One of the key bodies that should help preserve the Natural and Cultural-Historical Area of Kotor on the UNESCO World Heritage List exists only on paper. The Kotor Area Management Council has not met for more than a year and a half, and it should have regular monthly meetings and submit annual reports. Despite this, the Government did not take advantage of the legal possibility to dismiss the members of the Council and appoint new ones.
In order to more efficiently manage the area, which has been under the protection of UNESCO since 1979, the Parliament of Montenegro adopted the lex specialis less than ten years ago - the Law on the preservation of the natural and cultural-historical area of Kotor.
The area is managed in accordance with the Management Plan of Kotor. The law introduced the obligation to establish a Council that, among other things, monitors the state of the Kotor Region, prepares an annual report on the implementation of the Management Plan and gives approval for initiatives and programs related to that area.
The need to establish the Council arose due to excessive urbanization and other problems of this protected area, whose status has been questioned by UNESCO. However, the effects that the Council was supposed to have, especially in the last year and a half since this body does not meet, are increasingly questionable.
In February 2020, the representative of the NGO Expeditio Aleksandra Kapetanović resigned from this body, saying that the Council had not met for less than a year at that time.
"Although it is scheduled to meet once a month. This speaks not only to the dysfunctionality of this system, but also to a lack of understanding of the extremely problematic situation in which the Kotor area currently finds itself and the importance of managing the World Heritage area in general," Kapetanović said in his resignation letter. Center for Investigative Journalism of Montenegro (CIN-CG) had an insight.
Problems in the functioning of the Council began much earlier. In 2016, there were only five sessions, in 2017 this body did not meet once, and the work was somewhat more intensive in 2018, when nine sessions were organized. But, in 2019, he met only once, and in 2020, twice. Last year there was not a single meeting. So, in six years, the Council was supposed to have more than 70 sessions, but there were only 17, as can be seen from the minutes that CIN-CG received based on the Law on Free Access to Information (FIA) of the Municipality of Kotor for the period until December.
Since the formation of the Council, there have been several changes in Vasti in Kotor, but this did not affect the more efficient work of this body, which should have contributed significantly to the preservation of the Kotor Area.
The law stipulates that the President of the Municipality of Kotor is also the President of the Council, and in addition to him, the body has ten members. Apart from the five members appointed by the Kotor Municipal Assembly, it is stipulated that the other representatives should be from the department of culture, spatial planning and environmental protection, the administration responsible for the protection of cultural assets, the National Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO and non-governmental organizations dealing with the protection and preservation of the city.
"Although the competences of the Council defined by the law are very significant, in practice it has been shown that it exists only as a form, that it serves as a platform for the exchange of information between various actors, but that it has no influence whatsoever on the processes taking place in the Kotor Region", says Aleksandra Kapetanović.
She points out that it would be necessary to define new mechanisms and bodies for managing the Area.
A former member of the Council, professor of the Faculty of Architecture, Ilija Lalošević, is of the opinion that the Council is not enough by itself and that Montenegro and the city of Kotor, in order to protect and manage the area, should apply the earlier model, which is the provision of institutional, personnel and other preconditions for protection "in situ", i.e. within the area itself on the UNESCO List, which is common throughout the world, as evidenced by numerous examples in the environment, such as the one in neighboring Croatia.
"I believe that in addition to the Council, which would continue to have an advisory and control role, an institution entrusted with the management of the protected area, the so-called 'site manager', like the former Kotor Regional Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments. "Regardless of the recent reforms of the cultural property protection system, other protected cities and areas still have similar institutions today, such as Dubrovnik, where the function of managing protected cultural property is held by the Institute for the Reconstruction of Dubrovnik," Professor Lalošević told CIN-CG.
Lalošević was the director of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments in Kotor, which functioned from 1980 to 2011.
The Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments in Kotor stopped working ten years ago, and then it was transformed into regional departments of the Administration for the Protection of Cultural Property and the Center for Conservation and Archeology of Montenegro.
The Law on the Protection of Cultural Properties provided for the adoption of a Management Plan for cultural properties that have international significance, that is, that are inscribed on the UNESCO list or are nominated for inclusion. The management plan was adopted for the Kotor area in December 2011.
The law stipulates that the Council is obliged to submit an annual report on the implementation of the Management Plan to the Government every year by March 1. However, the report was submitted only for 2017, as can be seen from the document that CIN-CG received.
