INTERNATIONAL CONSERVATION DIPLOMACY AND THE WORLD HERITAGE CONVENTION

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Notes

1 David Takacs, The Idea of Biodiversity: Philosophies of Paradise 216 (1996).

2 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage 11 ILM 1358 (1972).

3 Russell E. Train, World Heritage: A Vision for the Future, in World Heritage 2002: Shared Legacy, Common Responsibility 36–38 (World Heritage Center, UNESCO, 2003).

4 Although IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, is now known as the World Conservation Union, the IUCN acronym has been retained. IUCN serves as the principal advisory body to the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO and to the World Heritage Center, which serves as the Convention Secretariat at UNESCO on natural heritage and environmental management issues. IUCN has a mixed membership of nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and governments.

5 ICOMOS, the International Council of Monuments and Sites, is the counterpart of IUCN for all cultural heritage matters related to the work of the Convention.

6 The World Parks Congress is a decennial event. Congresses have been held in Yosemite (1962), Yellowstone (1972), Bali (1982), Caracas (1992), and Durban (2003). The Durban Congress was postponed by a year to avoid overlap with the UN Summit on Sustainable Development, held in August 2002 in Johannesburg.

7 Jim Thorsell, World Heritage: Effectiveness 1992–2002 and Lessons for Governance. Background Paper prepared for Parks Canada workshop on Governance of Protected Areas, World Parks Congress, Durban, September 2003; and Jim Thorsell, World Heritage: 20 Years later, World Parks Congress Workshop Proceedings, IUCN, 1992.

8 Convention on Biological Diversity (Rio de Janeiro) 31 ILM 822 (1992).

9 The Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention are, next to the Convention text itself, the most important statutory document guiding the implementation of the Convention. In the July 2002 version of the Guidelines (all references cited herein and in the main text of the paper refer to this version unless otherwise indicated), the six cultural heritage criteria, related conditions of authenticity, and their applications are detailed in paragraphs 23–42. The four natural heritage criteria and related conditions of integrity are described in paragraphs 43–45. Since 1998, the Guidelines have undergone a major revision. A new version is being finalized for dissemination in the first quarter of 2004 and will have some important differences compared to earlier versions. One will be the numbering of the criteria for nominating/evaluating World Heritage properties. The six cultural heritage criteria (C(i)–(vi)) and the four natural heritage criteria (N(i)–(iv)) will be combined and presented as a single set of ten criteria numbered from (i) through (x). This will then also introduce changes in the World Heritage List, which until 2003 used the C/N distinction to refer to sites included in the List.

10 The World Heritage List is available at www.unesco.org/whc/. This web site also provides ready access to other important statutory documents of the Convention, including: the text of the Convention, the July 2002 version of the Operational Guidelines, the List of World Heritage in Danger, and brief descriptions of sites included in the World Heritage List.

11 Outstanding universal value (OUV) is the most important key phrase in the definitions of cultural and natural heritage in Articles 1 and 2, respectively, of the Convention. It is the only phrase that is consistently repeated in all of the six paragraphs defining cultural and natural heritage in the two Articles concerned.

12 Paragraph 36 of the Operational Guidelines (July 2002 version) says: “Cultural landscapes represent the ‘combined works of nature and of man’ referred to by Article 1 of the Convention.” Prior to 1992, the reference to the “combined works of nature and of man” was part of natural heritage criterion (iii), where there is reference to areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance. Given the Convention's reference to “combined works of nature and of man” in the definition of cultural heritage but not in that of natural heritage in Article 2 of the Convention, a workshop at the Fourth World Parks Congress in Caracas in 1992 recommended that such sites be part of the World Cultural Heritage rather than the World Natural Heritage set. This recommendation was accepted and the revised natural heritage criterion (iii) now reads as it is presented in paragraph 44(iii) of the Guidelines. Other important revisions to the natural heritage criteria in 1992 make “biodiversity” part of the definition of natural heritage criterion (iv). Also see Cultural Landscapes of Universal Value: Components of a Global Strategy (Bernd von Droste, Harold Plachter, and Mechtild Rossler eds., 1995).

