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From: Phumla Yeki <pyeki@dams.org>
Subject: WCD News Release
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 20:14:05 +0200
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<<...>> Today's Top Feature Story
Issue #2 Briefing Paper:
FLOODED FORTUNES
Dams and Cultural Heritage Management
Contact: James Workman +27 21 426 4000 For Release: 02 October
2000
WCD Secretariat: Human civilisation has evolved along rivers. Dams, by
definition, alter the flow patterns and use of rivers. The resulting
friction between large dams and equally valued cultural heritage has sparked
intense and escalating controversies in many corners of the world, pitting
archaeologists against cities, farmers against governments, nations against
neighbours:
* Egypt's Aswan High Dam triggered an international archaeological
salvage operation of the ancient city of Nubia that is unparalleled in world
history.
* When Portugal's Coa Dam construction unearthed Paleolithic
engravings, subsequent controversy and protests led leaders to abandon it,
despite $150 million already invested.
* In the past six years, China's list of cultural heritage sites
potentially affected by the massive Three Gorges Project has grown from 42
to 1,300.
* Native American tribes on the Colorado and Columbia Rivers threaten
legal action over operation of large hydroelectric dams that threaten their
ancient burial grounds and sites.
* Reservoir site surveys in India's Narmada Valley uncovered hundreds
of archaeological digs ranging from the Lower Palaeolithic age to historic
temples and iron smelting sites.
* During a historic low-water mark, Panama's post-inundation
assessment of impacts of Madden Dam revealed thousands of newly exposed
artefacts on the surface.
* Now, the global news media's white-hot spotlight is focused on
Birecek Dam in Turkey which is flooding remnants of a 2,000 year old city,
Zeugma, with one of the world's richest collections of Roman mosaics and
considered to be "a second Pompeii."
To tackle this issue, the World Commission on Dams, recognised for its
independent, balanced, comprehensive and peer-reviewed research, has
attempted to study the issue and collaborate with a range of partners
including the World Archaeological Congress (WAC). The Commission's findings
and recommendations remain confidential until the Final Report is launched
November 16. But today, in the interest of transparency, it presents some of
the publicly available evidence it has unearthed regarding cultural heritage
management and dams, to help both sides of the debate articulate the problem
and seek productive and consensus-based solutions.
The debate hinges on difficult and sensitive value-based questions, such as:
What exactly is cultural heritage? Is cultural past a human right? Do all
dams impact culture? Should the potential worth of undiscovered sites keep
new dams from being built? Are impacts of dams on cultural heritage
irreversible? What matters more, the "dead" legacy of the past or the
immediate "living" demands of the present? What incentives are there for
improvement? Can all cultural impacts be managed or are dams and heritage
irreconcilable?
The Commission can't resolve all these issues, now or in November. But
current research, including a recent WAC workshop at the University of
Florida, has uncovered clues, and approaches, that may shed needed light.
With advance plans, and by learning from past examples, countries,
communities and international agencies, have the means to resolve them on
their own.
In shorthand, cultural heritage is the unique social fingerprint, the
tangible ties between humans and their past. These expressions include:
distinct and sacred elements of the landscape, invaluable ancient or modern
human artefacts, critical plant and animal remains from human activities,
sacrosanct burial grounds or revered rural or urban buildings. They are the
clues to our distant and not-so-distant legacy.
Yet the density, location and nature of these clues rarely emerge until, and
some cases, only because, a dam, or other development construction has
begun, leading to a dilemma. While nations should preserve valuable cultural
and archaeological resources before building dams, dam building may be what
uncovers the very resources worth protecting in the first place.
This helps explain the dilemma, but doesn't explain it away, or make it less
urgent. Indeed, authors Prof Steven Brandt and Prof Fekri Hassan reported on
the February Dams and Cultural Heritage Management (CHM) workshop in
Gainseville Florida, with the sobering conclusion that: "The magnitude of
loss from different parts of the world wherever large dams are constructed
is staggering. The impact of large dams on cultural heritage is both long
term and far-reaching. It is also irreversible. The situation must be
regarded as a crisis of unprecedented dimensions."
Yet facing competing demands and limited budgets, what can be done by
governments, now?
The quick answer would be to proceed with extreme care. But that's easier
said than done. The workshop documented how countries rarely have explicit
CHM policies for dam projects. Of those that do, few enforce them. For
example, archaeological surveys have been done for only 25 of Turkey's 298
dam projects. Of those, five have organised, systematic rescue work.
