On 19 and 20 November, in the Terai region of Nepal and Indian States of Bihar, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh, the people celebrated the Chhath Puja festival. This is one of the most important festivals for the people living in that region. It has now exceeded the traditional boundary of celebration and proliferated to wider geography due to widespread diaspora.\n\nDuring the four-day festival, the Sun and goddess Chhati Maiya are worshipped in water sources—ponds, rivers, and lakes. By worshipping goddess Chhati Maiya, people believe wishes will be fulfilled and provide support and strength for the poor and needy. In this festival, the rich and poor come to the same place to worship with same kind of offerings.\n\nWater sources—ponds, lakes, and riverbanks—are important for this event, so people start cleaning and decorating these places much ahead of festival. They decorate the water sources with flowers, banana plants and leaves, offerings, and lights. During the festival, colorfully dressed people create a special and spectacular ambience. So not only the people celebrating but also those from other religions and regions come to visit these celebratory spots. Other than the religious, cultural, and social importance of this festival, it tries to teach important lessons on conserving water sources.\n\nThis is just one example among many festivals and rituals whose main reason for existing is taking care of forests, water sources, mountains, and other natural resources. In South Asia, despite having traditional linkages related to nature, such as rivers being a sacred place. The irony is that rivers are the most polluted in these regions.\n\nRituals for the water sources, praying in the mountains, and many more continue to be practiced. The main motto of these festivals is to conserve nature and water sources, but some are lost in the process. We are taught to keep up the traditions, but we forgot to transfer the actual meaning behind these traditions.\n\nThis is why we need to include ICH in education where we can correlate traditional knowledge with modern science. We despise the ancient knowledge and want scientific answers for all our problems. But if we look closely at most of the traditions passed on to us, these rituals are solutions for many modern problems.\n\nMost of the Sustainable Development Goals can be addressed through understanding practices and traditional knowledge. The relation of traditional values of safeguarding water sources can address the problem of access to clean water for the people. Similarly, peace, social cohesion, climate change, inclusiveness, and safe cities are a few of them, which could directly contribute with better understanding of intangible heritage.\n\nWe have the subjects like environmental science and social studies in school, but we rarely have relatable chapters on addressing local problems and solutions for them. We educate students on the plastic problem, but we should also discuss alternatives like traditional use of leaves plates and bowels, degradable clay cups, and other items.\n\nPhoto : Chhath Puja celebration at the bank of pond © Monalisa Maharjan

Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is the most populated city in the country. It is also one of the most populated cities in the world with a density of 23,234 people per square kilometer within a total area of 300 square kilometers. The Greater Dhaka Area has a population of over 18 million as of 2016 (World Population Review, 2017). According to the UN World Urbanization Prospects (2014), the population of Dhaka was only 336,000 in 1950. Dhaka has always been a center of cultural vibrancy and has a long history and tradition of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. The cultural vibrancy and heritage that have given glory to Dhaka for centuries often get buried under different modern-day civic problems. As an ever-expanding mega city, Dhaka is losing its cultural spaces to religious and ruling coteries. Many of the city’s prime spaces are now earmarked for various public and private business, commercial, or military purposes. The situation was not so deplorable even during the Pakistan era from 1947 to 1971.

It had taken the Solomon Islands forty long years to host the most prestigious regional cultural event in the Pacific, the Festival of Pacific Arts (FOPA). The Festival brought to the Solomon Islands about 2,500 dancers, artists, and other cultural practitioners from twenty-two countries in the region to share, interact, and display the uniqueness and diversities of their Pacific cultures and traditions in the context of a changing Pacific.

Banglanatak dot com is a social enterprise working with a mission to foster pro-poor growth using culture-based approaches. The Art for Life (AFL) initiative of the organization has led to socio-economic empowerment of 4500 folk artists in two eastern Indian states, West Bengal and Bihar. AFL aims at revitalizing traditional skills in arts and crafts by using these skills to augment livelihood opportunities and develop creative enterprise. The organization has worked with traditional folk singers, dancers, theater groups, painters, and artisans to revitalize their skills. Textual and audio-visual documentation aimed at safeguarding and promoting living heritage have also been undertaken.

During its seventh session in 2012, the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage had discussions on the increasing concern over the commercialization of intangible cultural heritage. Many issues were debated at that time, illustrating the growing awareness among States Party of the need to provide guidelines on ethical approaches to the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage. The UNESCO Secretariat was therefore invited “to initiate work on a model code of ethics.”

Tragic examples of cultural heritage destruction have recently filled the news. While they rightly caused dismay among the international community, it is, however, essential to acknowledge similar events perpetrated in the same circumstances to the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) of people caught up in the turmoil of war. Harm to ICH is, certainly, less visible than that to tangible property, yet the effects are just as devastating.

