INTERNATIONAL NETWORK FOR CULTURAL DIVERSITY
(INCD)
CULTURAL IMPACT
ASSESSMENT PROJECT
|
CULTURAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT
SYSTEMS A Review of Current
Literature |
PREPARED BY :
BURAMA K. SAGNIA
PROJECT CONSULTANT
B.P. 3186
E-mail: b.sagnia@unidep.org
Tel. : (221) 822 19 79 / 823 10 20
Fax: (221) 822 29 64
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Pages
I. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………..3
II. CULTURAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT
SYSTEM……………………………..4
11.1. Historical Context……………………………………….................................4
11.2. Current Situation and
Trends…………………………………………………7
II.2.1. Cultural Concerns of
Communities…………………………………7
II.2.2. National Responses…………………………………………………….11
II.3.2.
International Responses……………………………………………….13
III. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE
PERSPECTIVES………………………......18
REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………..21
According to the International Association for
Impact Assessment, impact assessment simply defined, “is the process of
identifying the future consequences of a current or proposed action”.
Impact assessment as a standard development
practice, gained international attention and recognition as a result of the
activities of two international bodies. In 1980, during the special session on
integrated impact assessment at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science (AAAS), the formation of a new organization was discussed. It would
combine the interests of environmental impact assessment, social impact
assessment, technology assessment, risk assessment and related fields. A
working party was convened to advance the proposal and the International
Association for Impact Assessment was inaugurated as an international
non-governmental organization. Today the association has over 1200 individual
members representing 111nations and national affiliates providing local
services to an additional 1500 members.
At the 1992 United Nations Summit on
Environment and Development, otherwise known as the Earth Summit held in Rio (
Preparing an Environmental Impact Assessment
Statement require the integrated use of the natural and social sciences and the
humanities. Forexample, addressing the social components of the Environmental
Impact Assessment has gradually led to the development of sound principles and
guidelines on social impact assessment. The EIS guidelines has adopted both
social and cultural variables among others to guide its investigations. While
some EIS’s distinguish social variables from cultural variables, some subsume
cultural variables under the broader social variables and treat Culture as part
of the Social dimensions of environmental impact assessment, on the assumption
that social impact assessment will adequately cover cultural issues and
concerns.
The fact of the matter is that neither the
cultural or social aspects of the EIS, nor the independent will of the cultural
community has led to the development of similar international principles and
guidelines for cultural impact assessment. A separate set of principles and
guidelines that could provide common standards for addressing the cultural
concerns of communities in a broad-based, holistic and participatory manner is
what is required.
What is Cultural impact assessment? What is its
purpose or aim? Why has its development lagged behind other forms of impact
assessment? What sort of principles and guidelines can be proposed to assess
the cultural impact of development policies and actions? What efforts have or
are being made to address cultural impact assessment at the national,
bilateral, multilateral and international levels? Attempts will be made to
address these issues and illustrating them with concrete examples.
There is
so far no internationally negotiated and acceptable definition of cultural
impact assessment, and it is not the purpose of this paper to attempt to do so.
As the project progresses, attempts could however be made to narrow down to an
all-encompassing standard definition that could be adopted and made relevant to
given situations.
Because there is a variety of approaches and
experiences in cultural impact assessment, it is worth beginning with a basic
definition of what it is meant, so that the terms used in this text are clear.
For the purpose of this study, cultural impact assessment is defined as:
A process of identifying, predicting
and evaluating the probable effects of a current or proposed development policy
or action on the cultural life, resources and values of communities, then
integrating the findings and conclusions into the planning and decision-making
process, with a view to mitigating adverse impacts and enhancing positive
outcomes.
It could be deduced from this definition that
cultural impact assessment is predicated on the notion that decision makers
should understand the consequences of their decisions before they act, and that
the affected people will not only be appraised of the effects, but have the
opportunity to participate in designing their future.
The cultural environment is different from the
natural environment because the former reacts in anticipation of change, but
can adapt in reasoned ways to changing circumstances in part of the planning
process. In addition, people in different cultural settings interpret change in
different ways, and react in different ways.
Perhaps because of this complexity of culture,
or the political implications of acknowledging the cultural dimensions of
development policies, programmes and projects, cultural impact assessment has
not been well-integrated into the decision making process of development
agencies. (Escap, 1992)
II. CULTURAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT SYSTEMS
Impact
assessment as a system has been gradually developing as a discipline, as a
profession and as a branch or field of development science. Nevertheless,
certain aspects of the system have been developing faster than others.
Environmental, social, technological impact assessment systems today embrace a
much wider spectrum of society; academics, development practitioners, policy
makers, etc, than cultural impact assessment.