There are signs of hope. In 1954, potential adverse impacts that the Aswan
High Dam on Nubia were dramatic enough to change forever the practice of
archaeology. An international rescue operation led to decades of intensified
research not just in the vicinity of the dam, but throughout Egypt. This, in
turn led the rewriting of the prehistory of the Nile Valley. On a global
scale, what the then Director General of UNESCO called "a task without
parallel in history" led to the launch of numerous other operations.
And values differ. Studying Tarbela Dam in Pakistan, WCD learned how
authorities, in consultation with religious leaders, ceremoniously moved
sacred shrines out of the flood area. Elsewhere it learned that a Spanish
community wanted their church to remain in the reservoir as a monument.
But in some cases no 'management' is possible. Last August, in Geneva, WCD
sponsored a meeting with representatives of affected communities on 'Dams,
Indigenous Peoples and Ethnic Minorities.' It discovered that Epupa Dam,
proposed on the Cunene River between Namibia and Angola, threatens 160
ancestral graves. As observer Dr. Bollig explained, "To the Himba, graves
are not simply an accumulation of stones under which some bones rest, they
are places laden with emotion and memories." Place forms their basis of
political rank and order, establishes land ownership, allows religious
ritual and orientation. Because a place, by definition, cannot be relocated,
CHM of dam construction may prove irreconcilable, and lead to other
alternatives.
Not surprisingly, developed countries have more legal, organisational and
financial capacity to cope with discoveries than many developing countries,
as shown by this contrasting tale of two sites:
Yacyret_ Dam inundated 80,000 hectares of land, 80% in Paraguay and 20 % in
Argentina. Between 1985 and 1988 a World Bank-funded study to evaluate the
cultural impact covered an area of 4,916 ha, and located a number of
archaeological sites. But Argentina's study work and rescue operation
suffered from funding shortage and bureaucratic management; Paraguay's
rescue research began only after the flooding had already started and, as a
result, most of the sites were by then under water.
By contrast, even before 1985 legislation, Portugal gave formal political
recognition to its cultural heritage through systematic consideration in
projects that impact the landscape, including dams. For example, Alqueva Dam
was suspended in 1979, until surveys examined archaeological impacts
upstream and down. Today, a year before submergence, Portugal has completed
or executed all rescue and mitigation activities in the inundation zone,
planned an archaeological museum, and constructed a memory center which
includes an ethnographic museum, a cemetery to which will be transferred the
remains from the impoundment area.
Most countries document a gaping shortage of qualified CHM personnel,
adequate facilities and infrastructure, an urgent need for local capacity
building, and training that integrates CHM assessment with environmental
assessment (EA) when looking for potential impacts.
"There is a two-way tension between saving the past and providing for the
present," said Madiodio Niasse of the WCD Secretariat. "Archaeologists don't
face the political demands for water or electricity; governments don't
always see the potential value of cultural resources until too late. But
this may be a false choice. Both parties can plan ahead, then work together.
Rescue operations don't just preserve what may be lost; they deliver real
and undiscovered benefits to all in the same way, and perhaps the same scale
and richness, as dams."
The Portuguese collectively recognised these benefits when the country
abandoned the Coa Dam even after investing US $150 million into it. To be
sure, not every country can afford to. And even where studies are required,
and cultural heritage should be covered, oversight and compliance may slip
through the cracks between social and environmental impact studies. This
oversight is attributed to: built-in biases toward only biological or
non-human factors; the poorly understood link between human behaviour and
environmental change; ignorance of how deeply society values cultural
heritage resources; lack of publicised CHM data apart from a few famous
sites; a scarcity of techniques designed to deal with cultural heritage in
environmental assessments.
Turning to global guidelines is not always the answer. The Florida workshop
found most international organisations lack any explicit standardised
policies toward cultural heritage, including the Asian Development Bank,
Inter American Development Bank, Japan Bank for International Co-operation
nor USAID. The notable exception is the World Bank's 1986 Cultural Property
policy, currently under revision, which has specific provisions aimed and
protecting cultural resources in Bank-funded projects, including dams.
"Perhaps the most distressing political finding from the workshop," said
Niasse, "is that some world organisations best positioned to fund, foster
and improve cultural heritage management within poor nations, are most in
need of CHM awareness and capacity building themselves."
The dilemma is not only over capacity for Turkey, which faces international
criticism for "sacrificing forever" a potential UNESCO world heritage site
on one hand, or the immediate basic demands for water or power by its
citizens on the other. It also involves priority. To emerge from the crisis,
it must overcome logistical, political and economic barriers. Among the
practical considerations in its Final Report the Commission may consider are
logistics, politics and economic incentives.
