نقش فرهنگ در توسعه پایدار جزیره

The paper aims to consider and compare some background trends in policy and science that are concerned with sustainable development, and, which may, influence the evolving approach to the sustainable management of islands, particularly that of the small island states. The presentation will consist of three steps. General trend The sequence of some cardinal documents from intergovernmental organisations, which have been concerned with island management, is considered. Attention is concentrated on their teleological approach, as it has evolved moving from the 1992 Agenda 21 (Chapter 17, Subject Area G, Sustainable development of small islands), and from the 1994 Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States, to the 2000 United Nations Millennium Declaration, and to the subsequent 2002 World Summit on sustainable development (WSSD) Plan of Implementation. Analysis is inclined to put into evidence how the approach to sustainable development has evolved passing through some stages, respectively marked by: (i) the focus on the ecological issues, leaving the other components of sustainable development in the background, and therefore concentrating on the first component of sustainable development, namely ecological integrity; (ii) an increasing consideration of economic and social issues, therefore concentrating on the second component of sustainable development, namely economic efficiency; and (iii) the diffusion of attention to human conditions, therefore focusing on the third component of sustainable development, namely social, intra- and inter-generational equity. The third stage has been marked by a peculiar consideration of culture, which has been regarded by decision-makers from two perspectives: first, as a resource for development, and secondly as a heritage to protect and transfer to future generations. Specific operational platforms Where the role of island culture is the focus, two arenas are worthy of consideration. The first arena concerns United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In this respect, the criteria through which island places have been included in the UNESCO world heritage list (WHL) may be referred to the concept of sustainable development with the final aim of evaluating whether and how they could be used as an operational platform. A more specific relevance may be attributed to the inclusion of cultural landscapes in the WHL, and to the proclivity to design and to operate the protection and valuing of intangible culture, in that focusing on two streams—landscape and intangible culture—which have marked the recent implementation of the 1972 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Cultural and Natural Heritage. It might be considered to what extent this articulated operational arena could help the protection and sustainable use of island cultural heritage. The second arena is concerned with the 2000 European Landscape Convention, which was designed by the Council of Europe, entering into force in 2003. In this respect, at least two peculiar features are relevant to island sustainable development: on the one hand, the aim of the Convention consists of framing the landscape in planning and management, therefore attributing a cardinal role to culture in designing praxis; on the other, the perception of the landscape by the individual local communities is regarded as the reference basis for protection, management, and planning, therefore focusing on those geographical features that are regarded as culturally relevant to the local systems. This approach leads to considering whether and how the landscape may be assumed as a focus for implementing sustainable development in small islands states. The role of science At this point, attention shifts to science, in order to discuss how culture has been recently approached, and what inputs may be identified with respect to small islands and small island states. In this respect, two speculative arenas have solidified: the structuralist arena, where culture is essentially identified in tangible realities, such as archaeological remains, old buildings and monuments, therefore opening the perspective of attributing them a peculiar role in planning and management; the humanistic arena, according to which culture is thought of as a mantle of symbols, and as the associated values attributed to places by local communities, therefore opening the perspective of considering the intellectual and spiritual endowment of the individual communities as an essential basis for designing culturally sound strategies and actions. The question is how these two conceptual approaches may be integrated and, jointly, how they may be used to optimise the strategies carried out by UNESCO and other intergovernmental organisations involved in island management, being sensitive to the role of culture vis-à-vis sustainable development. Conclusion Moving from this three-step pathway some deductions are sketched in order to design how the cultural identity of islands may be assumed as a cardinal basis for spatial praxis, and it may be framed into a comprehensive view by also embracing ecological identity.

