Plastic waste has become one of the biggest problems of the today’s world. The modern lifestyles we have accustomed to, generate tones of non-degradable wastes, which are polluting our environment and degrading it at the faster pace. If we look closer, many traditional practices in different parts of the world might have solution for sustainable environment.\n\nOne of such practices that are being used by the various communities of Nepal is plates and bowls made out of leaves. The leaves from tree known as Saal (Shorea robusta) is commonly used for this purpose. Broad leaves, shiny at the front with natural impermeability to water makes it ideal to make plates and bowls out of it. Saal is tree is native to Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Not only leaves but also the timber from this tree is also very valuable as it is considered to be strong for the building materials.\n\nThese leaves are arranged and stitched with hands using thin stick made out of bamboo. Many communities have different names for these objects made out of leaves according to their frequent usability. The plates made out of leaves are called laypya in Nepal basha, bowl shaped structures made out of leaves known as duna and tapari in Nepali, bota (Nepal Basha)\n\nStill today these plates and bowels are used for many rituals, feasts and other purposes.\n\nIn past these plates made out of the leaves were the only options for the feasts when needed to feed large number of people. In old days, before the start of festivals families gathered to sew the leaves for the feast. Especially during the big feast like weddings, it was a common practice for the family members, relatives and neighbors, to lend hands for making leaves plates or laptya several months ahead. But now a days due to the cheaper, readily available and commonly available option of plastic and paper plates these leaves are being replaced. Due to the catering services and party organizers, these community engagements is fading out.\n\nBut due to the religious and cultural significance, in the ritual practices these leaves are still used. It may be due the belief associated these leaves being pure. In the markets the green leaves rolled together could still be seen.\n\nBut there has been comeback of the leaf plates and bowls not only in the traditional rituals and feasts but also in the fast-food restaurants. The fast way to sew the leaves plates and bowls with the machines makes it easier to produce many plates in a day. It is not only easier but also the leaves plates are available all around the year in market. It’s really interesting to see the roadside food stalls using leave plates and bowls in Nepal.\n\nThese traditional practices if integrated in today’s modern lifestyle can help to combat many problem today’s society is facing.\n\nPhoto 1 : Process of sewing leaves to make plates. © Monalisa Maharjan\nPhoto 2 : Vendor selling the leaf plates in the market. © Monalisa Maharjan\nPhoto 3 : Traditional food in leaf plates Laptya. @Monalisa Maharjan

The punnuk is a tugging ritual of the village folk from three communities in Hungduan, Ifugao in Northern Luzon, Philippines. It is performed at the confluence of Hapao River and a tributary as the final ritual after the rice harvest. Its consummation brings to a close an agricultural cycle and signals the beginning of a new one. \n\nThe punnuk is a ritual of pomp and revelry. Garbed in their predominantly red-col-ored attire of the Tuwali ethno-linguistic subgroup, the participants negotiate the terraced fields in a single file amidst lush greens under the blue skies. The tempo builds up as the participants reach the riverbank, each group positioned opposite the other. The excitement is sustained through the final tugging match, and the sinewy brawn of the participants is highlighted by the river’s rushing water.

Gardening is a popular branch of traditional agriculture in Tajikistan. The term bāgh (garden) among Tajiks has three meanings: a home garden inside one’s own yard; a walled garden alongside the yard; and a garden far from the home and yard, where people go during summers to temporarily live and work. In these gardens, people grow fruit-bearing and shady trees as well as flowers and other crops.

The Masion des Cultures du Monde (World Cultures Institute) The Maison des Cultures du Monde (“World Cultures Institute”), has been founded in 1982 in Paris by Chérif Khaznadar and Françoise Gründ with the support of the French ministry of Culture. Its goals, the promotion and the enhancement of world performing arts - as witnesses of human inventiveness, \n\n- as landmarks of a historical continuity - as factors of cultural diversity \n- as sources of inspiration and creative renewal. Its method: the on-stage presentation of musical, dramatic, choreographic and ritual expressions from all over the world and mostly unknown to the French public. Since the creation of the United Nations, a new vision emerged that international solidarity should be based on the knowledge of other cultures and on a “dialogue of cultures”. In France several initiatives were conducted such as : - the Theatre of Nations with the support of UNESCO\n- foreign cultural seasons such as the Year of India, the Year of China, the Year of Korea, the Year of Vietnam etc. \n- a Traditional Arts Festival which promoted world traditional arts in a spirit of open-mindedness, awareness raising, aesthetic pleasure and cultural enrichment.

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.

Jeonju is the most popular city in Korea for its traditional culture. Jeonju is ranked number one in terms of the number of living human treasures, the cultural heritage index, and the traditional cultural and art performance index, indicating that traditional culture is more actively practiced and performed in the city than any other city in the country. Against this backdrop, the Korean government designated Jeonju a traditional cultural city, and traditional culture has been at the heart of the urban-development strategies of Jeonju. The city’s rich traditional culture dates far back in history.

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.

