Presentations

World Heritage Tourism Futures - the UNESCO Visitor Management Assessment & Strategy Tool (VMAST) as a framework for strategic & transformative visitor management

Slide 2:

For years we, heritage and tourism professionals, have observed, researched, and discussed how to strategically realise the positive impacts of tourism and overcome challenges such as overtourism, commercialisation of culture, sector related emissions, etc. 

In 2019 the Covid pandemic suddenly disrupted not only tourism, but our way of thinking about the world and the future. Since then we have spent time and resources addressing impacts and risk preparedness, with a focus on rapid recovery of the industry and tourism dependent communities.

But the backdrop gets gloomier by the day. Global warming is already showing us its destructive potential through increased frequency of wildfires, floods, droughts, and hurricanes. Wars and social unrest are also causing no-go areas. 

While visitors may leave devastated tourism destinations, the international tourism industry will seek commercial opportunities elsewhere. The opportunities for those left behind may however be less. Many communities are also feeling the effect of increasing migration, and are forced to share community infrastructure and already scarce resources. 

In an increasingly unpredictable world, where challenges are complex and ambiguous, and communities vulnerable (VUCA world) - how can visitor management be strategic?

Slide 3:

The 17 sustainable development goals (UNSDGs) set out through Agenda 2030 have since 2015 offered a widely agreed framework for pursuing positive contributions through tourism. 

Despite the Covid-inflicted setback, the message is again positive with the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) reporting recovery and an expected continued growth path for international tourism. 

UNESCO complements this hopeful message by emphasising the relationship between heritage and tourism, pointing to a future where the tourism model should be both sustainable and resilient.

Slide 4:

In the context of the Convention and guided by established definitions, global goals and targets, planning and management has focused on limiting negative impacts and making tourism more sustainable. 

Strategic guidance for managing the relationship between World Heritage and tourism is provided through the UNESCO World Heritage Sustainable Tourism Programme, with relevant resources brought forward through the WH Sustainable Tourism Toolkit. 

Slide 5:

The UNESCO Visitor Management Assessment & Strategy Tool (VMAST), although conceived in 2011, remains the newest but least promoted resource in the toolkit. 

Based on the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria for Destinations (GSTC-Ds) and aligning with Periodic Reporting, the VMAST helps World Heritage site management authorities improve visitor management for heritage protection and localisation of the UNSDGs.

Structured across 4 overarching goals, 40 management objectives and more than 200 indicators, it supports monitoring for improved information, budgeting for more feasible ambitions, communication for improved outreach, capacity development, and collaboration for impact.

Through VMAST “Best practice visitor management is not a status, but an aspiration and ongoing commitment to improve practice.”

Slide 6: 

VMAST is by design an intuitive tool and framework exposing what can be done through proactive and adaptive visitor management to achieve towards the four overarching goals. These include:

Goal A - to ensure effective governance and visitor management protecting heritage values;

Goal B - contribute to environmental sustainability, climate change mitigation and adaptation; 

Goal C - contribute inclusive social development and cultural sustainability; and 

Goal D - inclusive and sustainable economic development. 

Each of the goals are set out through 10 management objectives.

Slide 7:

Each of the in total 40 management objectives has an assessment- as well as a strategy component.

In the assessment, response options are simply either ‘yes/partly/no’ or ‘not applicable’ to whether something is carried forward through site management. Users are provided ideas for what can be done through ongoing management activities including monitoring, budgeting, communication, capacity development and collaboration. Links point to relevant resources and UNSDGs. 

As a strategy development tool, VMAST guides the development of SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, responsible and time-bound) strategy components that can be used to build a new strategy or update existing documents. 

Slide 8: 

Using VMAST as an assessment tool is not about achieving the highest score but creating a realistic baseline, recognising existing efforts, and identifying opportunities for improvement. The VMAST appraisal allows for interpretation, reflection, and discussion, placing the heritage site and communities at the heart of tourism discussions and developments. 

Slide 9:

Locally applied, VMAST is not only a management tool, but also a platform for inviting local stakeholders to engage in multidisciplinary and strategic collaboration.

With an increasing number of VMAST users across the world, it is also a ready framework for global knowledge exchange and reciprocal support.

Furthermore, VMAST may help connect practice. An example is the Cultural Tourism & Visitor Management Framework developed through ICOMOS and Organisation of World Heritage Cities (OWHC) operationalising the ICOMOS International Charter for Cultural Heritage Tourism through use of VMAST. 

Another example is coming out from the Hanseatic Town of Visby, contributing a method guiding complementary and strategic use of the ‘How To’ guides and the VMAST. Both UNESCO tools supporting visitor management from a tourism destination and local community perspective respectively. 

