Abstract
People inhabit and change environments using socio-cultural and psycho-social behaviors and processes. People use their socio-cultural understanding of phenomena to interact with the environment. People are carriers of cultural heritage. These characteristics make cultural values ubiquitous in all people-accessed and people-inhabited geographic spaces of the world, making people readily available assets through which environmental sustainability can be implemented. Yet, people’s conservation development is rarely planned using cultural resources. It is against this background that a Community-Based Cultural Heritage Resources Management (COBACHREM) model is initiated as a new approach that outlines the symbiosis between cultural heritage, environment and various stakeholders, with a view to create awareness about neglected conservation indicators inherent in cultural resources and better placed to complement already existing natural resources conservation indicators. The model constitutes a two-phased process with four (04) levels of operation, namely: level I (production); level II (reproduction); level III (consumption) that distinguish specific components of cultural heritage resources to be monitored at level IV for sustainability using identified cultural conservation indicators. Monitored indicators, which are limitless, constitute work in progress of the model and will be constantly reviewed, renewed and updated through time. Examples of monitoring provided in this article are the development of cultural competency-based training curriculum that will assist communities to transform cultural information into certifiable intellectual (educational) and culture-economic (tourism) assets. Another monitoring example is the mainstreaming of community cultural qualities into already existing environmental conservation frameworks such as eco-certification to infuse new layers of conservation indicators that enrich resource sustainability. The technical COBACHREM model acknowledges existing academic frameworks of communal identity formation (e.g., indigenity and autochthony) and is designed to add value onto these.
Highlights
People inhabit and change environments using socio-cultural behaviors and processes
The development of a Community-Based Cultural Heritage Resources Management (COBACHREM) model (Figures 1 and 2), in this article provides a specific approach where cultural and heritage conservation indicators are initiated at a communal level to effect existence of sustainable communities
In contrast with natural resources, cultural heritage resources management approaches are yet to develop clean-cut procedures and processes with conservation indicators for cultural resource use monitoring and as such, cultural and heritage resources are rarely prioritized as dominant enablers in sustainable development initiatives
Summary
People inhabit and change environments using socio-cultural behaviors and processes. People use their socio-cultural understanding of phenomena to interact with the environment. The development of a Community-Based Cultural Heritage Resources Management (COBACHREM) model (Figures 1 and 2), in this article provides a specific (micro) approach where cultural and heritage conservation indicators are initiated at a communal level to effect existence of sustainable communities. One example through which conservation indicator(s) will be developed for monitoring is the development of educational unit standards (or assessed units of learning registered as part of a qualification) using community cultural heritage knowledge (Table 1 example), that will be certified and credited to enable community members to become cultural-heritage service providers as tour guides, museum curators, interpreters and story-tellers, and other vocations Through this process, community members will format their cultural-heritage knowledge (i.e., document/inventory, safeguard, package, interpret and present), for future use to bargain and compete within both the intellectual and economic environments. Select and format cultural knowledge suitable for interpretation in heritage tourism
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