ABSTRACT
Launched in 2009, the UNESCO chair on Preventive Conservation, Monitoring and Maintenance of Monuments and Sites has contributed to the reflections and practices on preventive conservation of the built Heritage. This contribution summarizes the insights gained on preventive conservation mainly through the various doctoral dissertations that have been prepared within this collaboration between the Universidad de Cuenca (Ecuador), the Universidad de Oriente (Cuba) and KU Leuven. A number of workshops, living labs and research projects have contributed to reorient a number of practices to facilitate the implementation of preventive conservation –as is the case with the proposal to include base-line data and monitoring aspects at the introduction of proposals for World Heritage nomination. Experimenting maintenance practices in rural and urban areas in Ecuador has demonstrated they can be implemented. The preventive conservation concept developed has also led to understanding of the contribution of cultural heritage to local sustainable development, and doing so, in creating a new paradigm on the role of cultural heritage for development as has been reported in the report “Cultural Heritage Counts for Europe”. The insights seems also to align with a series of other discourses, demonstrating that the role of cultural heritage in society today cannot be underestimated. Prevention helps to understanding the fundamental role of cultural heritage for well-being as it empowers communities to be part of the safeguarding and development of their and next generation’s living spaces.