In this section attempts will be made to
provide an overview of the cultural impact assessment by reviewing the
historical background, current situation and trends and future perspectives.
II.1. Historical Context
In
the Europeans’ rush to annex as much territory as possible before some other
power beat them to it, they had little opportunity to learn much about their
colonies in Africa, Asia and Latin America – and the cultural arrogance
prevalent in the early twentieth century provided little incentive to do so
until after they found themselves with the responsibility of running empires.
Aside from the desire to exploit known mineral
deposits, they began with no fixed ideas of what they wanted to do with the
colonies, once they had them. This made for an early uncertainty about ultimate
objectives, but as the colonial era moved along, a variety of different goals
appeared. (L.h. Gann and Peter Dnignan, 1969)
Certain aims were universal. First of all, any
colonial government had to set up an administration – “to keep the peace” in
the phrase of the times. This implied at least a minimal control over the
colonial populations – enough to stop local warfare and slave raiding, and to
allow free access for missionaries, administrators, and traders. But
administration was expensive, and the first step led automatically to the
second – the colonies had to pay their own way. The European tax payers were
hardly inclined to view empire as a philanthropic enterprise, but making the
colonies pay was not an easy matter. The European administration was usually an
additional layer of government, above and beyond the existing traditional
authorities in the colonies. As a result some form of economic development had
to be fostered, especially a kind that would create taxable income. (P. Bohannan
and P. Curtin, 1971)
Beyond this general agreement that they should
keep the peace and make the colonies pay their way, Europeans has a wide choice
of possible policies. But the choice was limited in practice by the fact that
Whether it was for the British, French and
Portuguese in Africa or the Japanese, Dutch, British and French in Asia or the
Spanish ‘Conquistadores’ in Latin America the wanton pillage and destruction of
the sacred and religious was beyond imagination. Still some communities could
not recover the lost to their cultural heritages as a result of the colonial
expansionist policies.
It was only in the early years of the 1950s,
which somehow marked the start of development cooperation (after the end of the
second world war) that politicians and the development assistance community in
both donor and recipient countries began to show some shift in policy in favour
of respecting the cultures and traditions of non-western countries. (A.M.
Klausen, 1995).
This new shift is policy in however underlined
by two assumptions:
·
That
in the name of humanity, societies regarded as lagging behind when helped,
could attain the same level of development as the industrial west. This
assumption failed to take note of the cultural diversity of the development
contexts; and
·
That
different sectors of society were autonomous entities, distinctly separate from
one another. It was thought that it would be possible to provide technical and
economic aid to raise standards of living without making a significant impact on
other sectors of society, such as the cultural and political factors was not
considered necessary to achieve improvements in the economy and welfare of the
populations. This led to a tendency to under-estimate cultural differences, and
local experts were seldom consulted.
In the early 1960’s, the situation
however gradually began to change, with the publication of a wealth of
literature on unsuccessful projects. Initially, local cultures were regarded at
the time as an obstacle to progress, but by the early 1960’s a growing
realization developed that cultural factors were important and could not be
ignored. Some development technicians and economists began to look for help
from people who have some familiarity with cultural issues, in dealing with the
perceived obstacles as smoothly as possible. Many turned to the missionaries in
view of their hundred years of experience in influencing cultures. However, a
number of development assistance administrators no longer found the
missionaries a serviceable resource, in view of the dubious reputation they had
gained in key developing countries. In the process of nation building, it was
considered necessary for the development assistance communities to turn to the
recipient countries’ own special experts, to help give the foreign experts an
insight into cultural factors. However, at that point in time, when most
countries were just attaining political independence, the new elite often
proved to be as alienated from its own grassroots population as the foreigners.
The
late 1960’s brought about the recognition of the tremendous complexity and
difficulties inherent in development cooperation. Due to the efforts of
independent social scientists, often in the face of considerable opposition
from project managers, development assistance was placed under critical
analysis. The period evidenced the establishment of development institutes, to
be followed later by sector-based research institutes eager to sell their
services, with private consultancy firms hard on their heels. The period also
saw the emergence of a new trend in which the socio-anthropological slogan “A
society must be understood on its own terms”, began to influence the process of
planning and managing change.
In
the 1970s and 1980s, researchers were turning their attention to development
and the historical causes of underdevelopment. The focus was no longer on the
local cultural conditions for change, but rather on the power and control of
large, strong systems such as the multilateral development agencies. Prevailing
theories of modernization were challenged by what are called “dependency”
theories. These are a modern variant, rooted to a greater extent in empirical
knowledge of earlier theories of imperialism. During this period, the humanities
and social sciences were dominated by neo-Marxist thinking, portraying an
optimistic view of development, as a dream of a classless, liberated society.
