Angkor’s Management Plan to Be Overhauled
Cambodia’s Apsara National Authority, which manages Angkor Archaeological Park, will this week unveil a “revolutionary” new concept for Angkor’s management that will vastly decentralize responsibility for the preservation of the temple complex, according to Anne Lemaistre, Unesco representative in Cambodia. The new Angkor Heritage Management Framework, which has been two years in the making, will involve restructuring the management of the 401-square-km park so that each major monument and group of smaller monuments has one person serving as its director, who will be in charge of its every aspect, from conservation and tourist flow to security and forestry, she said. … Developed by the Apsara Authority and the Australian heritage consultancy firm Godden Mackay Logan, and assisted by Unesco experts through support from the Australian government, the new management plan will be unveiled during a series of international meetings in Siem Reap this week. … The site’s situation has changed tremendously since the first intergovernmental conference on Angkor in Tokyo in 1993 when the monuments were in such a state of deterioration after decades of conflict that the site had been put on the U.N.’s List of World Heritage in Danger. To coordinate the rescue efforts, countries agreed to create the International Coordinating Committee of Angkor (ICC), an organization whose formula has proven so effective that the ICC has become a model for World Heritage sites throughout the world. Angkor’s ICC will hold its technical meeting Tuesday and its plenary session Wednesday ahead of the intergovernmental conference. … Other management strategies to be discussed this week will include introducing a system of risk maps to monitor everything from water flow to stone conservation and tourist traffic; the need for an Apsara Geographic Information System team capable of interpreting data in geographical as well as conservation terms; and radar technology provided by China to locate and monitor underground archaeological features as well as water flow. …
Michelle Vachon
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/angkors-management-plan-to-be-overhauled-48235/