Slide 10:

However, post-Covid and today, developments are far from sustainable. As a result of our global debt-based and growth-dependent economy serving an increasing world population, we have overstepped six of the Earth’s nine planetary boundaries and we are heading towards a 2.9° C global warming.

A consequence and symptom of our fundamentally unsustainable development paradigm, we are failing on the UNSDGs and with them failing the hopes and rights of current and future generations. 

Faced by impending recessions, climate change and biodiversity collapse, concerned scientists, brave dignitaries, and a rapidly growing number of alarmed civil society members are calling for a fundamental shift to avoid the most catastrophic scenarios. 

Slide 11:

This message is also brought forward in the context of World Heritage, not only through a greater focus on climate action, emergency preparedness, and disaster risk reduction, but also from within the Advisory Bodies challenging current practices. 

The ICOMOS International Charter for Cultural Heritage Tourism (2022), with the subtitle Reinforcing cultural heritage protection and community resilience through responsible and sustainable tourism management, is outright calling for a recalibration of the perpetual economic growth-based approach to tourism through a transformational and regenerative approach. Moreover, the recently adopted ICOMOS Resolution on the Cultural Dimensions of the UNSDGs calls us to go beyond the current discourse of sustainability and realise the transformative potential of culture. 

Slide 12:

World Heritage Catalysis was founded in support of UNESCO and the World Heritage Convention. It supports an emerging community of practice applying strategic and transformative approaches in tourism destination and visitor management, with the aim to protect heritage while building adaptive, resilient, and peaceful communities.

Strategic visitor management involves aligning resources and capabilities with identified goals and strategies. Transformative or transformational visitor management, on the other hand, challenges predominant practices and intends to bring about profound and fundamental change. It involves new learning, unlearning, experimental approaches, and scientific creativity. 

Slide 13:

The transformative practice challenge is illustrated here with the current predominant practice at the left. Today World Heritage are referred to as properties and heritage generally governed as resources enabling tourism development in pursuit of job creation and perpetual economic growth. The GDP measured growth is however placing natural and cultural heritage at risk for exploitation. Communities risk increased tourism dependency and vulnerability.

But let’s imagine something else. In a fundamentally different development paradigm, heritage could be governed as commons - managed by groups of people for individual and collective benefit. Around the stewardship of natural and cultural heritage, generative and restorative tourism products and services could bring energy to circular and collaborative economies, enabling social and ecological systems to evolve. 

Navigating towards this vision, however, requires a change in the way we understand the world, its underpinning natural and human-made systems, our relationships, what we consider knowledge, valuable and value creation. 

But blindspots and futures illiteracy - our lack of knowledge and skills to image the future in a meaningful way - can however easily result in irrelevant “solutions” and perpetuation of old patterns and systemic flaws.

While VMAST may be an appropriate tool for strategic visitor management, it may not in itself spur transformative change. It can however serve as a useful framework to think constructively about the future.

Slide 14:

To support transformation and potentially transformative efforts, World Heritage Catalysis is currently designing Tourism Futures Labs applying UNESCO’s Futures Literacy Lab methodology. 

Within the framework of VMAST and by focusing on building blocks typically used to imagine the future, the Labs will help participants’ anticipate different futures and be more open to engage with innovative and experimental approaches in strategic processes. The Labs will specifically focus on the potential of networks, collaborative finance, participatory and polycentric governance.

For example, imagine a tourism-dependent community experiencing a random disruption preventing the community from hosting visitors for a substantial period, and possibly even permanently. A situation where tourism revenues have dried up, and money leaked out of local circulation. Anticipating such a scenario, a Lab would for example explore how circular, collaborative, reciprocal economic designs strategically could be integrated into communities enhancing local resilience, be applied in disaster risk response, and building back better. 

Slide 15:

This slide illustrates World Heritage Catalysis’ transformative practice approach, which underpins its emerging theory of change.

It involves application of several conceptual frameworks allowing innovative and heterodox practices to come into consideration through an inclusive but measured peer-approach.

While the VMAST helps improve practice by exposing complexity and opportunities, the World Heritage Tourism Futures Lab helps enhance futures literacy and bouncing beyond the ontological and methodological threshold defined by the current development paradigm.

The World Heritage Exchange Trading Systems (WHETS) hosts the exploration, adaptation, and application of various collaborative finance tools for building non-extractive economies and funding heritage commons. The World Heritage Autonomous Organisations (WHAO) explores the application of decentralised and participatory forms of governance.

Slide 16:

Finally, I would like to recognise and thank existing collaborators, and extend an open invitation to join the emerging community of practice. 

I specifically invite collaboration around the Tourism Futures labs, which through action research will generate new relevant insights. 

Slide 17:

For the rest of the workshop, I wish you ‘bon courage’ in the deliberation around strategic and hopefully also transformative visitor management, for heritage protection and community resilience. 

