World Heritage Site: Encyclopedia - World Heritage Site

World Heritage Site

A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a specific site (such as a forest, mountain range, lake, desert, building, complex, or city) that has been nominated for the international World Heritage Programme administered by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee.

The programme aims to catalogue, name, and preserve sites of outstanding importance, either cultural or natural, to the common heritage of humankind. Listed sites can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund under certain conditions. The programme was founded with the Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage that was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on 16 November 1972. 180 state parties (countries) have since then ratified the convention.

As of 2005, a total of 812 sites have been included in the list (628 cultural, 160 natural and 24 mixed properties in 137 state parties). Note that UNESCO references each World Heritage Site with a unique identifying number. However, often a new inscription has included previous sites now listed as part of a larger description. As a result, the numbering system currently ends above 1100, but there are fewer than that on the actual list. Currently, Italy is the country that held the highest number of World Heritages Sites with 40 in total.

Each World Heritage Site is the property of the country on whose territory the site is located, but it is considered in the interest of the international community to preserve each site for future generations of humankind. The protection and conservation of these sites is a concern of all the 180 World Heritage countries.

World Heritage Site - History

World Heritage Site - Pre-Convention

In 1959, the government of Egypt decided to build the Aswan High Dam, an event that would flood a valley containing treasures of ancient civilization such as the Abu Simbel temples. UNESCO then launched a worldwide safeguarding campaign, despite appeals from the governments of Egypt and Sudan. The Abu Simbel and Philae temples were taken apart, moved to a higher location, and put back together piece-by-piece.

The cost of the project was approximately US $80 million, about $40 million of which was collected from 50 different countries. It was widely regarded as a total success, and led to other safeguarding campaigns (saving Venice and its lagoon in Italy, the ruins of Moenjodaro 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 the common cultural heritage of humankind.

World Heritage Site - Convention and Background

The United States initiated the idea of combining cultural conservation with nature conservation. A 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 Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden.

A single text was ultimately agreed on by all parties involved, and the Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on 16 November 1972.

World Heritage Site - Nominating Process

A country must first take an inventory of all its significant cultural and natural properties. This is called the Tentative List, and is important because a country may not nominate properties that have not already been included on the Tentative List. Next, it can select a property off this list to make into a Nomination File. The World Heritage Centre offers advice and help in preparing this file, which needs to be as comprehensive as possible.

At this point, the file is independently evaluated by two organizations: 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 the decision to request more information from the States Parties. There are ten selection criteria that a site must meet to be included on the list.

World Heritage Site - Selection Criteria

Until the end of 2004, there were six criteria for cultural heritage and four criteria for natural heritage. In 2005, this was modified so that there is only one set of ten criteria. Nominated sites must be of "outstanding universal value" and meet at least one of the ten criteria.

Cultural Criteria

• I. "to represent a masterpiece of human creative genius";
• II. "to exhibit 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";
• III. "to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared";
• IV. "to be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history";
• V. "to be an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land-use, or sea-use which is representative of a culture (or cultures), or human interaction with the environment especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change";
• VI. "to be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance. (The Committee considers that this criterion should preferably be used in conjunction with other criteria)";

Natural Criteria

• VII. "to contain superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance";
• VIII. "to be outstanding examples 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";
• IX. "to be outstanding examples 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";
• X. "to contain 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."

World Heritage Site - List of World Heritage Sites

• List of World Heritage Sites in Africa
• List of World Heritage Sites in Asia and Australasia
• List of World Heritage Sites in Europe
• List of World Heritage Sites in the Americas
• List of World Heritage Sites in danger

See also

• List of conservation topics
• World Network of Biosphere Reserves

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "World Heritage Site", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki