A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area, selected by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
for having cultural, historical, scientific or other form of
significance, which is legally protected by international treaties. The
sites are judged to be important for the collective and preservative
interests of humanity.
To be selected, a World Heritage Site must be an
already-classified landmark, unique in some respect as a geographically
and historically identifiable place having special cultural or physical
significance (such as an ancient ruin or historical structure,
building, city, complex, desert, forest, island, lake, monument,
mountain, or wilderness area). It may signify a remarkable accomplishment of humanity, and serve as evidence of our intellectual history on the planet.
The sites are intended for practical conservation for posterity,
which otherwise would be subject to risk from human or animal
trespassing, unmonitored/uncontrolled/unrestricted access, or threat
from local administrative negligence. Sites are demarcated by UNESCO as
protected zones. The list is maintained by the international World Heritage Program administered by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, composed of 21 "states parties" that are elected by their General Assembly.
The programme catalogues, names, and conserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common culture and heritage of humanity. Under certain conditions, listed sites can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund. The programme began with the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World's Cultural and Natural Heritage,
which was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on 16 November
1972. Since then, 193 state parties have ratified the convention, making
it one of the most widely recognised international agreements and the
world's most popular cultural programme.
In 1978 the city of Quito in Ecuador earned the distinction of being the first city in the world to be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the same year, Kraków in Poland was also named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
As of July 2019, a total of 1,121 World Heritage Sites (869 cultural, 213 natural, and 39 mixed properties) exist across 167 countries. China and Italy, both with 55 sites, have the most of any country, followed by Spain (48), Germany (46), France (45), India (38), and Mexico (35).
History
| Signed | 16 November 1972 |
|---|---|
| Location | Paris, France |
| Effective | 17 December 1975 |
| Condition | 20 ratifications |
| Ratifiers | 193 (189 UN member states plus the Cook Islands, the Holy See, Niue, and Palestine) |
| Depositary | Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization |
| Languages | Arabic, English, French, Russian, and Spanish |
In 1954, the government of Egypt decided to build the new Aswan High Dam, whose resulting future reservoir would eventually inundate a large stretch of the Nile valley containing cultural treasures of ancient Egypt and ancient Nubia. In 1959, the governments of Egypt and Sudan
requested UNESCO to assist their countries to protect and rescue the
endangered monuments and sites. In 1960, the Director-General of UNESCO
launched an appeal to the member states for an International Campaign to
Save the Monuments of Nubia.
This appeal resulted in the excavation and recording of hundreds of
sites, the recovery of thousands of objects, as well as the salvage and
relocation to higher ground of a number of important temples, the most
famous of which are the temple complexes of Abu Simbel and Philae.
The campaign, which ended in 1980, was considered a success. As tokens
of its gratitude to countries which especially contributed to the
campaign's success, Egypt donated four temples: the Temple of Dendur was moved to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Temple of Debod was moved to the Parque del Oeste in Madrid, the Temple of Taffeh was moved to the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in the Netherlands, and the Temple of Ellesyia to Museo Egizio in Turin.
The project cost $80 million, about $40 million of which was collected from 50 countries. The project's success led to other safeguarding campaigns: saving Venice and its lagoon in Italy, the ruins of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan, and the Borobodur Temple Compounds in Indonesia. UNESCO then initiated, with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, a draft convention to protect cultural heritage.
Convention and background
The United States initiated the idea of cultural conservation with nature conservation. The White House
conference in 1965 called for a "World Heritage Trust" to preserve "the
world's superb natural and scenic areas and historic sites for the
present and the future of the entire world citizenry". The International Union for Conservation of Nature developed similar proposals in 1968, and they were presented in 1972 to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. Under the World Heritage Committee, signatory countries are required to produce and submit periodic data reporting
providing the World Heritage Committee with an overview of each
participating nation's implementation of the World Heritage Convention
and a "snapshot" of current conditions at World Heritage properties.
Based on the draft convention that UNESCO had initiated, a single
text was eventually agreed on by all parties, and the "Convention
Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage"
was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on 16 November 1972.
