Sustainable Development of Coastal Landscape Heritage: The Case Study of Anfeh-Hraiche

Abstract

Lebanon's Mediterranean shore is more than 210 km long, the coastal plain extends to a width of half a kilometer, narrowing in the central part, widening in the northern and southern extremes. Historically, towns and cities established in the coastal plain thrived as centers of commerce and trade having access to coastal rivers, streams, and coastal agriculture. For centuries, Lebanese coastal landscapes were a rich overlay of natural and cultural heritage, rural and urban, marine, and terrestrial, a repository of bio-cultural diversity. Twentieth century unregulated urban growth, commercial and industrial activities is incrementally fragmenting and destroying the integrity of coastal cultural landscapes. Anfeh, a town of 6,000 inhabitants in the Koura district, exemplifies the diversity of coastal landscapes. Along with its natural extension in Hraiche, Anfeh’s coastal landscape has been continuously settled since the Bronze age (Early and middle bronze age), to include archaeological monuments, historic churches and monasteries, saltpans (salinas), and olive groves. This outstanding landscape character and rich natural and cultural heritage of coastal Anfeh-Hraiche has placed them on the UNESCO tentative World Heritage List. Anfeh-Hracihe’s cultural landscape and biocultural heritage is threatened directly by industry, tourism, and real estate development; and compromised indirectly by the prevailing limited understanding of cultural landscape heritage by state organizations and the public is of monuments and archaeological sites only. In this thesis we argue that a holistic approach can integrate cultural and natural heritage, mediate environmental health while providing for local livelihoods. The research asks whether a holistic ecological landscape design approach can guide sustainable development of the Anfeh-Hraiche bio-cultural heritage in coastal Lebanon to address the fragmentation and deterioration of coastal ecosystems. Applying the methodology of the ecological landscape design the research expands beyond the municipal boundaries of Anfeh-Hraiche, to explore natural and cultural resources of the larger context, the coastal Koura district. Research of the regional context then serves as a foundation for reconceptualizing the coastal landscape of Anfeh-Hraiche and designating the rich coastal landscapes with its natural, semi-natural and cultural components, Ecological Landscape Associations, that are thereafter reintegrated into the conceptual design model proposed. Landscape connectivity is ensured through a network of linkages cultural and natural to protect the natural and cultural character of the coastal landscape.