Measures taken in identifying the initial Philippine nomination to UNESCO on the first proclamation of Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity were based on the contingency and the availability of comprehensive information. Subsequent formulations on the collection of data were based principally on the identification of ICH that is evolving and/or devolving but still viable. Focus is made on the ICH processes that are still viable within the culture of the practicing societies. This is made possible by the fact that domestic and political institutional structures maintain much of what were in traditional cultural heritage, that were not affected by the introduction of world religions that have altered beliefs and values systems. The complication is that there are more than eighty ethno-linguistic groups in the country from which inventories will emanate.Finally, the manner by which the collection of information is organised along the lines of the structure of Philippine societies, from the municipal level uploaded to the provincial level, then to the relevant national cultural agencies; and finally to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, that will maintain the national registry. Both literature search and primary field research will constitute the methods in data collection.To manifest the processes of identifying and collecting data for ICH inventory undertaking by the Philippines since the year 2000 is best described by\n\n:i)the initial emergency measures taken by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) in identifying the initial nominations of ICH to UNESCO by the Philippines in the year 2000; \nii)from the initial experience above, the formulation of the subsequent action plan for the ICH programme of identification and collection; and\niii) the methodology of identification and collection.

According to the International Organization for Migration, although the percentage of international migrants in relation to the total world population is relatively low, that is 3.3percent in 2015, and has grown only 1 percent since the 1970s—in absolute numbers, it has almost tripled, from 84,460,125 to 243,700,236 in that same period.

For Cambodians, like many peoples in Asia, rice is indispensable and firmly attached to socio-religious life of the people. Besides being the principle daily staple, rice—either husked or unhusked, cooked or uncooked—is a necessary ritual material in every religious ceremony. Interestingly, rice is considered to be female in gender. By nurturing an individual person in the form of cooked rice, she is considered Preah Me (August Mother). In addition, rice is venerated in the form of a goddess called Neang Propei.1 She is worshipped for good harvest and prosperity. \nNeang Propei is no doubt a local adoption/adaptation of the Indian God of Wealth and Prosperity, Vaishravana. Such complex socio-religious aspects involved with rice demonstrate how important rice was and is in everyday life of rice-farming commu-nities, concerning how to obtain enough rice for each year. Besides various techniques and tools that were created, rituals and games are also performed to reassure suffi-ciency of rice. For Cambodian rice-farming communities, those rituals and games are associated with animistic beliefs or are animistic oriented. Examples of these include Loeng Neak Ta, Da Lean, and Chlong Chet.2.

Southeast Asia boasts an astounding assemblage of traditional performing arts, varied in form, style or genre, time or period, and geographical source. Through the performing arts people assert ethnic identity, a dignifying and unifying force in a community. A performing art tradition conjures continuity; it is history. To lose such tradition is therefore to lose history. Dance, like other performing art traditions, is the expression of a people’s soul captured in motion. To safeguard such forms, they must be studied and documented, including the artistic material resources, oral traditions, beliefs, and practices embodied in them. These traditions are not museum pieces, but art forms that must be nurtured as artifacts that grow or transform as societies change.

유네스코아태무형유산센터는 ICHNGO FORUM #HeritageAlive와의 공동협력으로 무형유산 종목도서인 리빙 헤리티지 시리즈 <전통악기>편을 발간하였습니다.\n\n다섯 번째 출판되는 리빙헤리티지 시리즈 <전통악기> 편은 아프리카, 아시아, 유럽의 사례를 소개하는 15명의 저자들의 원고를 담고 있습니다. 특히 저자들은 전승 위기에 처한 전통 음악의 현황을 공유하고, 2003년 협약이 강조하는 활성화 방안에 관하여 서술하고 있는데요, 음악이 가진 치유의 힘을 보여주는 책이라고 할 수 있습니다.

Many of the cultural organizations in the Pacific are challenged by the lack of human capacity and resources to support the aims and objectives of their cultural groups or organizations. I will illustrate through examples some of the work I have been involved in since I began in the sector in 2009 as a youth volunteer in the field of ICH. My presentation is mainly focused on my work in Fiji and Vanuatu as a youth\nvolunteer worker with the Pacific Islands Museums Association, who is registered in Vanuatu as a charitable trust, and Vanua Youth Development youth organization in Fiji. I will also highlight some of the issues and challenges faced when working as a volunteer in terms of sustainability and highlight the benefits of supporting institutional strengthening. Networking with organizations and with key personalities/champions in the region to make those linkages and strengthen the sector and promote the ICH practitioners.