Co-orgarnized by ICHCAP and Hue Monuments Conservation Centre (HMCC), this year’s Asia-Pacific ICH NGO Conference was held in Hue, Vietnam under the theme of ICH NGOs towards Sustainable Development of Communities.

Living heritage is everywhere around us. It includes many elements that have been inscribed on the UNESCO Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage and the Register of Good Safeguarding Practices of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage—676 to be exact, as of May 2023, 245 of which are from Asia and the Pacific. Many others have been included in inventory lists at national, provincial, or sub-provincial levels in countries around the world. Others remain very local, known only to groups of practitioners, who are sometimes very few in number.

List of ICH Festivals applied for the Silk Roads Living Heritage Network Membership

The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) was set up to fulfil late Smt. Indira Gandhi’s (former Prime Minister of India) idea of restoring the integral quality of a human being, fragmented by his diverse roles in cities, classes, ethnic groups, religions, traditions, and nationalities, to reconcile one’s material and spiritual needs, and enable one to be at peace with oneself and with society. The center was visualized as encompassing the study and experience of all the arts—each form with its own integrity, yet within a dimension of mutual interdependence, interrelated with nature, social structure, and cosmology.

According to the Mongolian astrological calendar, as well as in other Asian countries, this year is the Year of the Tiger. As well as a year, the third of the twelve animals of lunar astrology is also marked with the day of the tiger (the day of the conquest of the tiger), the month of the tiger (the first month of spring), and the tiger hours of the day (3.40 a.m. to 5.40 a.m.). Mongols teach that, “If you do not get up with tiger i.e., during the tiger hours, then the day will be late. If you do not study in young age, then growing up will be late.” The tiger is also one of the eight cardinal directions on the map of Mongolia, representing northeast. This corresponds with the octagonal shape of a yurt, on which homeowners place the appropriate symbols depending on the direction of each face.

The parent organization of CEE Himalaya is the Centre for Environment Education (CEE), which was established in August 1984. CEE is a national institution with its headquarters in Ahmedabad and has been given the responsibility by the central government of promoting environmental awareness nationwide. It undertakes demonstration projects in education, communication, and development that endorse attitudes, strategies, and technologies that are environmentally sustainable. Based in the city of Lucknow in the state of Uttar Pradesh, CEE Himalaya has been working in the states of the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) for over two decades. The mission of CEE Himalaya is to enhance understanding of sustainable development in formal, non-formal, and informal education through its work with schools, higher educational institutions, local and Indigenous communities, policy makers and administration, youth, and the general commu-nity. The primary objective of CEE Himalaya is to improve public awareness and understanding of environmental issues with a view to promote the conservation of nature and natural resources by integrating education with traditional streams of knowledge and cultural expressions. This approach demonstrates and grounds sustainable practices in rural and urban communities and facilitates the involvement of the business and public sectors to respond to the effects of climate change and variability.

"In this region of many “lands” surrounded by water, knowledge of the land and its harvests is tied closely to identity and heritage. This section’s themes thus offer a closer look at how the knowledge of caring for the land and harvests is a way of feeling for the Pacific islanders. This ICH, in addition to coloring people’s interactions on the land and carrying expressions of respect, is a means of ensuring sustainability and prosperity.\nPacific islanders depend largely on the land and their harvests from it for their survival, but these also hold deeper meaning for life. To the people of Vanuatu, for instance, laplap soso'ur is more than an edible delicacy: it is a feature of their cultural identity and a means to bring people together across societal levels. Similarly, in Palau, the mesei taro fields are valuable property, but they are also much more in that these pieces of land are deeply connected to the identity of the people, particularly women, and figure prominently in the colorful oral histories of the Palauans. Both of these cases, along with the other themes in this section, reflect the profound value of ICH related to the Pacific islands and their harvests."

The parent organization of CEE Himalaya is the Centre for Environment Education (CEE), which was established in August 1984. CEE is a national institution with its headquarters in Ahmedabad and has been given the responsibility by the central government of promoting environmental awareness nationwide. It undertakes demonstration projects in education, communication, and development that endorse attitudes, strategies, and technologies that are environmentally sustainable.

By applying an evidence-based approach, this paper seeks to share the case of the multinational inscription of Ong Chun Ceremony nominated by China and Malaysia through a fourfold “storyline” to sketch out how the joint action was initiated, developed, and finalized from the pre- to the post-nomination phases. It tries to provide a reflective narrative-interpretation of the community-driven nomination on vision, methodology, and pathway that helped to conceive targeted goals for sustainable effectiveness of joint safeguarding of ICH, including recent community interaction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside a discussion on the way forward to synergistic cooperation across the East Asian sub-region.

Modernization and other internal and external influences have caused vernacular houses in the Asia- Pacific region to be replaced. Today, their traditional status has been taken over by houses constructed using newly introduced materials and styles, even in remote villages. Although a house, as a physical object, may be considered to be a tangible heritage, the vernacular house is a product that encompasses intangible components, including the knowledge, skills, and local traditions associated with their construction, use, and maintenance by the particular community. The conservation or protection of vernacular houses is, in other words, tantamount to safeguarding their rich culture rather than merely the preservation of static buildings. \n\nVernacular houses in the tropics of Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands are often built using native plants, and they require occasional rebuilding and regular maintenance. The knowledge and skills required for the construction of a vernacular house building are rarely documented. Instead, the expertise is generally stored in memory and in the activities that are undertaken by an individual, family, or community. This is transferred through practical experience down the generations and is only shared among the members of a community. Our initiative focuses on the reconstruction of vernacular houses in conjunction with local communities, creating opportunities to understand all the requisites of building these traditional structures by thoroughly recording the construction process. \n\nChanges that have occurred in individual values, the lifestyles of ethnic communities, and their surrounding environments have created a situation in which the resources that are necessary for the construction of vernacular houses are less easily available or no longer available. It is common for vernacular houses to be perceived as outdated, old-fashioned, and underdeveloped. A vernacular house can no longer be built and used in the same way that it was when it was the only choice of housing. We need to identify ways in which to sustain traditional house building practices and to utilize this knowledge by examining its potential and its meaning in the modern context. This paper introduces our approach to the reinstatement and reconstruction of vernacular houses and to the revival of related activities in conjunction with local communities in Fiji, Thailand, Vanuatu, and Vietnam and illustrates some of our findings. In the process, the study identifies what it takes to build and sustain vernacular housing.

Co-orgarnized by ICHCAP and Hue Monuments Conservation Centre (HMCC), this year’s Asia-Pacific ICH NGO Conference was held in Hue, Vietnam under the theme of ICH NGOs towards Sustainable Development of Communities.

Impulse Social Enterprises (ISE) is a sister organization of Impulse NGO Network (INGON) which is combating human trafficking in Northeast India for 25 years. Lack of education, poverty, and porous borders are the main reasons why Northeast India is a soft target for human trafficking. ISE focuses primarily on the ‘prevention’ and ‘protection’ aspects of the model that would stop human trafficking before it happens. It has partnered with other organizations in each of the eight states of the Northeast in an effort to help six Rs: Rehabilitate, Repatriate, Reintegrate, Recompensation, Report, and Rescue of trafficking victims. ISE also realized that it was just not enough to rescue and repatriate victims, it was also important to tackle the root cause of the problem, which is abject poverty and lack of sustainable livelihood in many indigenous areas.