Transformative tourism through strategic visitor management: Charter relevance and the UNESCO Visitor Management Assessment & Strategy Development Tool (VMAST)

Presented (virtually) by Cecilie Smith-Christensen during ICOMOS Annual General Assembly, Australia 2023 and ICOMOS International Cultural Tourism Committee workshop 7 September 2023

https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/share/Z2370fo7vn3c26XXtI1El48SWQt1QZUbxUT1jO3dpo6xNictmMF9XGOirt_pbctX.JyIjUzTYlCw5bU6D 

Passcode: uM=EY!21

1. Introduction

2.

Tourism and heritage professionals have for a long time been concerned with how to optimise the benefits from heritage tourism while minimising negative impacts. Specific challenges have related to overtourism, commercialisation of natural and cultural heritage, waste, emissions, and more. 

In 20-20, the outbreak of the Covid pandemic disrupted tourism destinations and businesses across the world. Today, when many again welcome tourists and hope for quick and steady recovery, climate change related events such as wildfires, floods, droughts, and hurricanes are devastating established as well as emerging tourism destinations, local communities, and individuals. 

In an increasingly vulnerable, unpredictable, complex, and ambiguous - so called VUCA world, resilience and adaptive capacity has become the new sustainability. We as heritage and tourism professionals are up against an unprecedented challenge in guiding the way forward. 

Despite setbacks during the Covid pandemic, the tourism sector is well on its way to recovery and a continued growth trajectory. At the same time, through our economic growth model, consumption has been allowed to outstrip our planets eco-resources. As a result, we have already crossed boundaries for what is considered a safe operating space for humanity. The UN secretary general Antonio Guterres has alongside scientific communities across the world, long warned us that unless we change course, we risk runaway climate change as a threat to all life on earth. He and others have also made clear that transformative change requires more than incremental improvements of practice and simple scaling up of sustainability initiatives.

4.

The transformation challenge can be illustrated through a diagram with practice along the horizontal axis.

The left side illustrate impacts of practice in the current conventional development paradigm. Today we operate in a neoclassical economic regime where money is issued as debt, and natural and cultural heritage are increasingly enclosed, privatised and commercialised to enable economic growth. 

Negative effects from tourism such as emissions, exploitative economic relationships, and resource depletion, are not accounted for. The reality is that as long as we operate within a fundamentally unsustainable debt financed global economy, the aspiration of sustainability basically means limiting damage. 

A Regenerative Development paradigm, depicted on the right side of the diagram, aspire to push beyond sustainability, and apply a holistic approach to restore equitable, healthy, and prosperous relationships between natural, social, physical, and economic dimensions.

This paradigm shift requires nothing less than an ontological and mindset shift and especially around how we relate to cultural and natural heritage. In the future, heritage must be governed, not as resources for economic exploitation, but as commons belonging to the community and stewarded for the greater good. 

Tourism must be either generative by creating new products and services that contribute to the wellbeing of the local community, and/or restorative as in helping to restore social and ecological systems to a healthy state. Moreover, only to the extent such tourism products and services are offered and used within a circular economy (involving both resource and financial circularity), tourism can contribute to a regenerative development paradigm. 

As heritage and tourism professionals, we are not expected to change the global economy. Still, there is a powerful agency in daring to voice cognitive dissonance, challenge own practice, and identify and aspire to influence leverage points for systems change within the domains and communities we operate.

5.

ICOMOS International Cultural Heritage Tourism Charter is progressive and inspirational in the way it recognises the need to recalibrate the perpetual economic growth approach to tourism and mitigate its unsustainable aspects. The Charter principles specifically promote positive transformative change whereby cultural tourism becomes relevant in building resilient and adaptive communities. As such the Charter is not only relevant - it is also empowering.

6.

While the Charter helps bring diversity into shared purpose, intentions must still be put into practice. As an AB to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, the ICOMOS ICTC has a commitment to support implementation of the UNESCO World Heritage Sustainable Tourism Programme and Toolkit. 

The Visitor Management Assessment & Strategy Tool (VMAST) was specifically developed to help site management authorities improve visitor management for heritage protection and localisation of the UNSDGs. The tool is set out through 4 overarching goals, 40 management objectives and more than 200 target indicators. Through a systematic approach it helps improve understanding, feasibility, outreach, capacity development, collaboration, and impact. The tool, which is accessible through UNESCO, hosted and supported by Zegeba and World Heritage Catalysis, is now applied across an increasing number of World Heritage sites and destinations. It also frames knowledge exchange between heritage and tourism professionals,

7.

The Charter is set out to provide principles for regenerative tourism destination management. While strategic visitor management is important, tourism as a transformational pathway needs to decouple the host-visitor relationship from the extractive economy and instead enable and support non-exploitative reciprocal exchanges. For more information about enhancing community resilience through strategic destination management and circular finance, please be aware of the poster presented for the Scientific Symposium.

