Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses why interregional knowledge exchange and cooperation are essential to improve heritage management in European peripheral coastal landscapes, based on interconnected pasts, common landscape features and similar societal challenges.

Paper long abstract:

Heritage in coastal landscapes confront preservationists, spatial planners, policy makers and politicians challenges that are specific for their coastal context. Heritage management in peripheral coastal landscapes varies greatly from one area to the next, but throughout Europe, several key issues and challenges recur. Rooted in the Interreg project Hericoast, Linde Egberts considers why knowledge exchange between coastal regions on the management of their heritage is of high importance, for managing coast-related heritage efficiently, taking the regional spatial and historical characteristics into account. They relate heritage challenges directly to diverse contemporary economic, social, cultural and ecological challenges these regions face. This paper addresses five aspects of heritage in coastal landscapes that explain why interregional knowledge exchange and cooperation are essential to improve heritage management. In short these are:

· Interconnected cultural histories

· Coastal heritage: common heritage, common challenges

· Coastal landscapes as marginalized pasts in heritage preservation

· The threats and opportunities of coastal tourism

· Ecological risks and challenges

Paper short abstract:

Cultural heritage in the Arctic is being impacted by environmental change as well as increased human activity in a rapidly growing tourism industry. In this paper, we discuss dilemmas and best practices for a sustainable use and management of vulnerable cultural heritage sites in the Arctic.

Paper long abstract:

Cultural heritage in the Arctic is being impacted by climate and environmental change as well as increased human activity. Cultural heritage management is therefore an increasingly challenging endeavour as management authorities must take under consideration multiple impacts and threats to cultural heritage sites in a changing environment. This paper is based on research conducted in Svalbard from 2014-2016 on cultural heritage management and methods for long term systematic cultural heritage monitoring. Human history in Svalbard goes back just over 400 years and Svalbard's cultural heritage sites are considered highly valuable remnants of an international history in the High North. In addition, cultural heritage sites are amongst the main attractions in a growing polar tourism industry, resulting in increased human activity on the sites. From the perspectives of both national and local authorities, tourism is also increasingly important in generating income and securing a viable settlement in Svalbard, and is considered the expected main source of income in the face of reduced mining activities. This paper presents threats to cultural heritage in the Arctic with a main focus on human impact. We explore the societal opportunities of tourism and the related challenges of increased human activity on coastal cultural heritage. Taking assets and threats as well as opportunities into consideration, we discuss dilemmas and best practices for a sustainable use and management of vulnerable cultural heritage sites in the Arctic.

Paper short abstract:

The question which coastal heritage elements are worth preserving is central within the activities of a successful Dutch stakeholder platform. This case offers theoretical and practical insights on stakeholder involvement and participatory aspects of heritage management.

Paper long abstract:

The Netherlands is shaped through interactions with the sea and tidal rivers. Many former coastlines have disappeared or transformed into lakeshores, and former sea defenses now sit within a polder landscape. This paper argues that many of the material remains in the Dutch coastal landscape - canals, sluices, harbours, etcetera - represent 'morality' in two ways. First, when the historical landscapes that included these remains were developed, the artefacts (or technologies) co-shaped the relationship between humans and their world. The material expressions of moral decisions of access and control continued to be present in the landscape and are appreciated today as heritage, the second way morality relates to coastal landscapes: which landscape elements are considered worth preserving and which are not? This question is central within the activities of the "Water Triangle Heritage Table", a successful stakeholder platform in the densely populated province of Zuid Holland that proposes heritage projects and co-creates provincial heritage policy in a tidal area. The Water Triangle includes three major heritage sites: (i) The Biesbosch tidal wetland, one of the country's largest national parks, was created by flooding in 1421 and includes many heritage sites; (ii) The Kinderdijk UNESCO Heritage site, on the old Alblasserwaard polder, includes 19 windmills that used to drain the land within this tidal region; (iii) Between Biesbosch and Kinderdijk, former sea defenses are visible in Dordrecht, a city that has linked sea and hinterland for centuries. This case offers theoretical and practical insights on stakeholder involvement and participatory aspects of heritage management.