The Convention came into force on 17 December 1975. As of May 2017, it has been ratified by 193 states parties, including 189 UN member states plus 2 UN observer states (the Holy See and the State of Palestine) and 2 states in free association with New Zealand (the Cook Islands and Niue). Only four UN member states have not ratified the Convention: Liechtenstein, Nauru, Somalia and Tuvalu.
The protection of the world heritage should also preserve the
particularly sensitive cultural memory, the growing cultural diversity
and the economic basis of a state, a municipality or a region. Whereby
there is also a connection between cultural user disruption or world
heritage and the cause of flight, as President of Blue Shield International Karl von Habsburg-Lorraine explained during an United Nations peacekeeping and UNESCO
mission in Lebanon in April 2019: “Cultural assets are part of the
identity of the people who live in a certain place. If you destroy their
culture, you also destroy their identity. Many people are uprooted,
often have no prospects anymore and subsequently flee from their
homeland ”.
Nomination process
A
country must first list its significant cultural and natural sites; the
result is called the Tentative List. A country may not nominate sites
that have not been first included on the Tentative List. Next, it can
place sites selected from that list into a Nomination File.
The Nomination File is evaluated by the International Council on Monuments and Sites and the World Conservation Union.
These bodies then make their recommendations to the World Heritage
Committee. The Committee meets once per year to determine whether or not
to inscribe each nominated property on the World Heritage List and
sometimes defers or refers the decision to request more information from
the country which nominated the site. There are ten selection criteria –
a site must meet at least one of them to be included on the list.
Selection criteria
Up
to 2004, there were six criteria for cultural heritage and four
criteria for natural heritage. In 2005, this was modified so that there
is now only one set of ten criteria. Nominated sites must be of
"outstanding universal value" and meet at least one of the ten criteria. These criteria have been modified or/amended several times since their creation.
Cultural
Site#252: Taj Mahal, an example of a cultural heritage site.
- "represents a masterpiece of human creative genius and cultural significance"
- "exhibits an important interchange of human values, over a span of time, or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning, or landscape design"
- "to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared"
- "is an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural, or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates a significant stage in human history"
- "is an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land-use, or sea-use which is representative of a culture, or human interaction with the environment especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change"
- "is directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance"
Natural
Site#156: Serengeti National Park, an example of a natural heritage site.
Site#274: Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu, an example of a mixed heritage site.
- "contains superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and esthetic importance"
- "is an outstanding example representing major stages of Earth's history, including the record of life, significant on-going geological processes in the development of landforms, or significant geomorphic or physiographic features"
- "is an outstanding example representing significant on-going ecological and biological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial, fresh water, coastal and marine ecosystems, and communities of plants and animals"
- "contains the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity, including those containing threatened species of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation"
Extensions and other modifications
A
country may request to extend or reduce the boundaries, modify the
official name, or change the selection criteria of one of its already
listed sites. Any proposal for a significant boundary change or to
modify the site's selection criteria must be submitted as if it were a
new nomination, including first placing it on the Tentative List and
then onto the Nomination File.
A request for a minor boundary change, one that does not have a
significant impact on the extent of the property or affect its
"outstanding universal value", is also evaluated by the advisory bodies
before being sent to the Committee. Such proposals can be rejected by
either the advisory bodies or the Committee if they judge it to be a
significant change instead of a minor one.
Proposals to change a site's official name are sent directly to the Committee.
Endangerment
A site may be added to the List of World Heritage in Danger
if there are conditions that threaten the characteristics for which the
landmark or area was inscribed on the World Heritage List. Such
problems may involve armed conflict and war, natural disasters,
pollution, poaching, or uncontrolled urbanization or human development.
This danger list is intended to increase international awareness of the
threats and to encourage counteractive measures. Threats to a site can
be either proven imminent threats or potential dangers that could have
adverse effects on a site.
The state of conservation for each site on the danger list is
reviewed on a yearly basis, after which the committee may request
additional measures, delete the property from the list if the threats
have ceased or consider deletion from both the List of World Heritage in
Danger and the World Heritage List.