Kapetanović points out that this annual report provides the most complete analysis and assessment of the situation in the Kotor Region.
The report states that, among other things, the effects of the implementation of the Management Plan "in the domain of preventing excessive and uncontrolled urbanization did not exist", that numerous examples of damage and destruction of the value of space "are indicators of inconsistent application of the Law on the Protection of Cultural Property and other laws", but also that "the incompetence of the majority of participants in the development of plans, projects as well as in the execution of works" contributes to such a situation.
Despite the fact that the Council did not meet from May 2020 to December last year, and the report on the Management Plan was not sent for years, the Government did not use its legal option to dismiss the body.
From the General Secretariat of the Government, CIN-CG said that in the period since the appointment of the Government of Zdravko Krivokapić on December 4, 2020, no proposal for the dismissal and appointment of the Council was submitted, noting that this was done for the last time in mid-January 2020, at the proposal of the then minister art by Aleksadr Bogdanović.
The appointment proposal is now in the department of the Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports Vesna Bratić. For more than three weeks, the Ministry did not respond to CIN-CG's questions, among other things, how satisfied they are with the work of the Council and in what way the protection of Kotor should be improved in order to preserve it on the UNESCO List. At the 41st UNESCO General Conference in November, Bratić said that membership in that organization is "one of the strategic priorities of our foreign policy", she thanked the organization for its support in previous years, "with the aim of significantly improving the preservation of the natural, cultural and historical area of Kotor".
Even the government itself did not answer the questions of CIN-CG about how the executive power protects the Kotor area, given that the Council does not function, but also why the executive power has not dealt with this issue so far, and the reports on the Management Plan were not sent in the legal deadline.
The President of Kotor Municipality, Vladimir Jokić, confirmed that the Government has not appointed a new composition of the Council, but claims that the body will meet soon.
"Regardless, the working group working on the revision of the Management Plan is doing its job, which is the priority at the moment. After drafting the document, the Council will consider it," he told CIN-CG.
He also believes that the Council needs to more precisely define its obligations, as well as its powers in fulfilling them, noting that this can only be done through changes to legal solutions.
Jokić praised the more intensive cooperation with the Government and the Ministry, but did not answer the additional questions of CIN-CG whether this was confirmed by the failure to hold Council sessions and the failure to approve the report on the Management Plan.
In the past period since the inscription on the UNESCO List, there have been changes in the natural and cultural landscape of the area, according to the only report on the Management Plan.
These changes were the result of intensive housing construction, especially after the devastating earthquake in 1979.
"Excessive construction was not even caused by an increase in the number of inhabitants that would have caused such an intensity of construction, because demographic growth has mostly stagnated or grown slightly, and no new economic facilities were built that would require the hiring of new labor and thus the need for an increase in residential construction ", states the report signed by Jokić.
In the report, it was stated that in parallel with the work on the development of the Management Plan, a new wave of urbanization was emerging, which was particularly reflected in the settlements of Kostanjica, Morinj, Risan, Dobrota, Prčanj...
The damage caused by the construction of residential and tourist facilities, the document states, irreversibly affected the authenticity and integrity of the Kotor area.
Less than 20 years ago, UNESCO issued a warning that excessive and uncontrolled urbanization represents one of the greatest threats to the preserved value of Kotor's World Heritage.
A moratorium on construction in the area was introduced in March 2017, due to several years of warnings by UNESCO that Kotor could be removed from the list of protected areas, precisely because of the excessive devastation of the area. Meanwhile, the government has not extended the moratorium on construction.
Priority status maintenance
The President of the Municipality, Vladimir Jokić, said that Kotor is the city with perhaps the most inscriptions on the UNESCO list in the world.
"In this regard, it is an absolute priority for the Municipality of Kotor to remain on the UNESCO World Heritage List. In the previous mandate, we succeeded in removing the threat of deletion from the list with a strong action, and in this one we will further confirm that status. Deleting it from the list would mean deleting our country from the list of civilized nations," he said.
In addition to the Kotor area since 1979, the Kotor fortress was also included in the list five years ago, as part of the Venetian defense system. The cultural heritage of the Bay of Boktor, the Bokel Marina, was entered on the Representative List of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity of UNESCO, as the first intangible cultural asset from Montenegro in December 2021.
Bonus video:
