ABSTRACT

Conserving cultural heritage is as important as conserving the natural environment. Yet, most tourism scholars have focused their discussions of sustainable tourism on the natural world. While some natural realms will in fact recover from the impacts of development and regenerate organically, damaged cultural heritage will not. Built heritage is a non-renewable resource that once destroyed is gone forever. This creates a unique challenge to heritage conservators and managers, who have long had to deal with throngs of tourists clambering on or vandalizing places of historic importance. These impacts will be discussed in greater depth in Chapter 4. Observers have identified several reasons why heritage is preserved. These

include countering the effects of modernization (e.g., demolition of historic structures), building nationalism and preserving collective nostalgia, improving science and education, safeguarding artistic and esthetic values, maintaining environmental diversity, and generating economic value (Timothy and Boyd 2003). While each of these is important in all parts of the world, the final point, economics, is the primary motive for conserving the built and living past in developing regions. Cultural heritage is seen in many places as an economic savior upon which tourism should always be based. Regardless of motive, however, conservation of the historic environment and living culture is critical in today’s rapidly modernizing world (Alley 1992), and given what is known about the destructive influences of mass tourism, including mass heritage tourism, heritage protection becomes a more urgent agenda item. Unfortunately, in the developing world, where much of the earth’s magnifi-

cent heritage is located, this protection goal is easier said than done. Many challenges exist in underdeveloped regions that often thwart conservation objectives. This chapter examines many of these challenges from socioeconomic, political, and historical perspectives. Because not everything related to heritage protection in the developing world is doom and gloom, the chapter also describes many opportunities that exist for heritage managers and communities in the less affluent parts of the globe.