Historic Centre of Bukhara

• Recent hotel constructions which would negatively affect the integrity of the property (issue resolved)
• Heavy traffic, pollution and poor sewege system (issue resolved)
• Managements systems/Management Plan (Lack of a proper conservation and management plan; Lack of guidelines for rehabilitation of housing)
• Management activities (Lack of coordination with regard to the conservation and restoration activities carried out as part of the State Programme; Lack of on-going routine maintenance and varying state of conservation of monuments)
• Housing, Development (Use of new building material and methods, inappropriate restoration and reconstruction methods; Utilities or Service Infrastructure)
• Ground Transport Infrastructure (Roads)
• Archaeological excavation and rebuilding on the Shakhristan Market site
• Others: Degradation of traditional houses

Total amount provided: 2016: USD 30,670 from the UNESCO/Netherlands Funds-in-Trust project for the Application of the UNESCO Recommendation on Historic Urban landscape (HUL, 2011) at the World Heritage properties ‘Historic Centre of Bukhara’ and ‘Samarkand – Crossroads of Cultures’

An ICOMOS Advisory mission visited the property in April 2018. Subsequently, the State Party submitted state of conservation reports on 1 December 2018 and 3 January 2019. Both reports are available at https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/602/documents/ and highlight the State Party’s following actions:

• The Cabinet Resolution of 9 July 2018 aligns the national conservation policy with the World Heritage Convention;
• An Interagency Task Force was created to address emerging issues at the property;
• A roadmap has been developed to address the conservation of the property;
• A moratorium has been placed on all construction work and upgrades to the property until management documents have been drafted and reviewed;
• A consultant has been engaged to develop a City Master Plan, including a Detailed Planning Draft that covers the period until 2022, taking into account the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of the property;
• The Cabinet passed Resolution No. 435, which grants the property the status of ‘specially protected area’. This resolution also expressed the need to develop appropriate guidelines and regulations for the property, including conservation, management and tourism regulations.

At the local level, the Bukhara municipal authorities have created a World Heritage Property Steering Committee, tasked with implementing the Management Plan using a system of protective zones. The State Party included the document ‘Maintaining and Use of Protected Zones Regime, 2018’ as an annex to its report, which outlines protection zones in the city and presents general provisions, which will inform the Master Plan for the property, currently under development. It is planned that these zones will be integrated into the cadastre. The Protected Zones Regime was subject to an ICOMOS Technical Review.

The Inspectorate for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage, as the body mandated to manage the property, has carried out the following tasks:

• Set up a process of local and community stakeholder consultation;
• Started an investigation into appropriate techniques and materials required for restoration projects, and established a research laboratory for this purpose;
• Established an inventory to define the site boundaries and demarcated the property boundaries with signage;
• Revised and updated the Management Plan and obtained approval from the Cabinet of Ministers;
• Commissioned archaeological investigations in the new Shakhristan market area.

The State Party has entered into an agreement with the UNESCO International Institute for Central Asian Studies (IICAS), which will act as the coordinating authority for Heritage Impact Assessments (HIA) for all projects planned within the property. These HIAs will also be submitted to the World Heritage Centre for review by the Advisory Bodies.  The Joint World Heritage Centre/ICOMOS High-Level mission to Shakhrisyabz in January 2019 also visited Bukhara, where they organized a training session and met with officials.

The protection, management and maintenance of the authenticity and integrity of the Historic City of Bukhara have been a source of great concern since 1997 (see WHC.97/CONF.208/04B and WHC.97/CONF.208/08B). The April 2018 ICOMOS Advisory mission reported recent widespread damage and destruction of attributes of the property’s OUV as a direct result of the Project of Detailed Planning of the Historical Centre of Bukhara Development (PDP), which is based on a national decree to stimulate tourism development in the property and its region. The PDP has improved living conditions through the installation of civic services and includes large-scale construction, restoration, and infrastructural development; however, it has also led to the collapse of sections of important monuments, to a widening of streets, and to changes in the property’s urban topography, potentially destroying archaeological attributes. The PDP was not assessed through an HIA, and the projects it foresees were not communicated to the World Heritage Centre before implementation began. The 2018 Advisory mission noted that the continued implementation of the PDP could have serious, irreversible negative impacts on the OUV of the property, as could reconstruction activities at damaged monuments utilising inappropriate methods and materials.

The 2018 mission concluded that the management and planning systems for the property are inadequate and suffer from a lack of human resources. The Committee may therefore urge the State Party to adopt urgent legal and institutional measures to control urban development. The mission also reported that, although an Integrated Management Plan for the property was completed in 2017, it has not yet been submitted for review by the Advisory Bodies or legally adopted.

It is a source of great concern that the Master Plan has been adopted without being reviewed by the Advisory Bodies, and the Committee may wish to request that the State Party submit the Master Plan as soon as possible. The development of appropriate conservation and restoration guidelines and the provision of a thorough legal framework for the protection of the property’s OUV remains an urgent priority. It is also important that the Management Plan for the property be integrated with the Master Plan in line with the approach of the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape.

Additionally, while the reported stakeholder consultation process is very welcome, its effectiveness requires verification. Prior to holding architectural design competitions for new projects or commencing any new development project or major restoration works, detailed proposals should be sent to the World Heritage Centre for review, in accordance with Paragraph 172 of the Operational Guidelines.

The State Party’s decision to adopt Cabinet resolutions for the protection of the property, impose a moratorium on construction and development within the property, and establish a restoration laboratory is welcomed. However, it remains unclear whether the moratorium covers both the property and its buffer zone, and it is crucial to continue observing this moratorium until appropriate management systems, conservation and development guidelines and HIA processes are in place and proven to be effective. The relationship between the newly established World Heritage Property Steering Committee, the Inspectorate for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage and Interagency Task Team remains to be clarified.

The Protected Zones Regime is welcomed, but as highlighted in the ICOMOS technical review, it is not aligned with the terminology of the World Heritage Convention, and it remains unclear whether the zones correspond to the boundaries of the property and its buffer zone. This document needs to be revised, submitted for review by the Advisory Bodies, and registered in the cadastre.

More information is required regarding the scale, scope and mandate of the State Party’s Interagency Task Force and on the conservation roadmap. Due to the reported negative impacts of recent developments on the property’s OUV, and in view of the challenges faced in managing the property and its OUV, it is recommended that the Interagency Task Force’s mandate include overseeing the development of an appropriate legal and management system and of conservation and development policies and guidelines. It is further recommended that a Reactive Monitoring mission visit the property, with a view to considering the full scope of the projects, both planned and underway, and to reviewing the factors that constitute a threat to the property and considering whether there is an ascertained or potential danger to the OUV of the property.