13 World Heritage was one of the three cross-cutting themes at the Durban Congress, the others being marine protected areas and people and equity. Heritage figured prominently in the various workshops and plenary sessions and in field trips associated with the Congress. World Heritage also became a center of attention in discussions concerning the role of extractive industries and new partnerships for protected areas. This was triggered by public declarations made immediately prior to the Congress by representatives of the mining and the oil and gas industries that they intend to treat World Natural Heritage sites as “no-go” areas for exploration and development.

14 The information presented in Figure 1 is the same as that in the Action Plan adopted in Durban on 17 September 2003. Actions have been numbered (they were “bullet-points” in the original text adopted in Durban) for easy reference in the discussions in this paper.

15 “Every State Party to this Convention shall, in so far as possible, submit to the World Heritage Committee an inventory of property forming part of the cultural and natural heritage, situated in its territory and suitable for inclusion in the list provided for in paragraph 2 of this Article. This inventory, which shall not be considered exhaustive, shall include documentation about the location of the property in question and its significance” (Article 11, paragraph 1 of the Convention).

16 The World's Greatest Natural Areas: An Indicative Inventory of Natural Sites of World Heritage Quality (IUCN, 1982).

17 John and Kathy MacKinnon, Review of the protected area system in the Indo-Malayan realm (IUCN, 1986).

18 Kent H. Redford et al., Mapping the Conservation Landscape, 17 Conservation Biology 116–131 (2003).

19 Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Government of Indonesia, & UNESCO, World Heritage Forests: The World Heritage Convention as a mechanism for conserving tropical forest biodiversity (CIFOR, Indonesia, 1999). See also Jeffrey Sayer et al., Tropical forest biodiversity and the World Heritage Convention, 29 AMBIO 302–309 (2000).

20 Proceedings of the Asia-Pacific Forum on Karst Ecosystems and World Heritage, Gunung Mulu National Park World Heritage Area, Sarawak, Malaysia (Tim Wong, Elery Hamilton-Smith, Stuart Chape, and Hans Friederich eds., IUCN, Bangkok, Thailand 2001).

21 Proceedings of the World Heritage Marine Biodiversity Workshop, World Heritage Paper No. 4 (UNESCO 2002).

22 The Boreal Forest Study: Finding exceptional protected area sites in the boreal ecozone that could merit World Heritage status, Consultation draft (compiled by Daniel Cantin, Alexei Blagovidov, and Alexei Butorin and edited by Clarisse Kehler Siebert) (IUCN, February 2003).

23 “For the purposes of this Convention, international protection of the world cultural and natural heritage shall be understood to mean the establishment of a system of international co-operation and assistance designed to support States Parties to the Convention in their efforts to conserve and identify that heritage” (Article 7 of the Convention).

24 Conservation Finance Alliance is an alliance of NGOs and bi- and multilateral donor organizations. For details refer to the web site at http://www.conservationfinance.org

25 UNF was established as a public charity in the United States to manage the donation of U.S. $1 billion pledged to “UN causes” by Ted Turner, the founder of CNN. Environment, including biodiversity and climate change, is one of the four UN causes supported by UNF grants channeled through the UN Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP) to various UN agencies for execution of specific projects and programs.

26 Michael R. Appleton, Progress and Problems for Human Resources Development for Protected Area Management in ASEAN Member Countries, Paper presented at the Capacity Building Workshop held in preparation for the Durban Congress, in Hanoi, Vietnam by the ASEAN Regional Center for Biodiversity Conservation (January 2003).

27 Scott Guggenheim et al., Investing in Biodiversity: A Review of Indonesia's Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (World Bank, 1999).

28 Nicholas P. Lapham & Rebecca J. Livermore, Ensuring Conservation's Place on the International Biodiversity Assistance Agenda (Conservation International, 2003).

29 See Thorsell, supra note 7.