First, logistics: Not all agree that upstream flooding from dams impacts
cultural resources forever. The critical impact zone is the "bathtub ring"
area where fluctuating water levels scour and erode the shoreline. The
deep-water zone may be the most protected from impacts and therefore the
best location for preservation. In some existing reservoirs already built
without attention to CHM, underwater archaeology is a viable choice for
assessment of and access to submerged archaeological and cultural resources.
In this regard, one Turkish local governor noted: "The dam [Birecek] only
has a life span of 50 years. So our grandchildren will be able to see the
part that is being flooded this month."
That said, submergence of archaeological resources is not a viable
mitigation alternative, as it is more cost efficient to excavate and manage
these resources before submergence. Mud-based resources are most at risk
from exposure to water. Gravesite disturbances often cause irreversible
emotional rather than physical impacts that cannot be mitigated. Lastly,
dredging of reservoirs can have negative irreversible impacts on the
inundated resources.
Second, politics: In theory, a quick ideal solution may seem to be vigorous
enforcement of international guidelines and agreements such as a permanent
UNESCO World Heritage Site declaration, protection or moratorium. But if the
"stick" of legal or regulatory sanctions are too severe, they may actually
create built-in disincentives to survey, explore, discover, excavate or
protect cultural heritage.
"Say you're a developer or regulator of a project and a worker brings you a
bone, statue or clay pot that may unlock a gap in human evolution," said
Niasse. "Your first impulse should be joy, not fear that this discovery will
lead to demands for more money, mitigation, time to explore and thus
controversy and indefinite delay. You need incentives to call in experts,
not hastily bury the bone and keep quiet."
Which leads to economics: Financial incentives come from long term revenue
potential generated from discovery of cultural heritage. Small grants or
rewards from national and world organisations may tip the scales better than
threats of sanctions and project moratorium.
Also, a percentage of total dam construction costs can be allocated for CHM,
either incorporated into Environmental Assessment budgets or considered as a
separate line item in project budgets. Funding at present is frequently
inadequate even for stop-gap and partial measures to "rescue" endangered
cultural heritage. No one can remedy the current inadequacies in developing
countries without earmarking part of the project resources to CHM.
"The overall picture of CHM and dams right now is dark. But we can light
candles to reveal a path forward. From Portugal's Coa, to the Grand Canyon's
Native American ruins, to Egypt and Sudan's Nubia along the Nile, each
country went in looking to generate electricity and came out with ways to
generate millions from tourism and museums. By enriching humanity, countries
also enrich their coffers with funds to offset the opportunity costs of
delay, or match the economic revenues of a dam."
The World Commission on Dams was established in 1998 to assess one hotly
debated aspect of development: which, how, where and why the earth's 45,000
large dams have worked or failed to deliver. Chaired by Kader Asmal, South
Africa's Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry under Nelson Mandela, and
now education minister, the Commission consists of 12 people - civil
engineers and NGOs, chief executives, academics and government officials -
who represent all sectors of development.
As a group, the Commission has listened carefully to both sides the water
and energy resource debate in cities like Colombo, Sri Lanka; Sao Paulo,
Brazil; Cairo, Egypt and Hanoi, Vietnam. It analysed seven dams in the
context of their basins under a microscope; studied national experience with
dams in China and India; evaluated trends through 17 themes and a cross-
check survey of 150 dams world-wide; and absorbed 900 submissions from
afield.
Based on the distilled evidence from this global review, the WCD will - in a
major launch starting 16 November 2000, in London - issue a report with
significant implications for future water and energy development. It will
also include criteria and guidelines for construction, operation, overhaul
and decommission of dams or alternatives.
No natural resource, even gold, is more precious to any given country than
its fresh water. And no public tool has been more widely and controversially
used for parting - and imparting - those waters, than dams. Decisions over
dams are decisions over sanitation. Crops. Drinking water. Health.
Electricity. Fisheries. Flood management. A nation's destiny. Dam building
is a $42 billion industry that forces 4 million people per year - or 11,000
each day - from their homes. Why? To what end? For whom? What are costs and
benefits of this?
Into such questions the WCD plunges, and this second feature story, focusing
on the current public evidence on Cultural Heritage Management, is only one
thin slice of the complex dams and development picture.
WCD KNOWLEDGE BASE www.dams.org
* Dams and Cultural Heritage Management, Working paper submitted to
the WCD by Dr. Steve A Brandt and Professor Fekri Hassan (World Archaeology
Congress)
* Brazil Case Study- surveys focused on the sector above the town of
Tucurui that was to be flooded by the dam. These surveys were carried out in
3 stages between 1977 and 1984, identifying and studying 34 sites, most of
which were classified as ceramic habitation sites.
