The Sustainable Preservation Initiative (SPI) seeks to save and preserve the world's cultural heritage by providing transformative and sustainable economic opportunities to poor communities in which archaeological sites are located. The SPI mantra is "Saving Sites by Transforming Lives". "People can't eat their history", according to University of Pennsylvania archaeologist Larry Coben, SPI's Executive Director, "we need to provide an alternative to other potential economic uses of archaeological sites, such as looting, agriculture, grazing, residential and commercial uses. That enables us to help people better their lives and gives them a powerful economic incentive to preserve our shared heritage".

WHAT WE DO

The Sustainable Preservation Initiative (SPI) seeks to save and preserve the world's cultural heritage by providing transformative and sustainable economic opportunities to poor communities in which archaeological sites are located. The SPI mantra is "Saving Sites by Transforming Lives". "People can't eat their history", according to University of Pennsylvania archaeologist Larry Coben, SPI's Executive Director, "we need to provided an alternative to other potential economic uses of archaeological sites, such as looting, agriculture, grazing, residential and commercial uses. That enables us to help people better their lives and gives them a powerful incentive to preserve our shared heritage."

OTHER PRESERVATION PROGRAMS

Existing preservation paradigms have proved inadequate and unsustainable, primarily due to the absence of an economic reason for local communities to continue preserving sites after the departure of archaeologists and conservators. How can someone tell an underprivileged person not to economically exploit a site, even if that exploitation is destroying the site, without providing a viable economic alternative? Can we provide an opportunity that provides income to that person while simultaneously preserving cultural heritage?

SPI seeks to create a new paradigm to solve this problem. The explosion of extreme tourism and globalization create enormous potential for locally based tourism and artisan businesses. Even small local economic benefits can compete successfully with looting and negative alternative uses of sites. In addition, the creation of local businesses with a vested interest in the preservation and maintenance of a site provides an ongoing and long-term source of incentive and funding for site preservation, as well as all of the benefits normally associated with economic deveploment in poor communities. 

OUR MISSION

SPI's goal is the creation of this new preservation paradigm. Working with community and governmental leaders, local business people, archaeologists and preservationists, SPI will develop plans for projects and businesses that will be locally owned and that maximize the spending of dollars in the communities surrounding the sites. Through microlenders, charitable organizations and other sources of funding, SPI will provide microgrants to existing or stat up businesses such as tourism, guides, restaurants, hostels, transportation, artisans and site museums and other rapidly implementable projects. Through this combination of local involvement decision making ad ownership, sustainable economic benefits and vale will be related to and conditioned upon continued site preservation. These businesses will also provide an ongoing revenue stream to meet preservation and other local needs. This paradigm provides a double benefit: every dollar spent on economic development and the improvement of local people's lives will also serve to preserve the world's cultural heritage. 

Of course, mere successful implementation of a few projects will not stem the destruction of the world's global heritage. Rather, we need to publicize, publish and educate with respect to SPI's successes and failures, as well as create a network of experts who can consult with archaeologists and local communities to assist them in the implementation of local economically sustainable projects. Many archaeologists desire strongly to assist their local communities in this way, but are not trained to do so. In the middle and longer term, SPI will be a resource for them to call upon to meet this goal and preserve their sites, in part by providing an online network of experts with whom archaeologists can consult. SPI will also provide course material for inclusion in archaeological curricula. 

SPI'S PROGRESS

SPI is presently active in Peru and expects to announce projects in Jordan and one or two additional countries in the coming months.