Indexing Vic Falls on World Heritage List
Published On July 3, 2015 » 1455 Views» By Administrator Times » Features
 0 stars
Register to vote!

National Heritage Conservation commissionFrom Collins Chipote –

in Bonn, Germany
THE World Heritage Committee meets again, and this time in the historic city of Bonn, Germany! Many of you who may have followed this page coming every time on Saturday must have had an opportunity of being introduced to the concept of World Heritage.
The previous article did discuss the criteria or set of grounds used for inscribing a heritage site onto the World Heritage List and I did allude to the fact that world heritage inscription today is the most sought after status of sites or places popular for tourism or promotion of conservation.
Over 190 states parties Zambia included are currently meeting in Bonn to hear how countries have been conserving and protecting their sites listed on the World Heritage List.
Dear readers a site which is not properly managed in line with Operational Guidelines of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), where developments are not properly planned for and whose environmental impact assessment does not take into account the Universal Outstanding Value of the site is invariably put on the most dreaded list, the List of World Heritage in Danger.
In world heritage and conservation circles, this is that a sign a state party has failed to manage and conserve the site and it is embarrassing to say the least unless the causes are unavoidable – social disturbance on a large scale or war or threats of war, earthquakes to just mention a few.
By Press time, the World Heritage Committee had retained a number of natural sites particularly those from war torn African countries on the Danger List. Unfortunately due to proposed or actual developments, uncontrolled logging and poaching in some sites, the Committee decided to retain some popular forests and national parks on the Danger List.
This is all because these activities no matter how desirable pose a danger to the integrity of the these heritage sites. The International Council for Minerals and Metals is also in agreement with heritage conservation fraternity that some activities of extractive industries in heritage sites are incompatible with world heritage conservation.
However the situation is different if the development in issue is compatible with or does support conservation efforts. In this regard, heritage conservation and sustainable development ought to be good bedfellows. Heritage conservation for its own sake will be meaningless in the midst of poverty particularly among local communities. Therefore, the call for development that takes into account or promotes the conservation of heritage sites, the culture and livelihoods of local communities is loud and clear.
Back to the 39th Session of the World Heritage Committee in Bonn, there are heritage candidates for inscription on the World Heritage List.
The Committee therefore will meticulously go through all the nomination files and assess whether or not these candidates are worth being put on this iconic List. For the pain of being cited for contempt by the Committee, I will not delve into the files to be opened but may do so after the decision is made.
If the dossier of the Barotse Plains was submitted to the World Heritage Centre at UNESCO early this year, it would have been discussed.
What the 39th Session in Bonn is doing is what was done 26 years ago in 1989 when the Committee inscribed the mighty Mosi-oa-Tunya/Victoria Falls as world heritage site. The previous article attempted to show the criteria under which the site was inscribed with scanty detail on actual values of the site. In other words the readers must know what makes the Mosi-oa-Tunya one of the special sites in the world, why is it a world heritage site deserving protection by the entire mankind. I did state in the previous article that the Falls were inscribed premised on criteria (vii) and (viii).
One colleague of mine from Caucasian country asked me jokingly the following set of questions in this fashion: where do you see rainbow where there is no rains, where do you experience rains when it’s not raining, where else can you get drenched with rains when it’s not raining or rainy season, where do you see smoke of rain misty standing high up in the sky even some 20 kilometers away?
Ladies and gentlemen and dear readers, this is what a common tourist would describe the Victoria Falls! And for your own information, this sets the tone for the inscription of the falls as world heritage and also as the Seventh Natural Wonder of the world! Lets hear what the World Heritage Committee heard some 26 years when inscribing the Mosi-oa-Tunya, shall we?
Zambia and Zimbabwe appearing before the Committee like a litigant appearing before Her Lordship, made a passionate appeal for the inscription of this tourist icon, and this was their argument: the Mosi-oa-Tunya/Victoria Falls is the world’s greatest sheet of falling water and significant worldwide for its exceptional geological and geomorphological features and active land formation processes with outstanding beauty attributed to the Falls meaning the spray, the mist and rainbow.
Getting into the specific criterion, (vii): the Falls is the largest curtain of falling water in the world; it is 1.708 meters wide and with up to 500 million litres per minute descending at 61 meters at the Devils cataract, 83 meters at the main falls, 99 meters at the rainbow falls and 98 meters at the eastern cataract. Eight spectacular gorges of igneous origin comprising basalts and several islands in the core zone serve as breeding sites for four endangered and migratory bird species.
The riverine rainforest within the waterfall splash zone is a fragile ecosystem of discontinuous forest on sandy alluvium, dependent upon the maintenance of abundant water and high humidity resulting from the spray plume of 500 meters (at its highest) that can be seen from a distance of 50km and 30km from Bulawayo and Lusaka roads respectively! This is the exceptional beauty which criterion (vii) is referring to and there is no such site anywhere else in the world that fits this description! Zambia therefore needs to be proud of this natural phenomenon and must do everything in its powers to conserve it. We need not stop here, there is yet another criterion (viii) upon which the Mosi-oa-Tunya inscribed. This criterion deals with issues of active or on going geological process centering on the changing positions of the falls resulting currently into seven gorges.
These gorges were actually where the falls were located in the far past. Here is what the two countries argued: the Mosi-oa-Tunya/Victoria Falls and associated eight steep sided gorges have been formed through the changing waterfall position over a geological time scale.
The gorges are an outstanding example of river capture and the erosive forces of the water still continue to sculpture the hard basalts. The gorges take a zigzag course of a distance of about 150km along the Zambezi river before the falls. Seven previous waterfalls occupied the seven gorges bellow to the present falls, and the Devils cataract in Zimbabwe is the starting point for cutting back to the new position of the waterfall.
In addition, an aerial view of the falls shows possible future waterfall positions. Upstream are spectacular series of riverine islands formed during the ongoing geological and geomorphological processes.
The property is characterised by banded basalt of ancient lava flow, Kalahari sandstones and chalcedony out of which stone artifacts of homo habilis dating three millions years, stone tools of the middle Stone Age and weapons, adornment and digging tools of the late stone that indicate occupation by hunter gatherers.
Having painstakingly and eloquently put this submission before it, the World Heritage Committee marveled and had no cause to rebut but graciously upheld the joint plea of the two states parties.
It’s no wonder that Livingstone the home of the Mosi-oa-Tunya is the tourist capital of the republic of Zambia and the city has thrived due to this natural wonder. This ought to make us proud and as such, we have a duty to find other sites that can be presented to the Committee for possible inscription.
This world heritage recognition dear readers is the most sought after today and as I write to you, states parties are, in the fashion of the court proceedings, appearing before the Committee sitting in Bonn pleading that their sites be placed on the World Heritage List. But why should countries seek this recognition? Well, this could be food for another day.

Share this post
Tags

About The Author