Only two sites have ever been delisted: the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary in Oman and the Dresden Elbe Valley
in Germany. The Arabian Oryx Sanctuary was directly delisted in 2007,
instead of first being put on the danger list, after the Omani
government decided to reduce the protected area's size by 90 percent.[23]
The Dresden Elbe Valley was first placed on the danger list in 2006
when the World Heritage Committee decided that plans to construct the Waldschlösschen Bridge
would significantly alter the valley's landscape. In response, Dresden
City Council attempted to stop the bridge's construction, but after
several court decisions allowed the building of the bridge to proceed,
the valley was removed from the World Heritage List in 2009.
The first global assessment to quantitatively measure threats to Natural World Heritage sites found that 63 percent of sites have been damaged by increasing human pressures
including encroaching roads, agriculture infrastructure and settlements
over the last two decades. These activities endanger Natural World
Heritage sites and could compromise their unique values. Of the Natural
World Heritage sites that contain forest, 91 percent of those
experienced some loss since the year 2000. Many Natural World Heritage
sites are more threatened than previously thought and require immediate
conservation action.
Furthermore, the destruction of cultural assets and
identity-establishing sites is one of the primary goals of modern
asymmetrical warfare. Therefore, terrorists, rebels and mercenary armies
deliberately smash archaeological sites, sacred and secular monuments
and loot libraries, archives and museums. The UN, United Nations peacekeeping and UNESCO and in cooperation with Blue Shield International are active in preventing such acts. "No strike lists" are also created to protect cultural assets from air strikes.[27][28][29]
But only through cooperation with the locals can the protection of
world heritage sites, archaeological finds, exhibits and archaeological
sites from destruction, looting and robbery be implemented sustainably.
The president of Blue Shield International Karl von Habsburg summed it
up with the words: “Without the local community and without the local
participants, that would be completely impossible”.
Statistics
The World Heritage Committee has divided the world into five
geographic zones which it calls regions: Africa, Arab states, Asia and
the Pacific, Europe and North America, and Latin America and the
Caribbean.
Russia and the Caucasus
states are classified as European, while Mexico and the Caribbean are
classified as belonging to the Latin America and Caribbean zone. The
UNESCO geographic zones also give greater emphasis on administrative,
rather than geographic associations. Hence, Gough Island,
located in the South Atlantic, is part of the Europe and North America
region because the government of the United Kingdom nominated the site.
The table below includes a breakdown of the sites according to these zones and their classification as of July 2019:
| Zone/region | Cultural | Natural | Mixed | Total | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Africa | 53 | 38 | 5 | 96 | 8.56% |
| Arab states | 78 | 5 | 3 | 86 | 7.67% |
| Asia and the Pacific | 189 | 67 | 12 | 268 | 23.91% |
| Europe and North America | 453 | 65 | 11 | 529 | 47.19% |
| Latin America and the Caribbean | 96 | 38 | 8 | 141 | 12.58% |
| Total | 869 | 213 | 39 | 1121 | 100% |
Countries with fifteen or more sites
Countries with fifteen or more World Heritage Sites as of July 2019:
Consequences
Despite
the successes of World Heritage listing in promoting conservation, the
UNESCO administered project has attracted criticism from some for
perceived under-representation of heritage sites outside Europe,
disputed decisions on site selection and adverse impact of mass tourism
on sites unable to manage rapid growth in visitor numbers.
A sizable lobbying industry
has grown around the awards because World Heritage listing has the
potential to significantly increase tourism revenue from sites selected.
Site listing bids are often lengthy and costly, putting poorer
countries at a disadvantage. Eritrea's efforts to promote Asmara is one example.
In 2016, the Australian government was reported to have successfully lobbied for Great Barrier Reef
conservation efforts to be removed from a UNESCO report titled 'World
Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate'. The Australian government's
actions were in response to their concern about the negative impact
that an 'at risk' label could have on tourism revenue at a previously
designated UNESCO World Heritage site.
A number of listed World Heritage locations such as George Town, Penang, and Casco Viejo, Panama,
have struggled to strike the balance between the economic benefits of
catering to greatly increased visitor numbers and preserving the
original culture and local communities that drew the recognition.
