development of the last 40 years which has already contributed to the degradation of many cultural landscapes and can be said without exaggeration to threaten all of the them is the success of the "Green Revolution" and the transformation of subsistence farming into the agro-business which is occurring through Asia. Not only have chemical fertilizers and new non-traditional crops been introduced into traditional and historic field systems, new and far-more-mechanical farming techniques have also been introduced. The ancient field system around Sukhothai (Thailand) has been completely obliterated; while the 3000 year-old rice terraces of Cordilleras in the Philippines are being abandoned because of their inaccessibility to modern equipment.
  

  While the Green Revolution has certainly brought with it many benefits to the people of the countries of the developing world, there are already indications that the dramatic increases in yield are falling off due to, for example, inadequate conservation of water resources and lack of resistance of the non-native crops to local diseases. Traditional farming techniques, such as those developed by the ancient Khmer Empire or by the Mongols at Khar Bulgas near Kharakhorum are many times more extensive than the area which is today arable. This suggests there may be advantages -- even in the strict economic development terms -- by respecting and preserving traditional technologies which may prove more "appropriate" and sustainable in the long run.
  

• Construction Boom
  

  The construction boom consequent upon the rapid growth which the Asia/Pacific region has enjoyed in the past 30 years is another area where the dialectic between development and preservation is apparent. With the introduction of new construction materials (principally reinforced concrete and concrete motars) and new construction techniques requiring deep foundations, many old buildings are destroyed by too-heavy additions or undermined by deep foundations. Some are razed entirely to make way for new constructions.
  

  Again, it is not always evident that the old techniques were not more appropriate or cost- effective. For example, recent earthquakes in the region (in particular at Lijiang in Yunnan Province, China and in the Philippines Cordilleras) have shown the vulnerability of modern rigid engineering techniques; while the recurring energy crisis renders life in modern sealed buildings impossibly expensive for the large numbers of urban poor in the megapoli of Asia who are forced into slums or onto the streets.
  

• Tourism
  

  One of the dominant forces behind the economic growth in the Asia/Pacific region is tourism. All indicators are that tourism will continue to grow to become the world's largest industry within the next 10 years. The popularity of cultural tourism is, in one sense, an indication of the success of education programmes designed to introduce people around the world to one another's cultures. However, mass tourism also threatens the continued existence of fragile monuments and sites. Already some sites, such as the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, China have been closed to the general public. Other sites, such as the Grand Palace in Bangkok, receive more than 7000 visitors a day raising serious crowd management and maintenance problems exacerbated by the wear and tear caused by so many visitors.
  

  Tourism, as a growth industry, has within it the possibility to finance much of the needed conservation work at heritage sites, and still leave abundant profits for tour operators. However, it will be important to insure that the profits of tourism are, indeed, re-invested in the local communities, and in this way insure that the heritage sites will be preserved and managed so that they can continue to attract the tourist dollar. For this purpose, the members of the local communities need to be taught skills of use in the tourist industry including site guiding, monitoring, and maintenance, as well as a host of services required by visitors.
  

• Population Growth
  

  Finally, there are the problems posed by population growth at historic sites. This, ironically, is caused by the success of such other developmental activities as the Green Revolution and the rapid growth of tourism. Added to the natural population increase within local communities is the even more problematic increase due to immigration of people attracted by the opportunities of the tourist industry and, in historic cities, the employment opportunities offered by modem urban expansion.
  

There is the need to involve the local communities to a much greater extent in the conservation of historic sites and monuments. The local people should want to be involved in heritage preservation because it rebounds to their economic and social advantage, by turning underutilized assets to more productive means and by creating local employment opportunities in building trades, traditional arts and crafts, and in the sectors of site management and in tourism.

It was with this goal in mind that that this project was formulated in late 1995 and presented in early 1996 to a workshop involving the managers of 32 heritage sites throughout Asia and the Pacific representing all of the different site problematics discussed above. The site managers responded with overwhelming enthusiasm to the project proposal. Five sites - all small historic towns -- were chosen as pilot "demonstration" sites in which to experiment and test various implementation strategies during the first term (year 1996-1997) of project implementation A further five sites - cultural landscapes - have been chosen for pilot demonstration sites during the project's second term (year 1997-1998).

The objective of this project is first and foremost to ensure participation of the people of the local communities within or adjacent to heritage sites in the various activities needed to maintain and preserve their sites, and to do so in ways which provides them with employment opportunities and economic benefits. In this regard, this is a development project which aims to demonstrates that the preservation of heritage is not a luxury for developed economies, but an activity which can bring economic opportunities and thus serve as a tool for job creation, income generation and thus poverty alleviation based on traditional technologies, locally available materials and the human resources of the local community. To accomplish this goal, the project will enable local communities to:

• understand and advocate the long-term conservation of the monuments/sites;
  

• play a leading role in the actual work on monitoring/policing; preventative conservation/on- going maintenance; and presentation/interpretation of the monuments and sites;
  

• develop means through which they benefit financially from the enhanced conservation of the monuments/sites while maintaining their social and spiritual traditions intact.
  

Because the concept of this project is complex, although with a succinct strategy and a straightforward message, we have given the project an easy-to-recognize acronym: LEAP, which stands for Local Effort And Preservation.