With the aspiration to help realise the transformative potential of cultural and natural heritage, World Heritage Catalysis supports an emerging commons-oriented community collaborating to improve practice through strategic visitor management (guided by the UNESCO Visitor Management Assessment and Strategy Tool -VMAST), circular finance (supported by World Heritage Exchange Trading Systems - WHETS) and collaborative governance (enabled by the World Heritage Autonomous Organisation - WHAO). In these efforts the ICOMOS Charter is a guiding resource. 

9.

Finally, in an increasingly vulnerable, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world - best practice is not a status. 

It is an ongoing commitment to anticipate possible futures, adapt and improve practice.

10.

Thank you very much for your attention. I wish you all an inspiring and constructive workshop, and great time in Sydney.

Enhancing community resilience through commoning – an emerging Theory of Change

Presented by Cecilie Smith-Christensen during the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) Bi-Annual Conference 19-24 June 2023 ‘The Commons we want: Between Historical Legacies and Future Collective Actions'

Panel 1.4 Cultural Heritage as a Commons: Governance Challenges through the lens of UNESCO Heritage Conventions and the Sustainable Development Goals 

1. First slide

2. UNESCO World Heritage

UNESCO World Heritage are natural and cultural heritage sites of Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) to humankind, and a shared responsibility to protect. Today many World Heritage sites are major tourism attractions and resources in a global tourism industry. But in an increasingly vulnerable, unpredictable, and complex world, the future existence of these sites is not guaranteed and their relevance less obvious.

3. Meta challenge

While climate change is generally referred to as the biggest threat and adaptation highest priority, the meta or transcending challenge of today is the unsustainability of our current development paradigm.

While it is natural for humans to strive for growth in wellbeing, “development” according to current measures requires perpetual growth through increasingly extractive economic activities. Exploitation of nature and culture is taking place across many communities hosting World Heritage, and tourism is often blamed.

But besides negative externalities not accounted for, the fundamental problem is not with the tourism sector. It resides in the inherent unsustainability of our financial and monetary system as a social construct. Since money holds no intrinsic value, but is issued as debt, global debt has increased to a level that can never be repaid but only serviced at the cost-of-living systems and future generations.

The transition from a degenerative to a regenerative economy call for a shift in mindsets and new practices. We need to go beyond ‘sustainability’ as a practice of limiting damage caused. Away from an approach where natural and cultural commons are enclosed, privatised, finanzialised, and exploited.

Instead, we need generative and restorative economic activities and collaborative stewardship of shared resources bringing social and ecological systems back to a healthy state where they may evolve.  

4. Meso & micro challenges

Thriving communities are complex networks of individuals, businesses, and organisations operating in a diverse economy where goods and services are exchanged, meeting basic needs, contributing wellbeing and development. Access to food, energy, clean water and housing is fundamental.

While tourism can contribute economic development, sector growth can also reduce economic diversity and make tourism dependent communities and networks vulnerable to disruptions.

Many development agendas and strategies fail to sufficiently anticipate risks, threats to vital commons and public goods, and appropriately plan for possible scenarios. Upon a natural disaster, outbreak of social unrest or contagious disease, tourism numbers could quickly drop and deprive community members of income, liquidity, and ability to provide for self and family. A disrupted, fragmented and disempowered community can in worst case lead to the exodus of people and businesses. Communities where economic leakage is high, are specifically vulnerable.

Resilient communities on the other side, are able to adapt to changes and be self-reliant if external resources are limited or cut off.

Enhancing such resilience will however require radical innovation beyond what is generally considered in the heritage and tourism domains.   

5. World Heritage Catalysis

In the context of these meta, meso, and micro challenges World Heritage Catalysis supports an emerging commons-oriented community of practice seeking to apply innovative tools and new technologies in tourism and visitor management enhancing heritage protection and community resilience.

6. Mission

The approach builds upon solid theoretical and empirical foundations, and specifically the work of the Ostroms on the governance of commons. Upon the later work of Bollier and Helfrich on 'the insurgent power of the commons' and 'patterns of commoning', World Heritage Catalysis seeks to realise the transformative potential of tourism and visitor management through commoning as a triad of social practices, acts of provisioning and forms of peer governance.

The main components in this effort include:

1. The UNESCO Visitor Management Assessment & Strategy Tool (VMAST) for improving practice
2. The WH Exchange Trading Systems (WHETS) for improving provisioning, and
3. The WH Autonomous Organisation (WHAO) for improving governance

These will now to be introduced separately and presented combined in an emerging theory of change.

