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GHF's The Forum on Global Heritage in a Developing World: Focus on Asia in the News

On May 3, 2012 at the Asia Society in New York, GHF hosted "The Forum on Global Heritage in a Developing World: Focus on Asia," a discussion of development challenges facing Asia’s most important and endangered heritage sites. The day-long event featured a diverse program of speakers and panelists, and was well-attended by leading experts in conservation, international development, venture philanthropy, technology, travel, academia and media.

 

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Temples of Doom?

June 2010

THE HELICOPTER raced over the great rice fields of Cambodia, and I peered into the distance for a first glimpse of my destination. The silvery flash below was a straight line of water, which soon revealed itself to be part of the moat surrounding a temple complex. As we descended, heading towards a tangle of huge blocks of stone and tropical vegetation, I noticed that the moat was dotted with lovely pink lotus flowers. Then the workings of an archaeological site became evident: scaffolding, storage sheds, a pick-up truck.

My destination was the temple site of Banteay Chhmar, largely created 800 years ago by the great Khmer builder King Jayavarman VII. Despite all the work going on, the site still felt like antiquity in the raw. Scrambling over the ruins, also a playground for adventurous local kids, was certainly more Indiana Jones than Time Team.

Although much less celebrated than the nearby temples and palaces of Angkor, Banteay Chhmar is full of interest and delight. In the 1990s the site suffered badly from looters attracted by its remarkable bas-reliefs; and some of its stone towers, which weigh in at around 150 tons each, were on the verge of collapse. But now Banteay Chhmar is being saved from damage and decay. And saved, too, from the almost unrestricted development which has done so much harm to Angkor.

Angkor is the Venice of South-east Asia. Not just because of the beauty of its waterways but because, like Venice, Angkor is being crushed under the weight of tourism. The parallel goes further: the combination of sheer numbers and poor management of visitors is common to both. Most visitors to Venice seem to head for St Mark’s Square and then follow a tightly circumscribed route around the city, which results in overcrowding at key points. Ditto Angkor, where buses disgorge an unending stream of tourists at a small number of popular sites.

In Venice, though, it is the tides that are the enemy; in Angkor the threat comes from within. The Khmers were visionary builders, but not good at structural engineering. Conservation architect John Sanday explains that ‘the Khmers were carpenters. They didn’t really understand stone.’ Their vast works were erected quickly: the building of Angkor Wat by King Surayavarman II is said to have taken 34 years. But sandstone and the local volcanic rock, laterite, were the chosen materials; and both can be as crumbly as shortbread. With two million visitors annually (the Cambodian government’s estimate for 2009), the result has been a conservation nightmare.

Since Cambodia’s 1997 coup d’etat, tourism has flourished. Siem Reap, the modern city that serves Angkor, is a boomtown. A dozen years ago it had 25 hotels: now there are more than a hundred, plus the inevitable T-shirt shops, pubs and massage parlours. It is a major short-break destination for Japanese, Chinese and Korean tourists - understandably so, since the Angkor site is a huge attraction. At 400sq km, the UNESCO World Heritage Site is more than a quarter of the size of Greater London. The scale and beauty of its infrastructure are hard to grasp. The Angkor Wat temple is the largest religious building on the planet; the reservoir of the West Baray is the biggest single manmade structure in the pre-industrial world. Fortunately, theft and vandalism are less significant problems now than they were; but unless visitor numbers are managed more carefully, Angkor will literally collapse under the weight of its own success. Also, tourist dollars don’t always reach the local economy: Korean tour groups, for example, often stay in Korean-owned hotels and travel on Korean-owned coaches.

Banteay Chhmar lies to the north-east of Angkor, three hours away by car (half of it on roads that are either mud or dust, depending on the time of year) or 35 minutes by helicopter. It is a different world. At this large, 12th-century temple complex, the California-based Global Heritage Fund is combining archaeological scholarship and conservation with a long-term commitment to developing skills and a sustainable tourism business for the local economy. It has a number of partners in this enterprise, ranging from the Cambodian Ministry of Culture to the US-based Friends of Khmer Culture.

Global Heritage’s strategy offers a practical solution to many of the problems that affect remote ancient sites. Local people are being trained in a number of skills, from basic excavation to stone carving: there are already 40 villagers working on the site. Equally important is the decision to avoid over-restoring the temple complex: the plan is to keep it as a partial ruin so that visitors can share the excitement and mystery of a great site emerging from the jungle. Integral to the project is Global Heritage’s commitment to what it calls Community-Based Tourism. Visitors are encouraged to stay with local families who have been helped to set up B&B accommodation, so that more of what is spent in the village stays in the village. The rooms may be pretty basic, but they are clean and cheap (US$7 per person), and the closest a foreign visitor will get to living like a Cambodian.

Banteay Chhmar is not Angkor, although it is about to be nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is much smaller, and even when the new road gets built it will remain remote. The site currently attracts about 100 visitors a month; however, that figure is expected to rise to 10,000. But these visitors will contribute both to preserving the site and ensuring the prosperity and stability of the local community.