METHODOLOGY

The strategic approach used in the implementation of this LEAP project is one which, although relatively new to UNESCO, has gained increasing recognition among development assistance agencies and professionals worldwide, and has recently been given strong advocacy in the UN/UNESCO Report of the World Commission on Culture and Development: Our Creative Diversity. Following the success of the first year of LEAP project implementation, this strategy has been incorporated wholesale into the draft of UNESCO Regular Programme and Budget for 1998-1999 (29 C/5) and made a cornerstone of UNESCO culture policy. The catalytic nature of the LEAP project segues into and reinforces other UNESCO action in the field of culture including the training of indigenous managers of protected natural and cultural sites and efforts to make eco-cultural tourism a tool for heritage preservation.

The basic approach used for implementation of this project involves initiating a variety of community participatory activities which act as the catalyst for local community interest groups to assess the unique characteristics, strengths and economic potential of the elements making up their physical as well as intangible cultural heritage, and then to design a community action plan to self-develop these elements in a way which is both profitable and sustainable. Activities vary from site to site, depending upon circumstance and need, and are continually evolving. Examples of such activities include:

1. Providing practical training in heritage preservation and management through reinforcement of local level endogenous capacity. This means working with local town and site managers, neighbourhood wardens, local businessmen and women, women's and youth groups, temple priests, etc to develop popularly-accepted zoning and environmental management plans for both preservation and development of historic areas. The resulting preserved areas can be as small as a neighbourhood street or park, or as large as to encompass the entire community and its surrounding landscape. This strategy includes training in the use of basic management tools such as mapping and computer-aided geographic information systems, in order to de-mystify these technologies and make their advantages available to local citizens so they may become competent managers of their own habitats.
   

2. Fostering community participation in heritage preservation, particularly in urban areas, through public-private partnerships to develop this heritage in an economically sustainable way (which may or may not involve adaptive re-use of the facilities), and through these efforts engendering a stewardship ethnic.
   

3. Recruiting the potential of cultural tourism as a tool for the preservation and enhancement of both the physical and intangible heritage. This involves developing training for and promotion of community-based tourism industry-related occupations grounded in the interpretation of local culture and history. Such promotion efforts also restore pride in local heritage, inspire the desire to manage the heritage well, and thus attract business to restored historic areas.

IMPLEMENTATION FRAMEWORK

A. Identification of Project Pilot Sites: Strategic Focus and Multiplier-Effect

During the first year of' the project, five initial pilot sites were selected for trial implementation of. this project. The sites were selected based upon the following criteria:

• It was important to identify responsible persons, groups or local organizations at the sites selected who indicated that they were ready and eager to explore this approach to economic development through heritage conservation and committed, not only to participate in the process, but also to take responsibility for its management. If a community is completely unaware of its heritage, or worse, does not see at least the emotional value of its conservation, then a different, more complicated set of strategies must first be employed to raise the awareness level of the communities before the conservation and development activities can be attempted. It was felt that for the first year of project implementation, it would be better to chose self-identified communities who already had reached a certain level of heritage awareness.
  

• The level of commitment to heritage conservation on the part of the national, provincial and district governments and local authorities was also taken into consideration in site selection, because this would provide the local community with a legal framework in which to proceed with project activities. The ideal level of commitment is present when a site is or has been nominated as a World Heritage Site. In this regard, among the sites selected for the first year two are World Heritage Sites (Kathmandu and Luang Prabang); the nomination dossier for one other is in process (Lijiang); and the remaining two are in the final stages of dossier preparation (Hoi An and Vigan).
  

• Finally, considering the experimental nature of the project and the limitation of both human and finance resources, it was decided to focus project activities for the first year on one type of site and to attempt at these sites to generate activities which (a) could be replicated and tested at additional sites in other countries and (b) which had the potential to be self- replicating in adjacent to the selected sites. This issue of replicability was felt to be important to the long-term success of the project, as the ultimate aim of this project is to be a catalyst for a general ethic of heritage conservation imbedded in the development process at the grass-roots level throughout the region.
  

• They are small historic towns with complex historical overlays and important physical components of religious, commercial and domestic cultural heritage;
  

• They are living towns in which the present populations are seeking to preserve their traditional cultural and spiritual heritage while improving their economic and physical conditions to a level consistent with the expectations of the 21st century; and
  

• They are or wish to become World Heritage Sites, and by doing so, seek to bring their conservation management skills up to world-class standards.

B. Identification and Training of Local Project Managers

In implementing the strategies to realize the objectives of the LEAP project, it is essential to identify those local institutions, traditional leadership roles or individuals who are most responsible for the maintenance of the sites and are most responsive to the need for their continued enhanced conservation and then to work with them, through them and to offer assistance to strengthen their managerial capacity and technical competence. Identifying these institutions or individuals is the key to ensuring that the activities associated with site management are carried out by the local communities, and are not imposed on the community from the top-down, or from "expert" assistance coming from outside the country itself. Although such expert assistance has an important role to play in the transfer of technology and know-how, the specific objective of this project is to promote the participation and empower the local community in heritage conservation as a development tool.

To this end, individuals and local institutions are identified at each of the LEAP pilot demonstration sites. The local managers at the pilot sites, have, as is to be expected, differing degrees of strengths and experiences. The site managers in Vigan, for example, are already well-trained and have considerable experience and expertise. Those in Luang Prabang, on the other hand, have had considerably less experience, and by necessity need more training and assistance in order to be successful in the conduct of project activities.(to be continued)