7. VMAST

The UNESCO Visitor Management Assessment & Strategy Tool (VMAST) is developed to help WH site management authorities improve visitor management for heritage protection and localisation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Structured across 4 goals, 40 management objective and more than 200 indicators, it systematically supports

• Monitoring for improved understanding
• Budgeted activities for feasible ambitions
• Communication for improved outreach
• Capacity development for strengthened capacities, and
• Collaboration for increased impact.

VMAST is currently applied in more than 35 sites across 25 countries.

As a free tool aligned with the Periodic Reporting and Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria for Destinations (GSTC-Ds), VMAST could be regularly applied supporting proactive and adaptive management.

In addition to onboarding support, World Heritage Catalysis invites VMAST users to join an online community with interdisciplinary collaborative learning circles dedicated to improve practice and contribute knowledge commons.

However, improved tourism and visitor management is not enough to ensure community resilience or individual adaptability.

8. WHETS

Alongside food-, water, energy- and housing security - critical in community resilience are means of exchange, efficient resource use, and economic inclusion.

Whereas the term 'circular economy’ often is associated with material flows, less attention is given to finance. However, without incentivising the flow of payments in the opposite direction to materials, a circular economy cannot become self-sustaining. Within a broader framework of Economic Operating Infrastructures, collaborative finance (CoFi) tools are premised on and supports circularity, reciprocity and trust within a given community or network. 

World Heritage Catalysis collaborates with value aligned organisations and networks ready to co-design and implement relevant approaches and tools. Collaborators include Circular Economy Coalition, the Credit Commons Society, Mutual Credit Services, and Grassroots Economics ao supporting a diversity of mutual credit systems, local P2P currencies, and B2B credit clearing. All non-speculative tools supporting inclusive and circular economies for a just transition.

The emerging portfolio of peer-validated and recommended tools, adaptable to support objectives set out through the World Heritage Convention (1972) and the VMAST, are referred to as the World Heritage Exchange Trading Systems (WHETS).

9. WHAO

While commons governance at local level is challenging enough, mobilising for transformational change requires a systemic approach beyond the ability of most organisations. World Heritage Catalysis aspire to support an emerging, inclusive and decentralised commons-oriented community of practice.

To extend an open invitation, bring diversity into shared purpose and improve peer- and transparent governance, we specifically explore the potential of sociocracy and web-3 technology through the World Heritage Autonomous Organisation.

The ‘WH’ in the acronym WHAO stands for World Heritage as a diverse and distributed network, ‘A’ stands for Autonomous and the freedom to self-organise and govern, and ‘O’ for Organisation – as a group of people getting organised with a particular purpose.

10. Integral stewardship model

This figure illustrates the integral stewardship model and relationship between VMAST, WHETS and WHAO with META commons created.

11. Approach

The approach through which we suggest instigating change starts with

1. Site management authorities use the VMAST for self-assessment
2. Next, VMAST is used to support collaborative and anticipatory strategy development
3. Third, hosted by World Heritage Catalysis VMAST practice circles serves as a forum for information, knowledge exchange and capacity development
4. An interest in WHETS and how collaborative finance may support strategy implementation is brought to the collaboratory where alternative tools are considered, proposals developed and appropriate systems incubated
5. Within a catalyst community WHETS incubated CoFi enabled networks will support local exchange, trade and collaboration aligned with local priorities and needs

12. Ecosystem

Zooming out, the outer circle in this image illustrates the current network of WH sites applying VMAST to improve practice.

The innermost circle represents World Heritage Catalysis where the WHAO supports collaboration and where practice circles and collaboratories are hosted.

The middle circle represents (future) WHETS incubated exchange trading systems.

While each such network would differ and apply autonomous governance, any digital exchange system could be federated through the Credit Commons Protocol.

This allows for a bold but viable vision where progressive stewardship of World Heritage could catalyse innovation empowering individuals, enhancing local community resilience, and networked transformative change. 

13. Theory of Change

This slide sets out the emerging theory of change in a casual pathway map.

It basically illustrates how we upon the meta, meso and micro level challenges invite World Heritage stakeholders to engage in commoning as 'a triad of social practices framed by VMAST, acts of provisioning enabled by WHETS, and peer governance through WHAO’ for community resilience and transformative change.

14. Final slide

Finally I would like to recognise and thank existing community members, catalysts, partners, collaborators, enablers and inspirators.

For more information please visit World Heritage Catalysis website. This presentation is available under the tab ToC.

Please reach out for interest in potential collaboration.

Thank you very much for your attention.

ENHANCING COMMUNITY RESILIENCE THROUGH VISITOR MANAGEMENT & COLLABORATIVE FINANCE - how participatory visitor management and circular economic innovation could enhance resilience and adaptive capacities while strengthening the stewardship of World Heritage.

Cecilie Smith-Christensen1

Fergus Maclaren2

1 World Heritage Catalysis

2 ICOMOS International Cultural Tourism Committee

Abstract in English

Thriving communities are complex networks of individuals, businesses, and organisations operating in a diverse economy where goods and services are exchanged meeting basic needs, contributing wellbeing and development.