In 1897, while living in the vast ocean space extending between Tahiti and the Marquis Islands, Paul Gauguin portrayed “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” (D’où venons-nous? Que sommes nous? Où allons-nous? ). Gauguin was so sensitive to the Polynesians’ lifestyles to discover the profound harmony and musicality that their culture imprinted on the landscape. Using brilliant colours and apparently simple painting techniques, he was able to infuse this its characteristics into his masterpieces. Hence the Gauguin's charming, almost yearning, aesthetical vision, which triggers our imagination. Nevertheless, the 1897 painting had a meaning overcoming its charming character. It mirrored the existential struggle of a Western man, like Gauguin, who perceived to pass through one of the most problematic phases of modernity—that of ideological and military conflicts marking the transition from the Nineteen to the Twentieth century—and who was looking for some alternative ways of life, and for better existential solutions, in exotic cultures, such as those of the Pacific. By way of contrast, at that time no existential struggle ought to be found in the approach to culture by Mr. Otto von Bismark-Schönhausen when, almost a decade before (1985), in the framework of the Berlin Conference, he designed the criteria according to which the great Powers would have divided the rest of the world into spheres of colonial domain. The Berlin event was concerned with Africa, but the political approach was pertinent also to the rest of the world, and it was presented as the most significant connotation of the Western Powers’ centrality. Those two attitudes—that of the Bismark's realpolitik, and that due to the existential Gauguin's anguish—may be regarded as meaningful signs, with which the Western world has designed itself vis-à-vis the external civilisations, representing them as “minor” only because they were not endowed with modern technologies and they were not inclined to assume the search for political domain as their key goal. The island world not only has suffered huge consequences—it suffices to mention the genocides accomplished in the Pacific region—but it had the disadvantage of being unperceived, essentially because it was essentially constituted by small and dispersed places, marginalised by the leading processes at that time involving the world's evolution. As a result, at the present time, focusing on the cultures of the island world savours of filling a huge gap and, just for this reason, it is a hard task, particularly when islands are considered from the perspective of cultural geography.

In the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States, not only the conditions of the island world differ from those existing at the time when the Programme was convened, but also because the political and scientific approaches have evolved much more than it would have been expected. The factor that has triggered this change more in depth may be found in the increase of relevance of islands to the issues concerned with the sustainable development of specific ecological and social contexts. It may be agreed that islands, coastal zones and mountains, particularly geologically young mountains, form a trio where the sustainable development-related concerns have acquired special relevance. The 1994 approach was concerned with the first and second components of sustainable development, namely, ecological integrity and economic efficiency. This was essentially due, first, to the approach of Agenda 21 to sustainable development, because this basic document assumed sustainable development as embracing a trio of goals—ecological integrity, economic efficiency, and social equity—but, as a matter of fact, it focused on the ecological and economic ones. Therefore, the role social equity was under-evaluated and, more important, it was not properly perceived that the more culture is considered the more equity is guaranteed. Secondly, that initial approach was due to the huge relevance of some specific island issues, essentially the consequences of climate change and under-development, which were contributing to leave culture in the background. During the Nineties, some implementation took place, essentially due to the concept of human development, adopted by the UNDP as the theoretical basis from which to start designing a more comprehensive view of the developing world. The human development index, together with the other indices, that this UN body has proposed and calculated to focus on the peculiar features of the developing world, have widely contributed to focus on the human conditions of island communities. Finally, the consideration of cultural landscapes, together with that of intangible culture, by the recently adopted approaches by UNESCO has exerted deep influence, at least for two reasons. The widening of the concept of social equity to the point of embracing the cultural heritage is the first reason, and the attention addressed to the island natural and cultural sites worth being included in the WHL may be regarded as the second one. As a result of these inputs, the initial approach, which dates back to the 1992UNCED and the 1994 Programme of Action, has been implemented very much, because it has embraced the key components of island realities. The approach from UNESCO leads to focusing on intangible culture, in that giving rise to an ample number challenges for science, some of the have been discussed in this paper. Till the introduction of such a problem, science was stimulated to adopt well-known and experienced structuralist approaches, according to which the island subject area was reduced to the intangible elements of culture and only those elements that were fit to be represented and explained by adopting cause-effects reasoning were investigated. Moving from that basis, the outcomes of science were properly defined and socially accepted as true and valid because they were object referred and objectivist. By opening the consideration to intangible culture, the agenda of science has been unexpectedly widened, and it has been involved in a chain of consequences. The representation of intangible culture requires the subject to be included in the scientific representations. Nevertheless, the inclusion of the subject leads to abandon that ambitious goal which is the objectivist nature of the scientific outcome. The conflict between the structuralist and humanistic visions of the Earth surface is essentially due to the fact that the scientist is reluctant to share the idea that the outcome of his work is not objectivist, because he is persuaded that, if so, the outcome is also regarded as not true and not socially pertinent. This conflict would be a mere matter of speculation if the protection of islands, particularly that of small islands, would not imply the consideration of intangible culture and, therefore, it would not call for humanistic approaches. This makes islands a fascinating arena not only per se but also for experimenting whether and how science is able to overcome traditional, typically modern, approaches and visions of the world.