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

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

Boysun district, in southern Uzbekistan, has a beautiful natural landscape and is surrounded by a mountain range. The local environment and geographic isolation created favorable conditions for unique local intangible cultural heritage forms and expressions to form and be preserved over time. The same conditions also led to the existence of various types of labor activities, such as agriculture, cattle breeding, and handicrafts.

The role of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) in safeguarding intangible cultural heritage has evolved from its mandate regarding cultural heritage generally. ICOMOS was created in a world that had experienced the destruction of significant heritage places during World War II and faced the threat of destruction throughout the Cold War period. The Second Congress of Architects, Conservationists and Technicians of Historical Monuments held in Venice in May 1964 produced the Venice Charter and established ICOMOS.

Relative to the creative economy of South Korea, the importance of the Eurasian Turkic states is growing. The reorganized resource-rich countries of the Eurasian continent, ancient nations belonging to the Silk Road, have established themselves from the beginning of the 21st century as political and economic powers in the international arena. CIS countries such as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan were protagonists of the great Silk Road that linked the East and the West that had been cut off from each other in ancient times.

Every year there is much ado about inscribing items on UNESCO’s Representative List. When the dust of that spectacle settles down, it is possible to discern what was distinctive and important in a meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee, in the long run and on the ground (everywhere). In 2015, in Windhoek (10.COM), it was, next to the breakthrough of the notion of stakeholders,1 glocal ethics.2 This took the form of, on the one hand, the twelve ethical principles (and the still unfulfilled promise to create a web platform with relevant tools) and, on the other hand a new chapter, of the Operational Directives that partially translated themes of the 2030 Agenda to intangible heritage safeguarding policy.

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.

The lion dance is a performance art known throughout East Asia, in which practitioners wear lion masks. It is thought that the lion dance was introduced in Japan as a religious play together with Buddhism in the seventh century. The dance tells the story of a lion with magical powers that played a role in expelling evil from the path on which the spirits travel. Today, it is a much-loved performance used to celebrate auspicious occasions, to bring peace, happiness, health, and long life. It is also commonly performed in New Year celebra\u0002tions and festivals. Several entertaining performance groups traveled around performing the lion dance during the Edo period, which gave momentum to the spread of the dance all over the country. The dance is light and has strong recre\u0002ational characteristics including acrobatic elements.

The life of the Bauls of Bangladesh revolves around body-centric ascetic practice termed sadhana. Bauls believe in the co-existence of every element of the endless Brahmanda, meaning universe in the human body. Thus, they make caring for the body their highest priority over anything else. They have created extensive verse about body-centric sadhana codes that they transmit through song. The verses or songs include descriptions of control over the consumption of daily necessaries, mainly food. And, they believe in the doctrine মানুষ যা খায়, সে তাই (a human is what he or she consumes). They also judge food as medicine, as the need to live a hale and hearty.

Many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) concern themselves with biological conservation but fewer explore the need for conservation of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). Pacific Blue Foundation focuses both on biological and cultural conservation, primarily in Fiji, and recognizes fundamental linkages between the two. For example, traditional marine resource governance at the community level often created “tabu” (pronounced tamboo) on their reefs that restricted or prohibited fishing. Modern ecologists who propose marine protected areas (MPAs) recognize Fijian cultural tradition as knowledge the ancestors understood to be healthy for the ecosystem. Pacific Blue Foundation (PBF) has sought to learn the stories of ancestral tabu areas to assist creation of new MPAs. One of the most iconic elements of Fijian ICH is their more than 3,000 years of construction, and navigating double-hulled sailing canoes. Here we briefly explore the role these traditional sailing canoes had in the human migration into Oceania, and the effort PBF has made in the past 15 years to revitalize the construction of these canoes and to envision their role in providing sustainable livelihoods in the future.

Hills resembling a dragon tail, composed of arenaceous soft mud stretching for several miles, scarce but fresh and lush vegetation, springs with ice-cold water spouting from the heart of the earth, waves of the salty lake gently crashing against the shore, magnificent white clouds soaring up in the sky and the numerous pilgrims, lined up one by one, treading right upon the “dragon tail” and making their pilgrimage through the sacred site Manjyly-Ata.

Bangladesh is rich in intangible cultural heritage in all the five domains outlined in the 2003 ICH Convention namely oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, and festive events, knowledge about nature and the universe and traditional craftmanship.Four elements are inscribed in the UNESCO representative list and two applications are submitted in 2019. The Ministry of Cultural Affairs has a list with literature of 54 elementsunder the 5 ICH domains, while researchers identified 123 elements. Comprehensive inventorying of living heritages is under process with the Government. Bangladesh, by ratifying 2003 Convention, assumes its obligation of safeguarding these elements of ICH. Among the elements, some are sustainable for the economic output of the objects associated with the elements. Others remain vulnerable for change in lifestyle, knowledge pattern, social and economic advancement, science and technology. Require safeguardfor sustainable development that includes transmission of the ICH elements for generations.