JEDDAH, 16 October 2006 — Saudi Arabia has selected three sites as the first United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage sites in the Kingdom. The sites are the ancient Nabatean city of Madain Saleh, Jeddah’s historic center and Riyadh’s Al-Dirriyah neighborhood.
The elevation of any cultural or natural wonder to the status of World Heritage Site is understandably a source of national pride. Being awarded the status of a World Heritage Site, however, might prove to be a poisoned chalice.
“What better way than tourism to promote understanding between peoples by inspiring admiration for the shared natural and cultural heritage?” asked Federico Mayor, director-general of World Heritage: Ours Forever.
He goes on to hint at the potential problems: “But uncontrolled tourism and ill-planned development can cause irreversible physical and social damage, not only to the sites but to the communities surrounding them.”
A striking characteristic of social change worldwide over the last 40 years has been the increase in mass tourism.
In 1950, the World Tourism Organization (WTO) estimated that tourism worldwide involved about 25 million people compared with 528 million in 1995, an increase of more than 2,000 percent in 45 years. The WTO forecast in 1995 that the figure would be 940 million in 2010.
The Kingdom is working hard to promote tourism. It has many obvious advantages. For towns and heritage sites, tourism provides jobs and brings in foreign currency. Sometimes it leads to an improvement in local infrastructure — for example roads, communication equipment, medical care. Travelers can admire the wonders of the world and learn more about other countries, their environments, cultures, values and ways of life and thus promote international understanding. We often learn much about ourselves by learning about others. “Tourism,” concluded a UNESCO Round Table on Culture, Tourism and Development in 1996, “would not exist without culture, because it is culture that is one of the principal motivations for the movement of people.”
One of the things the Kingdom may have to learn is that tourism can have negative effects. Millions of tourists visit the World Heritage site of the Borobudur Temple Compounds in Indonesia. The compounds are in a very hot and humid area and in order to ensure the comfort of tourists, tour-bus drivers sometimes keep their engines running with the air-conditioning on while waiting for tourists to return from the site. The carbon monoxide fumes are likely to damage the stone temples.
Automobile traffic is becoming a major threat to many other World Heritage sites. The road close to Stonehenge in the United Kingdom has threatened the integrity of the site. The proposal to build a highway close to the site of the Great Pyramids in Egypt from Giza to Dahshur was stopped by the Egyptian authorities at the request of UNESCO. The World Heritage Convention, referring to the List of World Heritage in Danger, mentions the serious threat of “rapid urban or tourist development projects.”
Madain Saleh and Al-Dirriyah are largely undeveloped. The World Heritage status might earn them a large number of tourists. In the event of such an occurence, very carefully considered and researched conservation measures will have to be implemented in order to preserve the essence of the sites.