Paper short abstract:

The paper addresses new ways of dealing with memories and heritage arising from colonial dynamics in LA. We will focus on city ports as interfaces of transoceanic flows and as sites endowed with great potential for transforming contentious memories into sustainable heritage solutions in the future

Paper long abstract:

Latin America coastal cities have a rich heritage which can play an important role in creating sustainable growth. A significant part of it arises from a colonial past and brings to the present contentious memories. Spontaneous and forced migrations were responsible for global transferences. Syncretic processes transformed those mixed cultural references into totally new heritages. This is now subject to active debate. Public policies and entrepreneurs, aiming at feeding tourism industries tend to sell those products without the required awareness of its meanings, excluding the actual actors and producers of those heritages. An overexploitation of some heritage sites is a problem. Organisations fighting for the rights of indigenous people denounce how public policies are responsible for hidden memories and neglected heritage. New approaches are required in order to pursue an innovative management of coastal heritages. Such challenge encompasses a transnational and interdisciplinary approach and a plan of action incorporating environmental, social, economic, cultural and historical perspectives in a coherent framework for sustainable heritage management and socioeconomic development.

CoopMar is a CYTED network, built on those challenges. CoopMar explores the relation between sea and society, with a special focus on coastal communities. It prioritises knowledge circulation among stakeholders (universities, museums, foundations, firms, public institutions and the society). Its general mission is to make an inventory of shared heritage in two European (Portugal, Spain) and four Latin American countries (Brazil, Cuba, Panama and Chile) and to hand back scientific knowledge to societies, promoting genuine interaction and empowerment of Ibero-American port cities communities

Paper short abstract:

The main topic of this paper is the examination of the Hulda Festival for Arts and Sciences as an example of an innovative programme for the promotion of the coastal cultural heritage.

Paper long abstract:

The Hulda Festival for Arts and Sciences, funded by the EU, is an innovative travelling festival, which is using M/S Hulda, a historical centennial sailing boat, as an attractive infrastructure to coordinate art and cultural events in coastal cities. This floating platform works as a residency for artists and culture professionals from diverse disciplines.

The festival's aim is to promote the interdisciplinary interaction and the coastal cultural heritage, as well as to raise the interest of youth and the civil society for art and science. The mission of the Hulda Festival, inspired by the work of the Turkish-Swedish innovative sculptor Ilhan Koman, is to bring together people from diverse backgrounds, in order to create a platform for inspiration, interaction and cooperation.

Paper short abstract:

Fishers under resource protection laws and institutions were imposed new practices as professionals. We analyze a discursive format (reported speech) fishers use for ‘talking’ with the institutions that govern them – contesting legal impositions through the vocabulary of citizenship.

Paper long abstract:

Several laws and institutions aiming to protect marine resources impose new restrictions and obligations to certain professionals, requiring them to change as a condition to become good or valued "ecological citizens". If, as citizens, the professionals need to comply with the laws, then can also - and often do - contest them. Thus contestation places them in a dilemmatic situation: how to remain in the realm of (good) citizenship while legitimately contesting what makes them citizens (their institutions and laws). This presentation examines how professional artisanal fishers from a Portuguese Natura 2000 protected site deal with this dilemma. Specifically, we examine how they use reported speech - in which the institutions are directly quoted in the discourse of the Self (the interviewee) - for dealing with it. Extracts organized around instances of reported speech were identified in interviews (n=11) and 3 focus groups (n=13). In these extracts, we explore how reported speech is used for giving "out-thereness" and credibility to re-presentations of the institutional-Other, the Self, and their relations; we also examine the explicit and implicit representations of citizenship grounding the arguments interviewees use. We show how interviewees manage to present an authoritarian institution breaching the imperatives of democratic citizenship in their relation with the Self, who is in turn depicted as a good citizen, even if only rarely as a good ecological citizen.

Paper short abstract:

This paper traces the impact of historic trade routes in the weaving the cultural, social and economic fabric of the coastal belt of Kerala, a State in the South-Western Coast of India, with an extended coastline along the Arabian Sea.

Paper long abstract:

Kerala is a State in the South-Western Coast of India, with an extended coastline along the Arabian Sea. It has many port cities and has had trade relations with Chinese, Persians and Babylonians among others in the Ancient period and later with the Portuguese, Dutch and the British in the modern period. These trade routes has led to exchange of not only goods but also cultures and mixing of traditions. Unique cultural heritages and practices are still in existence in these thriving port cities bearing testimony to the role that the sea has played in shaping the culture and economy of the region. This paper traces the impact of these historic trade routes in weaving the cultural, social and economic fabric of the coastal belt of Kerala. The current dependence of the region on migration to the Arab countries along these ancient trade routes for income and employment is also tied into the narrative of the sea.