"The Cook Islands are fifteen islands scattered over an area of 2 million square kilometres of ocean. Situated near the centre of Eastern Polynesia, the islands lie within close proximity of the French Polynesia archipelago to the east and the Samoa islands to the west. \nIn 1965 the Cook Islands gained a status of internal self-governing and the establishment of the Legislative Assembly, then Parliament thereon after…..and so began the Cook Islands journey into shaping itself as a nation. \nIn the 1970s, the government realised the importance of oral history and especially the traditional knowledge possessed by the elders of the nation. This led to the establishment of the Tumu Korero division to collect, record, and document oral histories. These are currently housed in the National Archives, and George Baniani, the Manager of the National Archives, was a member of the team that implemented this project. The intention of the government was to have these oral histories published and fed into the education system as resources for our children. \nIn 1992, the Cook Islands hosted the Festival of Pacific Arts and a fantastic cultural complex was erected to house the Ministry of Cultural Development, but more importantly, the National Auditorium to showcase the vibrant performing arts of the Cook Islands. This building itself has fostered the development of the performing arts and has ensured the rapid growth and enormous interest in the arts, especially from the younger generation of Cook Islanders. \nThe theme of the Festival of Arts was traditional navigation, and it highlighted the knowledge and skills our ancestors held in overcoming this great expanse of ocean. They had the knowledge of the stars, wave patterns, and migratory birds to guide them from island to island. They settled and populated islands from as far as Palau of the Micronesian islands to Rapanui in the far east of Polynesia, and this was accomplished a thousand years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic. "

Countries in the Asia-Pacific region abound in a wealth of cultural expressions, but these expressions are not often recognized as skills that may be used to revitalize communities. ICH safeguarding needs to look beyond research and documentation, building databases on art forms, and creating awareness through one-off festivals or made-up landscapes where the artists and crafts persons are uprooted from their natural environment to engage in demonstration. The paper shares examples from an initiative in India that emphasizes the need for investing in communities to revitalize their traditional skills and promote community-based creative enterprises, including cultural tourism to safeguard ICH. The Art for Life (AFL) initiative of banglanatak dot com, a social enterprise headquartered at Kolkata, India, aims at fostering an alternative pathway for development using cultural heritage as concrete means for improving people’s livelihoods and empowering local communities. Around twelve languishing folk art forms have been revitalized. The initiative has led to improved income and quality of life for 5,000 traditional artists. Non-monetized outcomes include improved education of children, improved health, and better access to sanitation. Capacity\nbuilding of the ICH practitioners, documentation, and dissemination, heritage education and awareness building, and promotion of grassroots creative enterprise have been the critical components of the safeguarding process.

This publication contains papers from the 2021 World Intangible Cultural Heritage Forum held online for three days, from September 29 to October 1, 2021. The event was hosted by the National Intangible Heritage Center and organized by ICHCAP.\n\nThe forum was held under the theme of “Rediscovering Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Era of Convergence and Creativity” to re-examine the creative value of intangible cultural heritage and present the possibilities by examining examples of innovation and value creation through intangible cultural heritage.

2003년 체결된 UNESCO 무형문화유산보호협약의 서문에서는 세계화 및 사회변화의 과정이 무형문화유산에 대한 심각한 위협을 초래함을 지적하면서, 제1조에서 무형문화유산의 보호와 국제적 협력 및 원조의 제공을 그 목적으로 규정하고 있다. 따라서 이 협약의 당사국들은 자국 영역 내에 존재하는 무형문화유산의 보호를 위하여 필요한 조치를 취할 수 있으며, 지적재산권에 의한 무형문화유산의 보호도 그 한 방법이라고 할 수 있다. 그러나 지적재산권에 의한 무형문화유산의 보호는 그 보유자에게 법에서 규정하고 있는 보호기간 동안 독점배타권을 인정함으로써 강력한 보호를 부여하는 반면, 보유자의 자유로운 의사에 의해 그 사용가능 여부가 결정되기 때문에 보유자의 의사에 따라 무형문화유산에 대한 접근권이 제한될 수 있다. 이는 무형문화유산이 전 세계 인류 모두가 함께 지켜나가야 할 공동의 관심사라는 관점에서는 바라본다면 문제라고 할 수 있다. 하지만 역으로 무형문화유산에 대한 지적재산권의 인정을 부정하게 된다면 무형문화유산에 대한 접근권은 확대될 수 있지만, 무형문화유산의 보호 특히 무형문화유산의 창조, 유지, 계승과 밀접한 관련을 가진 그 보유자의 보호에는 적절하지 않다. 따라서 무형문화유산에 대한 지적재산권의 보호를 인정하면서 이러한 보호가 무형문화유산에 포함된 정보에의 접근권을 지나치게 제한하지 않도록 하는 방법이 마련될 필요가 있다

Bridging ICH communities and governments, NGOs play an integral role in networking and implementing projects to safeguard ICH. The importance of NGOs in ICH safeguarding has been emphasized in the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. In this issue of the ICH Courier, we present three profiles of ICH NGOs working to safeguard ICH in the South Asian sub-region.