Tourism can contribute to economic development, but sector growth can also reduce economic diversity and make tourism dependent communities vulnerable to risks and disruptions affecting the sector. Upon a natural disaster, outbreak of social unrest or contagious disease tourism numbers could quickly drop and deprive communities of income, liquidity, and sustainability. Places dependent on imported goods and services, and where economic leakages are high, are specifically vulnerable.

World Heritage are global tourism attractions often under pressure from economic exploitation and overuse. Their sustainable use and protection rely on local stewardship. The UNESCO World Heritage Visitor Management Assessment & Strategy Tool (VMAST) helps site management authorities manage visitation and tourism for the protection of heritage values while localizing the UN Sustainable Development Goals. By facilitating an open and inclusive strategy development process placing World Heritage at the centre, collaborating stakeholders extend strategy objectives beyond site management. While participatory management could support polycentric governance and collaborative stewardship of the site, it may however not be enough to strengthen community resilience towards economic disruptions.

The term 'circular economy' is typically understood to refer to material flows, but without a flow of payments in the opposite direction to materials, a circular economy cannot become self-sustaining. The World Heritage Exchange Trading Systems (WHETS), incubated through World Heritage Catalysis (https://www.whcatalysis.org), is a portfolio of value aligned economic operating infrastructure and collaborative finance (CoFi) tools adapted through deliberate site- and visitor management for the protection of World Heritage and a circular local economy enhancing community sustainability and resiliency.

The poster presents an emerging Theory of Change applying VMAST & WHETS.

Abstract en Espagnol

Las comunidades prósperas son redes de individuos, empresas y organizaciones que operan en una economía diversa intercambiando bienes y servicios para satisfacer las necesidades básicas, contribuyendo al bienestar y al desarrollo.

El turismo puede contribuir al desarrollo económico, pero el crecimiento del sector también puede reducir la diversidad económica y hacer que las comunidades dependientes del turismo sean vulnerables a las perturbaciones. En caso de catástrofe natural, estallido de disturbios sociales o enfermedad contagiosa, las cifras del turismo podrían descender rápidamente y privar a las comunidades de ingresos, liquidez y sostenibilidad.

El Patrimonio Mundial suele estar sometido a la presión de la explotación económica y la sobreexplotación. Su uso sostenible y su protección dependen de la administración local. La Herramienta de Evaluación y Estrategia de Gestión de Visitantes (VMAST) del Patrimonio Mundial de la UNESCO ayuda a las autoridades encargadas de la gestión de los sitios a gestionar las visitas y el turismo para proteger los valores del patrimonio, al tiempo que se localizan los Objetivos de Desarrollo

Sostenible de las Naciones Unidas. Sin embargo, aunque se apoye la gestión colaborativa del sitio, puede que no sea suficiente para reforzar la resiliencia de la comunidad frente a las perturbaciones económicas.

El término "economía circular" suele referirse a los flujos de materiales, pero sin un flujo de pagos en la dirección opuesta, una economía circular no puede ser autosostenible. El World Heritage Exchange Trading Systems (WHETS), incubado a través de World Heritage Catalysis, es una cartera de herramientas de financiación colaborativa adaptadas a través de la gestión deliberada de sitios y visitantes para la protección del Patrimonio Mundial y una economía local circular que mejore la sostenibilidad y la resiliencia de la comunidad.

El póster presenta una Teoría del Cambio emergente que aplica VMAST y WHETS.

UNESCO, ICOMOS & IPCC co-sponsored meeting (6-10 December 2021): Culture, Heritage & Climate

Poster presentation

ENHANCING WORLD HERITAGE STEWARDSHIP & COMMUNITY RESILIENCE THROUGH TOURISM & VISITOR MANAGEMENT - A POLYCENTRIC APPROACH

Presenter: Cecilie Smith-Christensen

Presentation (5min)

Communities are highly complex and distributed networks of individuals, businesses, and organisations. Well-functioning and sustainable communities have a diverse economy where goods and services are exchanged between community members meeting basic needs and contributing wellbeing and development.

Tourism can contribute economic development but also change the social fabric of a place. Sector success and growth can reduce economic diversity and create tourism dependent communities vulnerable to risks and disruptions affecting the sector.

Where economic leakages and imports are high, monetary supply and means of exchange could dry up. Covid 19 demonstrated that tourism can collapse and quickly deprive communities of income, liquidity, and sustainability.

World Heritage are global tourism attractions, and nominations are often economically motivated. Once inscribed, States Parties take on the governance responsibility which by default is hierarchical.

As key resources in the tourism sector World Heritage often come under pressure from economic exploitation and overuse. Their sustainable use and protection rely on local stewardship.

