4 Decisions
0 Resolutions
Year start: 1977close
Year end: 1977close
Theme: Credibility of the World Heritage Listclose
By Year
It was the opinion of several members that the Committee should issue a statement on the whole philosophy underlying the Convention and, in particular, the need for a World Heritage List. Others felt that the discussion on the criteria for inclusion of properties in the List would necessarily raise the philosophical concepts involved.
Several members felt strongly that the World Heritage List should be exclusive and that, because of its impact, the List - in which balance would be sought geographically and between cultural and natural properties - should be drawn up with extreme care. Responsibility for ensuring the exclusive character of the List would rest first of all, with the States nominating properties and secondly, with the Committee which would have the right to reject nominations; the adoption of criteria which would be used by the Committee to filter nominations therefore constituted a very important first ...
The feasibility of adopting criteria gave rise to some discussion, with member's referring to the difficulty already experienced in establishing criteria at the national level, to the changing and subjective nature of evaluations of qualities, to the impact of Western thought and to the difference between perception from within a given culture and perception from outside. The representative of ICOMOS, in reply, recognized the difficulty of drafting criteria to be applied to cultural property throughout the world and of translating concepts into words that were meaningful on a universal ...
Hope was expressed that sufficient information would be provided to States to enable them to select properties that were truly eligible for inclusion in the List and that the criteria adopted would assist States in restricting their choice of properties nominated. In this connection, one proposal put forward sought to impose on States a limit in the number of properties that they might submit in the first instance but, on reflection this was not considered advisable. It was, however, decided that States would be advised to limit the number of nominations submitted at a given time, on the ...