Understanding management in a World Heritage context: key current issues in Europe

Abstract

This paper examines the results of the Periodic Report for Europe, completed in 2015. The paper examines general trends in World Heritage and compares the results of Periodic Reporting, completed by member states, with those of Reactive Monitoring cases brought to the World Heritage Committee. It concludes that there have been improvements in the implementation of the World Heritage Convention in the last decade, but also recognises that there are still many pressures. In particular, there is a need to engage the interest of external stakeholders and decision-takers more closely and convince them better of the importance of heritage to society as a whole.

Keywords:

• World Heritage
• Periodic Reporting
• Reactive Monitoring
• stakeholders
• decision-takers

Acknowledgements

This paper is a revised version of that given at the Canterbury Conference on World Heritage Sites in a National Context: The Implementation of the 1972 UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. I am grateful to the organisers of the conference for allowing me the chance to put my paper into more permanent form.

My paper draws heavily on work commissioned by UNESCO for the review of the Second Cycle of Periodic Reporting in Europe, carried out by a team of experts and the World Heritage Centre between 2013 and 2015. I am most grateful to my colleagues in the expert team, Katri Lisitsin, Pierre Galland and Ole Soe Ericson, and to the staff of the World Heritage Centre, particularly Petya Totcharova, Alexandra Fiebig, Anatole Oudaille-Diethardt and Lise Sellem, for their input into this team effort and for allowing me to make use of the results of our work in this paper.

Note on contributor

Christopher Young is a cultural heritage consultant, having previously been Head of World Heritage and International Policy and then of International Advice at English Heritage for over 15 years, after being Director for the Hadrian’s Wall World Heritage Site. He has worked with UNESCO and others over many years on policy and management issues concerned with the implementation of the World Heritage Convention. He was part of the consultant team which analysed the results of the Second Cycle of Periodic Reporting in Europe, and also worked on the outputs of the First Cycle.

Notes

^1. UNESCO divides the world into five regions for the purposes of the World Heritage Convention and in fact Europe is grouped with North America. This paper deals solely with Europe since conditions in the USA and Canada are different and their Periodic Report was prepared separately.

^2. http://www.kent.ac.uk/law/research/projects/heritage [accessed 14 August 2015].

^3. See http://whc.unesco.org.

^4. UNESCO, “Periodic Reporting”, http://whc.unesco.org/en/periodicreporting/; UNESCO, Operational Guidelines, paragraphs 199–210 and Annex 7, http://whc.unesco.org/en/guidelines/ [accessed 2 November 2015].

^5. UNESCO, Operational Guidelines, paragraph 201.

^6. UNESCO, “Revised Periodic Reporting Questionnaires: Section I and Section II”, http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2008/whc08-32com-inf11Ee.pdf [accessed 2 November 2015].

^7. Ibid.

^8. UNESCO, Final Report, http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2015/whc15-39COM-10A-en.pdf [accessed 2 November 2015].

^9. Oudaille-Diethardt et al, World Heritage in Europe; see also UNESCO, “Europe and North America: Periodic Reports: Second Cycle Reports”, http://whc.unesco.org/en/eur-na/ [accessed 2 November 2015].

^10. UNESCO, “Periodic Reporting Questionnaire, Section I and II”, http://whc.unesco.org/en/pr-questionnaire/ [accessed 18 October 2015].

^11. The World Heritage Convention identifies three Advisory Bodies, the International Centre for Conservation in Rome, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

^12. UNESCO, Operational Guidelines, paragraphs 169 and 172.

^13. UNESCO, “Listing of Factors Affecting Properties”, http://whc.unesco.org/en/factors/ [accessed 2 November 2015].

^14. Veillon, State of Conservation, http://whc.unesco.org/en/soc/ [accessed 2 November 2015].

^15. UNESCO, Final Report.

^16. IUCN, “World Heritage Outlook”, http://www.worldheritageoutlook.iucn.org/ [accessed 2 November 2015].

^17. More detailed information can be found in the report to the World Heritage Committee: http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2015/whc15-39COM-10A-en.pdf [accessed 2 November 2015].

^18. Information supplied by World Heritage Centre.

^19. UNESCO, “30th Session of the Committee”, http://whc.unesco.org/en/sessions/30COM/documents/ [accessed 7 November 2015] for papers WHC-06/30.COM/11A.1 and WHC-06/30.COM/INF.11A and UNESCO, Periodic Report Action Plan, Europe 2005–2006, World Heritage Reports 20, http://whc.unesco.org/documents/publi_wh_papers_20_en.pdf [accessed 7 November 2015].

^20. Young, “Monitoring and Evaluation”.