* Contributing paper to Thematic Review 1.2: emphasises the meaning of
ancestral graves to the Himba tribe. To this tribe graves are not just
stones - not the physical fact but the connection between graves, family
history and community's system of land tenure and decision-making. Pp9
* Glommen & Laagen Norwary Case Study- chapter 3.9
NEWS REPORTS, EXAMPLES, JOURNALS
* "We did everything we could to preserve the site, but no one was
listening...Energy policy is more important than cultural and historical
projects." - Turkish museum official, regarding Birecek Dam
"Unfortunately, all infrastructure projects are interventions with
the physical system, and in some cases that does affect cultural or historic
sites. The bottom line is to put in a sincere effort to minimise loss. When
that's not possible, you have to take precautions either to move what's
there, or at least to establish a complete documentation of what is being
lost." (http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/050700turkey-rome.html )
* "The Participants of The Society for Africanist Archaeologists
Conference held in Cambridge, England, 12-15 July 2000 are alarmed at the
magnitude and extent of the damage and loss to the cultural heritage of
Africa caused by the construction of dams and other development activities.
They urge governments and international institutions to take prompt action
to develop long-term Culural Heritage Programs to rescue Africa's threatened
Cultural Resources, to strengthen the capacity of African universities,
museums and other cultural heritage organizations , to enforce standard
procedures of good practice, to inform and engage local communities in all
aspects of Cultural Heritage Management, and ensure speedy publication and
dissemenation of all information recovered."
* The Ilisu Dam in Anatolia, Turkey, will flood 52 Kurdish villages
and 15 towns, destroy the archaeological city of Hasenkeyf. A report
produced by Environmental Resources Management, listed the destruction of
archaeological remains at the 'epicentre of western civilisation' as one of
the dam's risks. http://www.hasankeyf.org/eng/index.htm
* It is estimated that 1,300 known archaeological sites and hundreds
other yet to be discovered that are threatened by the Three Gorges Dam on
the Yangtze River.
http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/china.html
* Two hydroelectric projects in India, the Nagarjunasagar and the
Srisailam, submerged relics of archaeological significance from ancient and
medieval India including temples of typical Chalukyan style. But UNESCO and
foreign governments collaborated in transferring the archaeological remains
to safer sites.
(Sarma, I.K. 1984. "Some aspects of salvage archaeology in
Andhra Pradesh, " in: Itihas - Dr. N. Ramessan's Commemoration Volume,
1984.) and (Ramaswami, N.S. 1984. "ASI: An incredible feat." The Week, Feb.
12- 18, 1984, p. 44-45)
CONTACTS/ LINKS
The World Archaeological Congress (WAC) http://www.wac.soton.ac.uk/ was
established to recognise the historical, social, and political role of
archaeology. A WAC Task Force has been formed to address the effects of dams
and reservoirs on cultural heritage sites.
The Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural
Heritage, United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) http://www.unesco.org/whc/world_he.htm requires signatories to
adopt general policies; establish appropriate organisations and services;
and develop legal, scientific, and financial measures for protecting and
conserving cultural heritages.
The World Heritage List, UNESCO http://www.unesco.org/whc/opgulist.htm
encourages protection and to date includes more than 360 cultural sites of
exceptional interest and universal value. In 1960-64, a UNESCO international
salvage excavation project was carried out in the reservoir area of the
Aswan High Dam in Upper Egypt. Project:
http://www.unesco.org/culture/laws/works/html_eng
The World Commission on Culture and Development (WCCD), UNESCO and UN
http://www.unesco.org/culture/development/wccd/html_eng/index_en.htm was
established jointly by UNESCO <http://www.unesco.org> and the United Nations
in December 1992. It produced the report, Our Creative Diversity, on the
interactions between culture and development.
International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS)
http://www.icomos.org/ICOMOS_Main_Page.html is an international
non-governmental organisation of professionals, dedicated to the
conservation of the world's historic monuments and sites.
Europe has a national policy on cultural heritage which involves 27
countries. www.culture.coe.fr/pat/eng/
____________________________________________________________________________
___
World Commission on Dams Secretariat
PO Box 16002, Vlaeberg, Cape Town. 8018 South Africa
* +27 21 426-4000 Fax: + 27 21 426 0036
E-mail contact: jworkman@dams.org/ Home Page: http://www.dams.org
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