Heritage Conservation

Heritage Conservation is more than just history – A good heritage conservation strategy incorporates all aspects of a region’s heritage – historical, but also natural and cultural.
Current emphasis of heritage plans
Much of local and national government’s plans for preserving ‘heritage’ deals almost exclusively with physical assets, such as historical sites and buildings – Palaces, temples, churches, mosques, tombs, and similar sites. This is particularly true in countries and regions that have a long history and a number of historical public buildings.
But heritage is more than that
We need to remember that heritage is in fact more than just physical buildings. The true heritage of an area is to comprehensively look at not only the tangible assets, but intangible ones as well. This includes public assets, and private ‘domestic’ assets such as dance, music, art, festivals, dresses, food, and more form part of the area’s heritage.
Need for a broader outlook
A problem that is faced in heritage conservation is the vertical demarkation of natural, cultural and historical heritage assets between different departments and agencies, with little, if any, coordination or integration among them. This clearly calls for a more coordinated effort among the different stakeholders – who maintain their individual goals and objectives, but collectively incorporate them into a common and agreed vision.
Components of a strategy
Taking the above points into consideration in developing a conservation strategy will first of all require a comprehensive inventory that can be used to make informed decisions about the management of heritage sites. This is followed by a work programme to protect and rehabilitate heritage features as well as improve opportunities for the local community to be involved. Along with the implementation of the work programme is its operations and maintenance, containing a fiscally responsible plan defining the routine, ongoing operating and maintenance activities needed to ensure clean, safe and preserved heritage assets.
Community involvement and awareness should be an integral and important component of the strategy, to increase educational opportunities, stewardship programmes and community involvement activities. Monitoring is also an important component, to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy, and to provide updates to the strategies as needed.