Over the course of many centuries, humans have learned how to make use of even inhospitable, dry and rocky environments. They built stone terraces in order to be able to cultivate fields, deploying sophisticated irrigation systems and shady trees to make these areas fertile. “The forests tended by the Mijikenda people on the coast of Kenya and Tanzania are a fascinating example of how people and nature are coexisting in a changing and challenging context,” says Dr. Girma Kelboro Mensuro from the Center for Development Research (ZEF) at the University of Bonn.
Local changes and the future of cultural landscapes in Africa
Using two case studies, one on the Konso Cultural Landscape in Ethiopia and the other on the Sacred Mijikenda Kaya Forests in Kenya, the researcher is examining how human-environment relationships have changed in UNESCO-listed cultural landscapes. He is collaborating with a number of partner scientists in Africa, namely Dr. Abiyot Legesse Kura from Dilla University in Ethiopia and Dr. Eric Kioko from Kenyatta University in Kenya, as well as several postdocs. “The two landscapes have played host to many generations of people, and indigenous knowledge and institutions have enabled conservation and preservation practices for nature and people’s livelihoods,” says Mensuro, the leader of the research team and a member of two Transdisciplinary Research Areas (TRAs)—Past Worlds and Modern Questions. Cultures Across Time and Space and Innovation and Technology for Sustainable Futures—at the University of Bonn.
The researcher sees UNESCO World Heritage Sites as “living” landscapes that are molded and changed by socio-economic, cultural, ecological and political factors. The key question being addressed by the research project is how UNESCO is taking account of these changes in its efforts to support the protection of cultural landscapes of global significance.
The project entitled “Local Dynamics and Integration of UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Outstanding Universal Value: Evidence from Cultural Landscapes in Ethiopia and Kenya” will receive nearly €1.5 million in funding over the next four years. “This funding will enable collaboration between researchers in Kenya, Ethiopia and Germany as well as dialogue with local communities, experts and policymakers,” Mensuro says.
Indigenous heritage and resilience in the Amazon
The endangered cultural and natural heritage of three indigenous groups in the Bolivian and Brazilian Amazon is being studied as part of another project entitled “Heritage and Territoriality: Past, Present and Future Perceptions among the Tacana, T'simane and Waiwai.” The Volkswagen Foundation is providing the project with nearly €1.1 million in funding over the next three years. “With agro-industrial companies and infrastructure expanding ever further into indigenous territories and protected areas of the rainforest, there’s an urgent need to work with the representatives of indigenous groups to study the cultural heritage that’s under threat,” explains Dr. Carla Jaimes Betancourt from the Department of Anthropology of the Americas, part of the Institute of Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Bonn.
The project lead, who is also a member of the TRA Past Worlds - Contemporary Issues. Cultures in Time and Space at the University of Bonn, hopes that taking a holistic view of the issue of heritage that is based on archaeological, anthropological and ecological research will lead to knowledge being generated by indigenous and non-indigenous researchers together. Professor Karoline Noack, a member of the same TRA and of the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, is responsible for the joint research being done in the collections of the communities of origin, which are held in the Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden, the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt am Main and the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg.
Local indigenous researchers are working on the project with a number of other scientific institutions: the Núcleo de Estudos da Amazônia Indígena (NEAI) at the Federal University of Amazonas in Manaus, Brazil; the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC); the Universidade Federal do Oeste do Pará (UFOPA); and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Bolivia. The project aims to create new concepts of heritage by bringing together a number of previously separate fields—ecological and social relations, historical territoriality, intangible/material culture and indigenous perspectives—and developing strategies for protecting and (re-)constructing heritage at a local, national and global level.
Eleven million euros for eight projects
In their joint call for proposals entitled “Global Issues – Integrating Different Perspectives on Heritage and Change,” the Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo (Italy), the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden) and the Volkswagen Foundation (Germany) are providing a total of some €11 million for eight new projects. An international review process was used to select interdisciplinary research projects that combined the perspectives of researchers and stakeholders from a range of countries. In addition to a lead applicant from Germany, Italy or Sweden, each project involves at least two partners from low- or middle-income countries outside Europe.
More on the projects being funded: https://www.volkswagenstiftung.de/aktuelles-presse/aktuelles/kulturelles-erbe-was-das-gestern-uns-f%C3%BCr-morgen-lehrt
Media contacts:
Dr. Girma Kelboro Mensuro
Center for Development Research (ZEF)
University of Bonn
Phone +49 228 73 4917
Email: gmensuro@uni-bonn.de
Dr. Carla Jaimes Betancourt
Institute for Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology
University of Bonn
Phone +49 228 734446
Email: cjaimes@uni-bonn.de