Irrespective of private or public ownership, ignoring World Heritage their intangible status as commons - resources shared by many rightsholders and in need of appropriate governance - could increase community vulnerability.

Elinor Ostrom, recipient of the Nobel prize in economics (2009) for her work on the governance of commons dedicated her later career to polycentric governance - a distributed form of leadership and citizenship that protects the integrity of the system and multiple centers of decision making, where each center has a certain degree of autonomy (Ostrom, Ostrom workshop)

So how could a polycentric approach possibly enhance resilience and adaptive capacities while strengthening the stewardship of World Heritage?

The UNESCO World Heritage Visitor Management Assessment & Strategy Tool (VMAST) is a free and voluntary tool supporting site management authorities in their efforts to manage visitation and tourism for the protection of heritage values while localizing sustainable development goals.

By facilitating an open and inclusive strategy development process placing World Heritage at the centre, collaborating stakeholders and partners would help extend the strategy objectives beyond the site management organisation.

While participatory tourism development and visitor management has the potential to distribute efforts and responsibilities, it would likely not be enough to strengthen resilience towards climate risks and economic disruptions.

Mostly remaining a blindspot, this is an opportunity to bring focus onto money as a social construct. Since the gold standard was abolished, most new money has been issued as private debt and thereby underpinning the inherent unsustainability of our current perpetual economic growth-based development paradigm.

To address this fundamental and systemic challenge, we need to enhance our economic and specifically monetary literacy and identify new partners able to unlock new and transformative potentials. More specifically we could support efforts looking to historic and indigenous knowledge systems of polycentric governance of scarce resources practiced across communities of our concern. There are already inspiring social currency innovations supporting connectivity, inclusivity, economic just transition, local transformation, and resilience.

WHETS - the World Heritage Exchange Trading System, proposed and incubated through World Heritage Catalysis set out to provide an economic infrastructure supporting stewardship of World Heritage.

As a mutual credit system applying time as unit of account, WHETS embed values of inclusion, reciprocity, and trust - all values that help build and sustain thriving communities.

Designed for the protection of World Heritage and implemented through deliberate visitor management, WHETS could support collaborative exchanges among local tourism stakeholders building polycentric networks and strengthen local stewardship.

Made available to anyone willing to accept it and extending across distributed networks of autonomous individuals, businesses and organisations, WHETS could grow a people centred economic infrastructure and means of exchange decoupled from any specific economic sector, and thereby potentially enhance community resilience and allow the consideration of a more regenerative pathway.

ICOMOS Scientific Symposium (9-10 November 2021): Living Heritage & Climate Change

Building Community Resilience Through Visitor Management & Monetary Innovation

Presenter: Cecilie Smith-Christensen

Key words: tourism; resilience; risk preparedness; monetary innovation

World Heritage sites are among the most visited places and attractions in the world. Many communities living in and around World Heritage sites have become dependent on tourism generated revenues. Climate change is threatening natural and cultural heritage alongside livelihoods. Covid demonstrated that disruptions in tourism can deprive communities of income, liquidity, and sustainability. Innovative and integrated approaches that respond to this vulnerability enhancing resilience, adaptive and transformative capacities are needed.

The poster presents the World Heritage Exchange Trading System (WHETS) - an emergent innovative platform cooperative including a marketplace and time-based medium of exchange (￦) facilitating collaborative exchanges among World Heritage stakeholders and within communities hosting World Heritage.

It elaborates how WHETS, integrated into efforts to develop and implement visitor management strategies applying the UNESCO World Heritage Visitor Management Assessment & Strategy Tool (VMAST), could enhance heritage protection, increase community resilience, and improve visitor experiences.

Abstract

Adaptive and transformative visitor management - Applying the UNESCO World Heritage Visitor Management Assessment & Strategy Tool (VMAST)

Presenter: Cecilie Smith-Christensen

Keywords: visitor management - transformation - VMAST

CHNT Reference: Smith-Christensen, C. (2021) Adaptive and transformative visitor management - applying the UNESCO World Heritage Visitor Management Assessment & Strategy Tool (VMAST) in CHNT – ICOMOS Editorial board. Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Cultural Heritage and New Technologies. Heidelberg: Propylaeum.

Introduction

World Heritage sites are among the most visited places and attractions in the world. Unmanaged, tourism can threaten heritage values, exploit resources, and make communities less resilient. While facing many similar challenges, sites’ uniqueness and diversity prevents a ‘one model fits all’ approach. Recent and increased risks of future disruptions make long term strategic planning difficult.

The poster presents a methodology and theory of change developed through World Heritage Catalysis applying the World Heritage Visitor Management Assessment & Strategy Tool (VMAST) for adaptive and transformative visitor management.

