Intangible Cultural Heritage.
A seven part series on the heritage you cannot map: the living practices, knowledge and meaning that carry equal weight under UNESCO and the lender standards, yet are the part projects most often miss.
Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is the living heritage around and beyond the monument: oral traditions, social practices and rituals, knowledge of the land, and craft passed down rather than written down. It is recognised under the UNESCO 2003 Convention and expected under IFC Performance Standard 8, World Bank ESS8 and EBRD ESR 8, yet it is routinely scoped out of a project baseline because it cannot be surveyed. This series sets out why that is a managed risk rather than a soft consideration, and how to find, assess and safeguard it in practice. For the related service, see cultural heritage and intangible heritage.
Intangible Heritage: The Heritage You Cannot Map
Intangible heritage carries equal weight under UNESCO and lender standards, yet it is the part projects most often miss.
Read the article →You Cannot Survey a Memory
If you cannot survey meaning, how do you find intangible heritage? You ask, and asking well is a discipline in its own right.
Read the article →The Compensation Trap
The engagement meant to identify intangible heritage can manufacture the very risk it was there to manage.
Read the article →A Legacy, Not a Liability
Treat intangible heritage as a community legacy rather than a project risk, and it manages the risk better than risk management does.
Read the article →Known Unknowns
A heritage baseline that finds nothing is not the same as a site with nothing on it. The difference is where the risk hides.
Read the article →Who Changed the Recipe?
Proving a project caused the loss of a living practice is hard. Pretending it is simple, in either direction, is the real failure.
Read the article →What You Can Harm Without Touching It
A living World Heritage landscape can be damaged through its setting, not its fabric. Two conventions explain why.
Read the article →