Water conservation in the urban landscape through heritage and capacity building: the case of Guimarães, Portugal

Abstract

Water is vital for our life and for the well-being and survival of future generations. Water is the key element of the socio-economic development of the countries and is one of the most critical resources for the tourism industry. Nowadays water scarcity and water quality challenges have been identified in many parts of the world. Thus, it has been recognized that water is a natural resource, which needs to be preserved and guarantee its quality. In this context, water issues in the tourism industry are obtaining big attention from organizations, such as the United Nations Environmental Programme, the United Nations World Tourism Organization. Moreover, this resource is an unquestionable element of the urban planning in history, and in the past, the decision-makers assumed its presence as fundamental in the city or rural planning. Thus, this study considers the historic urban landscape, all natural and cultural attributes placed in historic layers of cultural accumulation, including hydrology and other natural characteristics of the place. In this way, the water presence in historic cities as a natural resource that circulates in rivers, fountains, underground flows, aqueducts, cisterns, and other cultural elements are very important to explore as living testimonies of the human presence and as a natural resource to preserve for the future. In fact, the water landscape and the water heritage have a social projection as a legacy and expression of the history of a certain place and the local communities. The charts and conventions written around the heritage conservation and preservation do not reflect around the water as a tangible or intangible heritage resource and do not debate the methodologies and the practical implications of the water use. It is a gap in the historical preservation and heritage conservation. Thus, this chapter proposes to highlight the role of the water heritage conservation as a way to develop cultural and sustainable tourism practices. The determination of principles around safeguard of resilient water landscape will improve the information and valorization around this enormous heritage. It is important to debate principles and a methodology that tourism and local communities could adopt and implement to protect water as a natural and cultural resource in a risk.