Many people then believed a world revolution was imminent as development
cooperation was dismissed by a large number of radical social scientists as
mere “emergency relief”, not worthy of their attention. Today, however, things
have changed as few people now believe in any swift revolutionary change of
system. Critics of the system are now joining the staff of both development
cooperation agencies and other social institutions. (F. Perroux, 1983)
II.2. Current Situation and Trends
What
then is the current situation as regards the acknowledgement of cultural issues
in development frameworks and processes? It is widely believed that most
development cooperation politicians and administrations have passed the stage
when expertise on cultural factors was only consulted as a branch of public
opinion. As a result of the publication of well-researched technical analyses
of the significance of cultural factors in development efforts, coupled with
active lobbying by a variety of research communities, a new recognition of the
role of cultural and social research emerged. However, available expertise in
the field of cultural and social research is still underutilised.
Considered as a whole there is still on the one
hand, on almost total lack of established routines and on the other, a
noticeable sceptism in development cooperation institutions as to the value of
adopting a more professional and standard approach to the cultural basis of
development. At the same time, one can observe that the formulation of
development cooperation goals and principles now underscore the fundamental
role of cultural factors in recipient countries in the way development
assistance is designed.
It appears that the critical problem areas to
address have to do with the administrators of development cooperation, the
programmes and projects they fund and the governments and organizations at the
level of the recipient countries. In this section, attempts will be made to
identify some of the cultural problems communities face with regards to
development policies and actions, the responses of governments and
international development agencies, and what could be done to address the
issues in a strategic perspective.
II.2.1. Cultural Concerns of Communities
The
nature of the international funding for development projects in developing
countries is such that local communities are hardly consulted. Rather, they are
merely informed and their level of participation is curtailed. In the case of
large infrastructural projects such as road construction, large scale
multinational logging and Dam constructions, because of the controversies
involved, especially as it affects the local communities, the attitude of
governments, the donor agency and the multinational contracting companies is
one of benign neglect.
The following examples will illustrate the
point.
1. Cultural
Challenges to Road Planning and Design
Unlike
Therefore the challenge to construct new roads
in developing countries with the intensity of land development, coupled with
the significance of cultural sites, is extremely difficult. Added to the
engineering challenges is the requirement to document the proposed development
under environmental impact assessment legislation, the regulations of the
country and the environmental guidelines and directives of the donor agency.
This was the case for a recently completed
study in
The study involved the
feasibility of ten proposed new roads for the urban area of Denspasar, the
capital of the The government of The main challenge for road
design and construction in As a result, most existing roads
run northeast and southwest jogging only to the east and west to pick up
existing communities. Since most of the proposed ten new roads were to
cross the existing infrastructure, they potentially created significant
adverse impacts on the integrity of the villages, the severing of access to
the temples and the loss of housing and forced relocation of the residents.
Moreover there is no mitigation or compensation that is acceptable to the
villagers and they must be involved in any decision making and vote in
agreement as to the roads impact on the community. Whereas new roads and
improvements to the existing road infrastructure are desperately required
to meet the growing number of vehicles and the movement of tourists that
contribute substantially to the foreign exchange of Indonesia, but
accommodating the cultural needs of the Balinese makes road design and
construction a unique challenge. Source: ND Lea
International Ltd,
2. Cultural Challenges to Multinational Logging
The
rainforests in the world’s tropical regions are the source of the cultural and
biological diversity of local communities living nearby. They tap the rain
forest as a means of subsistence, to meet their spiritual and emotional needs
and as sources of the diverse medicinal and nutritional plant species they
require.
However,
these forests are frequently threatened by development projects or concessions
offered to international companies by their governments for logging purposes.
Sometimes, big pharmaceutical companies from developed countries tap these
forests as the source of medicinal plants which are later developed in distant
laboratories into drugs that they later sell back to the very countries the
plants were obtained from.
The world forest movement documented the plight
of the Saramacca maroons of
Box II. Saranaca Maroons say no to Multinational logging. Maroons are the descendants of African
slaves who fought for and won their freedom from the Dutch colonial regime
that ruled The Saramacca are one of the six Maroon
peoples of Furthermore, it has or is in the process
of granting vast areas of the rainforest in concessions to multinational
logging and mining companies. These concessions are granted without even
notifying indigenous and maroon communities let alone seeking their
participation and approval, even if the villages fall within the
concessions. Presently, at least two-thirds of the
indigenous and maroon communities are either in or very near to logging
and mining concessions. The Saramacca leaders have formed an
Association to educate their communities about land rights and the
environment and to oppose the activities of the logging companies. They
have started to map their lands with the aim of presenting a request for
title to the government. However, prospects for legal recognition through
negotiation or recourse to the legal system appear to be minimal Suriname
is presently the only country in the western hemisphere that does not have
legal, constitutional or other process that account in some way for
indigenous and maroons rights.
