Minister of the Environment Thorbjørn Berntsen

The cultural heritage perspective in the work for sustainable production and consumption

IVth European Conference of Ministers Responsible to the Cultural Heritage, Helsinki 30. may 1996

Dear colleagues!

In Rio de Janeiro the United Nations in 1992 held the largest conference on environment and development ever, with history's largest gathering of state leaders. Among the important results of this conference was the adoption of Agenda 21, an action plan for the next century

The key to solve many of the global environmental problems is to be found in the industrialised and rich countries. We have a special responsibility for changing our own production and consumption patterns, and to obtain a consumption level within the limits of nature, as well as assisting the developing countries in making their agenda environmentally sound and directed towards sustainable development.

Sustainable production and consumption patterns means meeting fundamental human needs, greater resource and energy efficiency, greater use of renewable energy sources and improvement of environmental quality. We must look at what and how we produce and consume, and how much. And w We must realise that this is deeply connected with the social and economic structures of our societies, as well as our conception of values, and this means that. W we will not succeed in achieving this without fundamental changes in our society and lifestyle. It is also quite clear that a healthy environment, good nutrition and sound living conditions for all will be necessary to maintain peace and stability.

In the follow- up of the Rio-conference Norway has taken an activeacting and promoting role in the UN Commission on Sustainable Development ( CSD ); arranging two ministerial meetings on sustainable production and consumption in Oslo in 1994 and 1995. The results of this work will be a central theme onsubject for a Special Session of the General Assembly next year

A condition for sustainable development is also an integration of environmental targets into policies in all sectors at central, regional and local level, and in the private sector. In Norway the different ministries are responsible for environmental consequences in their sectors. Environmental policy is thus not a responsibility for the Ministry of the Environment alone.
Public awareness is also essential, and the NGOs must play an important role in this work.

How does all this relate to the work for protecting the cultural heritage?

I need only to look out of my office window to see an old castle which is an historic example of reuse of material, which means less production cost and less transportation, which again means less use of energy and less waste to handle. The natural material produces little pollution and the product is even beautiful!

Studying the cultural heritage is also a lesson in sustainable production and consumption. When we make the analysis that guides the decisions we shall take, we must haveapply a new and much broader perspective. We must for instance consider:

• What is the energy consumption of the different way of producing?
• What type of energy should be used, or in other words: What are the environmental costs of the emissions from the energy production?
• What are the transport costs, and how much pollution will the transport imply?
• What type of waste will have to be handled in the production process?
• What is the life cycle of the product, or in other words: Over how many years can you distribute the environmental costs?
• How much of the product can be reused or recycled after the end of its life cycle?
• How much of the final waste is difficult or dangerous to handle?

This type of complex environmental budget is essential to set up before deciding to demolish buildings instead of preserving them. So far the arguments put forward by those working for preserving the architectural heritage have been intellectual and emotional. In our time we need to look into the effects not only for the visual environment but on the totality. We present here four reports with concrete examples of this approach. You can read about these both in my full statement in the written form and of course in the reports themselves. Just twoBut I will give you a couple of examples.

One of the most common problems in building preservation is the widespreadcommon desire for replacing windows. Generally this is done for the purpose of saving energy. Normally it has disastrous effects for the visual appearance of the buildings, because so much is dependant on the way the windows look. Even when the ambition is to replace the window with a copy the result is bad, because the right materials are not easy to find and different techniques are used in the production. But it turns out that over a life cycle of 90 years the total energy consumption of old windows with an attached inner frame is only 1 - 5 % higher than for new windows. And since the use of new windows emits more of nasty things as CO2 and NOx's and a number of other technicalities that we ministers fortunately have experts to understand for us, there is no real argument for replacing old windows at all!

Another big preservation problem in Norway is that the art objects in many of our churches suffer from the climatic conditions created by the heating in the cold season. Heating makes the air dry, the wood shrinks but the layers of paint do not. They crack, and eventually fall off.
We cannot stop religious life in our cold winters, and we must allow the religious congregation to attend their services without freezing to death. The study shows that a new regime for how you heat churches will save 6 mill. Norwegian Crowns OK in conservation of art objects while at the same time reduce the energy consumption of the 1 770 churches and chapels in Norway to the equivalent of what is needed to supply 3 500 family houses! This is what I call sustainable consumption!

All the studies show that good preservation practice is in reality sustainable consumption.

We needI give a general call for the necessity to have a transsectorial environmental policy, that place responsibility for the environment on every body, from governmental ministries and other public agencies to individuals. This includemeans of course also a responsibility for the cultural heritage as an important part of our environment.

In our production we have a priority hierarchy of goals with respect to sustainability:

1. The product should be easy to maintain. Easy and good maintenance gives a long life cycle.
2. The product should be easy to change, adapting to the societies changing needs of societies. This will also prolong the life cycle.
3. The product should consist of materials easy to reuse after its ended life cycle
4. The product should consist of materials easy to recycle after its ended life cycle.
5. The product should consist of materials easy to dispose of after its ended life cycle.

As you see the key word is life cycle. How then do we implement such a new policy?

The type of scientific work presented here will needs to be extended.

This work will also be important for the Norwegian Governments ongoing work on a Wwhite Ppaper to the Parliament on Sustainable Development, where the cultural heritage perspective will be included.

In 1997 we will have a national Cultural Heritage Year, focusing on the industrial heritage, thethe preservation of our coastal culture and public awareness.. In this connection I wantould like to underline the importance of the NGOs.
Not least because these are democratic structures, which give their members a practical experience in democratic rule that consolidate the democratic political system.

The voluntary organisations must also play a central role if we shall have any chance of changing the production and consumption patterns, since this at the end of the day rest with the choices every man and woman make in their daily life. And making choices that will create an environmentally sound world demands a commitment to the future. This commitment is based on man understanding himself as a link in a continuity. This understanding can only be created if people are surrounded by the cultural heritage left to them by earlier generations, and feel obliged to pass the heritage on. This is why the protection of the cultural heritage is so important for environmental policy in general.

Protection of industrial heritage is also a priority of the Norwegian Government. Preserving the monuments of the industry that laid the foundations for our present prosperity is essential for strengthening the solidarity in the welfare society, based on respect for the efforts put in by all the workers dedicating their lives to produce values that in turn created a better society.

We believe that the ideas presented here have a universal validity.
We are also talking about fighting omission of polluting agents that are subject to a transboundary distribution, and in this way it is an international and common problem we are facing. In order to spread this approach to the protection of the cultural heritage we opened at the beginning of this year, in co-operation with UNESCO, a Nordic World Heritage Office in Oslo. This office is joining forces from all Nordic countries, and shall be of service to among others also the Baltic and North East-European states.

The Norwegian Government sincerely hopes that the Council of Europe can create a good follow- up program based on the ideas we have had presented to us here in Helsinki.

In arranging this conference, stressing the social perspective and economic benefits of the preservation of the cultural heritage,. the Council of Europe has made a major contribution also to the work the United N,ations through the CSD, is doing on the all-important subject of promoting sustainable production and consumption patterns. I congratulate the Council of Europe and its Cultural Heritage Committee, and I wholeheartedly support the proposed Helsinki Declaration and the resolutions securing a follow- up work on these important issues!