Nested BoxesTangible Cultural Heritage and Environmental Protection in Light of Climate Change

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.

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.


2004 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger O'Keefe

The preamble to the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage 1972 (the ‘World Heritage Convention’),1adopted 30 years ago, testifies to the conviction of the States Parties ‘that deterioration or disappearance of any item of the cultural…heritage constitutes a harmful impoverishment of the heritage of all the nations of the world’.2It speaks of the recognized ‘importance, for all the peoples of the world, of safeguarding this unique and irreplaceable property, to whatever people it may belong’3and declares ‘that parts of the cultural…heritage…of outstanding interest…need to be preserved as part of the world heritage of mankind as a whole’.4


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josh B. Martin

Abstract Despite growing recognition of the global value of underwater cultural heritage (uch), along with intensified international efforts to ensure its protection, the possibility of its inscription on the World Heritage List has never been comprehensively examined. Arguing that the unesco 2001 Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage (uch Convention) is insufficient alone to protect globally outstanding wrecks, such as the Titanic and the Lusitania, this article examines in detail the many legal and practical challenges involved with listing such sites under the World Heritage Convention. By reviewing key international agreements such as the uch Convention, World Heritage Convention, Law of the Sea Convention and the International Titanic Agreement, it draws the conclusion that it is the improved offshore management of uch—through ‘cultural’ marine protected areas operating under the framework of the uch Convention—which would open the possibility of nomination to the World Heritage List.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-77

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 an outstanding universal value. In 1994, at the Nara Conference, the Document of Authenticity was adopted, 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”. Since 1997, States Parties have to provide regular reports on the implementation of the World Heritage Convention and the conservation status of each site listed on the World Heritage List. So far, two periodic reports have been made (2000-2006 and 2008-2015), and the third was recently launched (2017-2022).


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

Abstract:Indigenous peoples’ emphasis on protecting their cultural heritage (including land) through a human rights-based approach reveals the synergies and conflicts between the World Heritage Convention and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). This article focuses on how their insistence on the right to participate effectively in decision-making and centrality of free, prior, and informed consent as defined in the UNDRIP exposes the limitations of existing United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and World Heritage Convention processes effecting Indigenous peoples, cultures, and territories and how these shortcomings can be addressed. By tracking the evolution of the UNDRIP and the World Heritage Convention from their drafting and adoption to their implementation, it examines how the realization of Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination concerning cultural heritage is challenging international law to become more internally consistent in its interpretation and application and international organizations to operate in accordance with their constitutive instruments.


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