Presently, all land in the interior
of the country (approximately 80%) is classified as state land and indigenous
peoples and Maroons are considered to be permissive occupiers of state land
without rights or title thereto. If their subsistence activities conflict with
logging or mining operations, the latter takes precedence as a matter of law.
Furthermore,
International human rights standards provide
that indigenous peoples and Maroons have the right to participate fully in
decisions, before they are taken, about whether concessions are granted on
their lands. This right includes the right to information concerning the
proposed activities, companies involved and the nature of the risks posed by
the activity.
Source: http://forests.org
–
Enterprises,
barry@forests.org
Source:
Kingdom,
wrm@gn.apc.org
3. Cultural
Challenges to Dam Construction
The
construction of a dam is always part of broader socio-economic development
projects designed to provide hydro-electric power or to provide more cultivable
land through irrigation. However, dam construction is without controversies as
it disrupts the pattern of living of local communities living around the site
of the proposed dam or destroys underground archaeological remains and even
relics and monuments.
This was the case with the Ilisu Dam project in
Trukey.
Box III. Cultural Aspects of the Ilisu Dam
Project in The
plan to construct a dam at Ilisu on the River Tigris is part of a large
scale project for the socio-economic development of SE Anatolia. A number
of dams are involved in this area that once formed part of ancient
Mesopotamia, but those which have attracted attention because of their
impact on the cultural heritage are the Birecik Dam on the Euphrates,
which led in 2000 to the flooding of Zeugina from which spectacular
mosaics have been retrieved, and the Ilisu Dam on the Tigris which
involves most crucially the impressive site of Hasankeyf, a major city on
the ancient silk route in the 11th-13th century. The area between the Tigris and
Much of the archaeological heritage in the
uppervalley of the Tigris and The dam projects have however led to far
greater attention over recent years and this attention in turn generated welcome possibilities for
research. Equally, not much is known or documented of
the traditional culture of the local population to be displaced by the
construction of the dam. Kurdish settlements can be traced after a
migration from western Source: Ilisu Engineering group,
II.2.2. National
Responses
1. Legislative protection of the heritage
resources
Government response to the cultural concerns of
communities is somehow mixed. Some governments have given adequate legal,
institutional and policy protection to the heritage while others pay only a lip
service to heritage conservation. The example of
Box IV. Legislative Protection of Cultural Heritage Resources: A South
African Perspective The country has adopted a three-tree
system of heritage resources management that results in effective
protection and conservation at the national, provincial and local
government levels. Through a national strategy employed by an enabling
legislation, heritage resources are adequately employed. The present legislation successfully
promotes good management of the national estate without being mutually
exclusive, enabling communities to conserve their legacy.
In the light of the above noted diversity,
together with the recognition of the importance of protecting local
communities cultural heritage, the government recently adopted the National
Heritage Resources Act 25 of 1999. This Act replaces the Apartheid
legislations. The 1999 legislation for the first time in South African
history paid adequate attention to the interests of the suppressed ethnic
groups during the Apartheid era. Section 38(1) of the National Environmental
management Act states that any party who intends to undertake a development
activity, must notify the responsible heritage resource authority and to furnish
it with all necessary details. If the heritage resource authority believes
that heritage resources will be affected by such development, it will
require the developer to submit a heritage assessment report. Source:
2. Assessing Anticipated Impacts of
Railroad construction
In the
The study anticipated different
possible scenarios such as impacts of a transport accident and accident-free
rail or truck transport to determine the degree of possible vulnerability of
the cultural heritage resources as part of the planning and decision-making
process for the project.
Box V. Anticipated Impacts of the Proposed Action
in Impacts
on cultural Resources Generally Regardless
of the alternative selected, the proposed action would irreversibly alter
a historic way of life in the rural west. Impacts
on Accident-free rail Transportation Ground
disturbance activities during the construction phase of the proposed rail
corridor could crush or disturb archaeological sites, or expose or cover
sites by creating soil erosion. Indirect impacts may also occur during the
construction phase, including disturbance of archaeological sites by
purposeful or accidental actions of project employees (USDOE, 1999) Possible
impacts could also occur during both construction and operations to sacred
springs and burial sites of the Newe and to Pleistocene fossils.
Impacts
of Accidents-free truck Transportation If the shipment of SNF and HLW through Impacts
of a Transportation Accident An accident involving a shipment of SNF or
HLW through Source: United States Department of
Environment, 1999a.