As the global age dawns . . . questions linking culture, development and globalisation are no less pressing than other vital questions about our common future.

Source: World Culture Report, UNESCO Publishing, Paris, 1998.

While cultural issues are gaining in public attention everywhere, they often have low priority in the development policies of many countries. Stressing the importance of considering culture in development projects, James D. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, stated:

	In this time of globalisation . . . the poor are the most vulnerable to having their traditions, relationships, and knowledge and skills ignored and denigrated . . . Their culture . . . can be among their most potent assets, and among the most ignored and devastated by development programmes.

Source: Culture Counts, Conference on Financing, Resources and the Economics of Culture in Sustainable Development, Florence, Italy, 4-7 October, 1999.

Culture is important in the processes of social and economic development. Socially, it provides for the continuity of ways of life that people in a region or country see as significant to personal and group identity. Economically, various forms of cultural expression such as music, dance, literature, sport and theatre provide employment as well as enjoyment for many people. These contribute increasingly large amounts of money to the economies of most countries every year.

Employment is also generated through the restoration and presentation of cultural heritage centres and sites - both for education and tourism.

Our Creative Diversity

An independent World Commission on Culture and Development (WCCD) was established jointly by UNESCO and the United Nations in December 1992 to report on the interactions between culture and development. Chaired by Mr Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1982 to 1991, the Commission, presented its report, Our Creative Diversity, in 1995.

Our Creative Diversity highlighted culture as the 'last frontier' of development. Development not only involves improved access to goods and services, but also provides 'the opportunity for people to choose a full, satisfying, valuable and valued way of living together, thus encouraging the flourishing of human existence in all its forms and as a whole'.

Read a summary of Our Creative Diversity.

One of the recommendations of Our Creative Diversity to UNESCO was to publish regular reports on culture and development.

The first World Culture Report (1998) described culture as 'both the context for development as well as the missing factor in policies for development.' It also questioned many of the cultural assumptions in the development models being used to guide economic, social, political and conservation policies worldwide .

It asked the question, 'Can we say that the range of development models has progressively narrowed over time?', and concluded that:

	Western cultures have customarily been employed as the basis of thinking about development: 'Western culture has held an iron grip on development thinking and practice'.
	This model equates development with modernisation and modernisation with Westernisation, and this is a cause of great concern in many countries.
	Increasingly, it is being recognised that there are several alternative strategies of development.
	A paradox of globalisation is that local cultures are being stressed more than before, at least in ways that reflect local cultural interpretations of the diverse cultural and economic processes that are part of globalisation. While cultural pluralism is increasingly becoming a feature of most societies, people are turning more and more to culture as a means of self-definition and mobilisation.

Cultural diversity

Cultural diversity is an important human right. It is a cornerstone of citizenship in any society. However, historical pressures and domestic political trends have limited the right to cultural autonomy and expression of some citizens. As a result, many minority peoples have been marginalised from the development processes in their own countries. This is tragic both for the marginalised groups and for development trajectory of the wider society. As a result, the 1998 World Cultural Report stated that:

	. . . considerable imagination is needed to build the participatory institutional spaces where diverse voices can express themselves, whether in the management of local environmental issues, the organization of local urban life, or the operation of political institutions of functioning democracies.

Source: World Culture Report, UNESCO Publishing, Paris, 1998.

The same principle holds at the global scale. More and more, countries (especially in the South) are arguing that societies differ in their particular paths of development; that each society has its own history, political and social structures and cultural values; that development policies should respond to the needs and requirements of each society; and therefore that what is appropriate to one society may not be appropriate to another.

This issue has been a major concern of the UNESCO African Itinerant College for Culture and Development (AICDD). AICDD is a regional coordinating body for discussion and debate on the cultural dimensions of development.

Research by AICDD indicates that development efforts in Africa have not yielded the expected results, and argues that there are three culturally-related reasons for this:

	The unsuitability to the African context of development models and methods taken from industrial societies.
	The institutional, geographic, social and cultural gap between people living and working locally and government decision-makers and authorities.
	A lack of the institutional knowledge and skills to plan development policies and projects that are consistent with the cultural context.

Consequently, there are increasing challenges to the dominant western approach to economic development and modernisation - not only from the South but in the North as well. The demonstrations in Seattle, Washington DC, Melbourne and Prague in 1999 and 2000 against the World Trade Organisation and other international political and financial institutions (that are perceived as promoting a uniform model of development) are evidence of this.

Finding space for these alternative models of development will not be an easy task - this is the downside of globalisation and the domination of the world economic system by major transnational corporations.

As a result, discussions about culture and development tend to be framed in terms of several key issues that relate to the social, economic, political and conservation dimensions of sustainable development, including:

	Culture and economic development		Cultural diversity, conflict and pluralism
	Cultural rights and indigenous peoples		Globalisation and cultural diversity
	Culture and sustainability		Culture and poverty
	Culture and democracy		The economics of cultural heritage
	Culture, freedom and independence		Heritage conservation and values
	Global creativity and the arts.		Indicators of culture and development.