UNESCO, cultural heritage, and outstanding universal value: value-based analyses of the World Heritage and Intangible Cultural Heritage Conventions

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 528-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Bortolotto
Ethnologies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 383-403
Author(s):  
Richard MacKinnon

Since Canada has signed the UNESCO Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage of 1972, it has had some eighteen cultural and natural sites selected for the World Heritage List that represent internationally significant nature reserves and natural wonders, significant Canadian architectural history, important sites representing Canadian aboriginal culture and geological treasures of world-wide importance. These internationally significant sites have put Canada on the world stage in both the heritage conservation field and in the national and international tourism sector. What Canada has decided to inscribe on this list has had a major impact at the local, regional, national and international arenas. The author of this paper reflects on some of the ancillary guiding charters and conventions since the World Heritage Convention was implemented that have led to where we are today in the field of heritage conservation in Canada. He goes on to predict some areas where heritage conservation will be going in Canada in the near future. He argues that Canada could likewise have its rich intangible culture play a similarly significant role if the Canadian government signed the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage of 2003. Last, he discusses some of the recent developments in eastern Canada in intangible cultural heritage, conservation and the sustaining of traditions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 227-242

Since 1972 UNESCO has established a frame of protection for cultural and natural heritage (Convention concerning the protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage) and the “World Heritage List”, which it considers as having outstanding universal value. In 1994, at the Nara Conference, the Document on Authenticity was established, stating that “the protection and enhancement of cultural and heritage diversity in our world should be actively promoted as an essential aspect of human development”. Today, many factors affect the authenticity and integrity of cultural heritage: intensive tourism, excessive restoration works, new inappropriate investments or uncorrelated private interventions, etc. The debates on cultural heritage research, preservation and management have increased in recent years as the effect of UNESCO standards, namely to establish “an effective system of collective protection of the cultural and natural heritage of outstanding universal value, organized on a permanent basis and in accordance with modern scientific methods”. The problem of preservation, management, and promotion of heritage is of crucial importance from many points of views: scientific, technologic, socio-economic, and cultural.


Author(s):  
Forrest Craig ◽  
Corrin Jennifer

This chapter addresses the protection of cultural heritage in Oceania. How the peoples of Oceania relate to their environment is through the prism of heritage. That heritage is holistic, embracing all life, and is both tangible and intangible. Understood through cultural traditions, it defines their cultural identity and remains inseparable from their social, economic, and environmental well-being. The States of Oceania have not engaged with the protection of cultural heritage at an international level, and, while party to the World Heritage and Intangible Cultural Heritage Conventions, the level of protection is modest, though increasing in significance.


Author(s):  
Ottavio Quirico

The international protection of tangible cultural heritage overlaps with that of the environment, ranging from the conservation of biodiversity to the prevention of desertification. Against this background, the phenomenon of climate change raises questions that challenge the fundamentals of the World Heritage Convention, which protects cultural heritage and interlinked natural heritage. Global warming critically affects cultural sites of outstanding universal value, such as the city of Venice, and depletes mixed cultural and natural sites inscribed on the World Heritage List, such as Tassili n’Ajjer. Arguably, the World Heritage Convention is lex specialis with respect to international environmental regulation as concerns localized adaptation and mitigation measures protecting sites of outstanding universal value. By contrast, environmental regulation, notably the UNFCCC regime as reviewed in Paris in December 2015, is lex specialis as concerns general mitigation and adaptation, systemically integrating the protection of tangible cultural heritage. This argument also applies to intangible cultural heritage, including a human rights perspective. In fact, the fundamental right to culture has been invoked in international jurisdictions to protect intangible heritage, but still remains lex generalis with respect to the UNFCCC regime. As in a set of nested boxes, such an interactive pattern outlines a basic paradigm to shape the broader intersection between the regulatory regimes protecting tangible cultural heritage and the environment in international law.


2019 ◽  
pp. 125-135
Author(s):  
Viktoriia Pilkevych

The author studies UNESCO’s activities in the cultural sphere, especially the protection and preservation of cultural heritage around the world. There is World Heritage List. Sites must be of outstanding universal value and meet the special criteria to be included on this List. Countries are trying to include their cultural objects for protection. Cultural heritage is architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and painting, elements or structures of an archaeological nature groups of buildings which are of outstanding universal value. The World Heritage Committee is responsible for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention («Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage»,1972), gives financial assistance and decides on the listing or deletion of properties in the List of World Heritage in Danger. The List of World Heritage in Danger informs the international community of threat and to encourage corrective action. Special attention was given to European cultural and natural sites which are in this list. These are sites in Serbia (Medieval Monuments in Kosovo (2006)), United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City (2012)), Austria (Historic Centre of Vienna (2017)). This article focuses on the reasons for listing in the List of World Heritage in Danger (different conflicts, war, natural disasters, pollution, poaching, uncontrolled urbanization, tourist development etc.). Author outlines problems of protection world cultural heritage that need to be solved in the future. International community can help in this problem because each site in World Heritage List has outstanding universal value in our life. The author emphasizes on high importance of cultural sphere of the UNESCO’s activities.


Author(s):  
Strecker Amy

This chapter examines the protection of landscape in international cultural heritage law. Since the inclusion of ‘cultural landscapes’ within the scope of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention in 1992, landscape has gained increasing importance at the international level. However, given the focus of the World Heritage Convention on landscapes of ‘outstanding universal value’, it was not until the adoption of the European Landscape Convention (ELC) in 2000 that landscape became democratized. The ELC conceives of landscape above all as a people’s landscape and, accordingly, provides for the active participation of the public in the formulation of plans and polices. It focuses not only on outstanding places but also on the everyday and degraded landscapes where most people live and work. This ostensibly brings ‘landscape’ back to its early etymological origins—when it corresponded to a close-up, lived-in perspective—and has a number of implications for human rights and democracy.


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