VMAST

The World Heritage Visitor Management Assessment & Strategy Tool (VMAST) is the newest addition to the World Heritage Sustainable Tourism Toolkit availed through the UNESCO World Heritage Sustainable Tourism Programme (https://whc.unesco.org/en/tourism/). As a free and voluntary self-assessment tool it helps site management authorities manage tourism for the protection of heritage values while localizing sustainable development goals.

The tool was developed with input from a broad spectre of stakeholders including the Advisory Bodies (IUCN, ICOMOS, ICCROM), site managers, sustainability- and tourism professionals, aligning with relevant policies, guidelines, and resources.

Methodology and theory of change

Structured upon for main goals, forty management objectives and more than 200 achievement indicators VMAST recognises many different efforts that can be considered good visitor management, and that ‘best practice’ is an ongoing process rather than status.

The methodology for applying VMAST elaborated through World Heritage Catalysis involves five main steps and an ongoing visitor management cycle:

1. Baseline assessment/ progress monitoring - Use VMAST to assess to what degree visitor management meets objectives set out through achievement/ success indicators;
2. Collaborative anticipation and prioritization – Involve key stakeholders in a VMAST based SWOT analysis to identify local development/resilience needs and opportunities, prioritising objectives and success indicators that should be brought forward through strategy development/revision;
3. Strategy development - Make use of VMAST to facilitate an open, participatory and SMART strategy development process leading to a more distributed and potentially polycentric governance model;
4. Strategy implementation – Support multi stakeholder and distributed strategy implementation potentially applying an incentives mechanism (see WHETS);
5. Monitoring– Regularly apply VMAST in adaptive and transformative visitor management.

The VMAST Theory of change set out through UNESCO builds on a consistent design focusing on efforts that can be made through fundamental management efforts (a-e):

Monitoring -> Improved understanding

Use VMAST to improve protection of heritage values while contributing to sustainable development objectives. 

Budgeted activities -> Feasible ambitions

Use VMAST to budget for activities and support feasibility of strategic ambitions.

Communication -> Improved outreach

Use VMAST to effectively and in a culturally appropriate manner communicate with stakeholders.

Capacity development -> Strengthened capacities

Use VMAST to engage with relevant stakeholders and strengthen capacities towards the achievements of identified sustainability and development objectives

Collaboration -> Increased impact

Use VMAST as a framework to enhance engagement and dialogue with local and national authorities, rights-holders, and other relevant stakeholders.                   

An emerging community of practice

World Heritage Catalysis (www.whcatalysis.org) hosts and supports an emerging community of practice applying innovative technologies including VMAST aiming to enhance adaptive and transformative capacities for building resilient and thriving communities.

WHETS - the World Heritage Exchange Trading System (www.whets.club), incubated through World Heritage Catalysis, is an emergent innovative platform cooperative including a time-based currency (medium of exchange) and marketplace enabling collaborative exchanges among community members.

Current efforts explore how WHETS could be integrated into VMAST strategy development and implementation through incentives and exchange circuits visioning WHETS as a local complementary currency that could be applied across World Heritage sites developing economic resilience while placing the protection of heritage values and localising the SDGs at the core. 

Presentation

Adaptive and transformative visitor management – applying the UNESCO World Heritage Visitor Management Assessment & Strategy Tool (VMAST).

VMAST is the newest addition to the WHSTP Toolkit. It is developed as an online tool helping WH site management authorities improve visitor management for the protection of heritage values while localising the UN SDGs.

VMAST open the scope for good practice across four overarching goals, 40 management objectives and about 200 achievement indicators.

Upon appraisal of a visitor management baseline and prioritisation of the most relevant objectives, VMAST allows development of a SMART and integrated visitor management strategy.

VMAST is not only cost and time efficient, but a proactive management tool that can be applied to develop a strategy from scratch or in regular efforts to revise current strategies for adaptive visitor management.

World Heritage Catalysis is in partnership with technology and hosting provider Zegeba, supporting UNESCO and site management authorities making use of the tool in transformative visitor management.

In facilitating an emerging CoP, it supports the application of VMAST with the objective to build resilience and adaptive capacity across tourism dependent communities and stakeholders in and around WH. Doing so it applies a commons oriented, participatory and polycentric governance approach in the elaboration and implementation of visitor management strategies. It specifically provides and promote resources supporting transition away from perpetual economic growth to a regenerative development paradigm.

VMAST is also, together with the new ICOMOS Cultural Tourism Charter, applied in the calculation of a forthcoming Destination Resilience Index commissioned by the Organisation of World Heritage Cities (OWHC) and developed through ICOMOS ICTC.

Please consider this an open invitation to get in touch for the promotion of technologies with potential to support VMAST management objectives and research interests.

The poster was presented during Presented during Conference on Cultural Heritage and New Technologies organised by ICOMOS Austria 2-4 November 2021.