Guest editorial

When we consider the role that cultural heritage has in sustainable development, we must first make the issue visible to analyze the state of the art.

In 2015, when the United Nations (UN) General Assembly was held, the New Global Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted. It meant a significant turning point because, for the first time, the cultural heritage is included.

In this new global agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are established to eradicate poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity. They are part of the New Global Agenda, whose deadline to be reached 2030 has the commitment of 193 countries.

However, cultural heritage was long absent from the general debate on sustainable development despite its crucial importance to societies and broad recognition of its great potential to contribute to social, economic and environmental goals.

The 2030 Agenda adopted by the UN General Assembly integrates, for the first time, the role of culture, through cultural heritage and creativity, as a facilitator of sustainable development in all the SDGs ^[1]. This inclusion signifies a significant change in how the convention is implemented.

As indicated by the UN Organization for education, science and culture, its website Culture for Sustainable Development: “culture is part of our being and configures our identity. Without culture, there is no sustainable development.”

Besides, “The safeguarding and promotion of culture are two ends in themselves and, at the same time, as many means to contribute directly to the achievement of many SDGs: to achieve safe and sustainable cities, to promote economic growth and decent work, to reduce the inequality, stop environmental degradation, achieve gender equality and promote peaceful and inclusive societies. Thanks to effective culturally-based activities aimed at achieving the SDGs ^[2].”

With its identity value and as a repository of historical, cultural and social memory, heritage preserves a crucial aspect of the development process. It is necessary to take on the challenge of conserving, safeguarding and promoting this fragile, crucial and nonrenewable resource for the benefit of current and future generations.

It is necessary then to move toward a sustainable future where the environmental, social and economic dimensions are balanced in the search for development and a better quality of life, as pillars of the SDGs.

The SDGs have 17 objectives; number 11 is “Sustainable cities and communities,” referring to “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.”

Specifically, goal 11.4 proposes “Redoubling efforts to protect and safeguard the world's cultural and natural heritage,” regardless that other goals refer directly or indirectly to culture and heritage.

Within the framework of the General Assembly of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) that was held on December 8, 2018, in La Plata, Buenos Aires, the Scientific Symposium focused on “New approaches to cultural heritage: ICOMOS Emerging Concepts Series – SUSTAINABILITY: Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development. The main concerns were: How can culture and the conservation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage be best integrated with urban planning, tourism development, infrastructure development, poverty alleviation and disaster risk reduction?”

With the UN SDGs, the New Urban Agenda adopted Habitat III and ICOMOS resolutions 18GA 2014/37 and 19GA 2017/21. It has become a fundamental priority to focus on how cultural heritage can contribute to inclusive, sustainable development.

Sessions in the ICOMOS scientific symposium focused on “the role that cultural heritage can play in sustainable development […] Identify methods to assess trade-offs and create synergies so that cultural values and community concerns are integrated into development processes.”

This special issue includes some of the articles that were presented at the symposium. The selected articles allow us to explore and develop different approaches that consider sustainable development's guiding principles and contribute from the cultural heritage in a transversal and multidisciplinary way.

The editors point out that the authors' opinions expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect the institutional position of ICOMOS.

In the article titled “Discussing natural resource extraction in cultural landscapes as a cultural value,” Patricia O'Donnell and Christophe Rivet consider a broad survey of the World Heritage List and sites on national Tentative Lists to identify those related to natural extraction sites and distinguishing between categories of relict versus living, and between the types of natural resources being extracted.

They focus on how natural resource extraction is perceived as a destructive aspect of human culture despite having defined a particular relationship between communities and their environment to the point of creating entire sets of cultural values through settlement patterns, traditional skills and practices, innovation and technology, intangible cultural expressions, local economies and more.

The cultural dimensions of natural resource extraction landscapes were discussed at the ICOMOS ADCOM Annual Symposium, La Plata, December 2018. The workshop included experts in cultural landscapes, sustainability, industrial archeology and industrial heritage. The articles stress the need for guidance to review and analyze potential living cultural landscapes related to natural resource extraction.

In the article “Dignity of the heritage and the heritage communities: Design/methodology/approach,” Riin Alatalu describes a case study based on the training experience in heritage protection on a national and international level and the discussions of the “Heritage and Human Rights” that took place in Estonia in the year 2019. The article discusses why the human rights-based approaches should be used in the preservation of cultural heritage and how they enable to identify the problems, scale the rights of different stakeholders and thus facilitate discussion to reach consensus.

The research helps heritage conservationists, policymakers and urban planners with regards to management and implementation of human rights-based approach and community involvement in heritage protection on World Heritage, national and local levels.

Miquel Reina Ortiz, Mario Santana, Clemencia Vernaza, Patricia Ramírez and Fernando Montejo, and Juana Segura Escobar present in the article “Capacity building for the documentation and conservation of Latin American cultural heritage: making technology accessible and sustainable” how technology makes more accessible to the conservation specialist in Latin America. They provide a comprehensive capacity-building program that involves teaching about theory and practice, using two important UNESCO World Heritage Sites located in Colombia. Opportunities and limitations of adopting technology to make the documentation process for conservation more sustainable in low-income economies and provides a framework to implement future strategies in South America are also mentioned.

The paper raises a discussion on how the concept of sustainability of adopting new technologies in Latin American countries can assist in optimizing the conservation of decorated surfaces in the important UNESCO World Heritage Sites by involving emerging professionals' capacity building.

Flavia Rinaldi, Lucía Maglio, Iliana Pisarro and Laura Basterrechea, in their article “New approaches for cultural heritage. Heritage as an urban tool,” illustrated through the example of a few specific cases of urban actions and projects, those instances in which the existence of built heritage leads to the recognition of identity and valuable contribution.

They explain how this identity may be either central or complementary (regarding a consolidated identity or an ongoing one, a physical manifestation of social or cultural one). However, in both cases, it allows the definition of a specific area with unique characteristics that encourage its regeneration, transformation and recovery in terms of urban and spatial quality, combining private spaces with a high-quality public space, all this in line with sustainability criteria.

Based on specific examples in Buenos Aires, Argentina, they link the theory with practical analysis and show how conservation actions indirectly help reduce consumption by minimizing waste production and the amount of building energy and materials required. Conservation and maintenance save resources, new resources to build new spaces or buildings or rebuild them, avoid significant investments in doing things again and reduce poverty. The article addresses contemporary issues of general interest, which refer to physical urban renewal actions based on the combination of a public and private space approach aligned with sustainability criteria.

In the article “Cultural landscapes: exploring local people's understanding of cultural practices as ‘heritage’” Elena Settimini puts forward through the analysis of the vineyard landscape of Langhe-Roero and Monferrato (Italy), the discussion of how the selection of a World Heritage site driven by “outstanding universal values” risks presenting a top-down approach to heritage processes.

The author points out the new challenges of the validation of landscape as cultural heritage and opportunities for the heritage sector, taking into account the participation of the local communities in the decision-making processes and the discipline-driven frameworks. She questions how the identification and representation processes validated through World Heritage status capture a landscape understood by individuals and groups living within it. If not, how do these differences affect people's engagement?

Finally, we like to express our special thanks to Marcela Díaz for her valuable collaboration.