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It is a great pleasure for me to share this 50th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention celebration with you. Over the past five decades, the World Heritage Convention has protected and promoted humanity’s treasures and transformed the way we value and safeguard heritage. In this issue we look at a few key sites that have marked turning points for the Convention, ...

It is a great pleasure to meet for this extended 44th session of the World Heritage Committee to be held from 16 to 31 July 2021 in Fuzhou, China and online. As China is home to a prodigious array of stunning natural sites and ancient cultural sites – from the iconic Great Wall and the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries to the Silk Roads and the amazing round buildings of the ...

I am particularly pleased that the 43rd session of the World Heritage Committee will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan. We are very grateful to our generous hosts for organizing this session in a World Heritage city. Baku has always been at the crossroads of cultures. Situated along the western shore of the Caspian Sea, it is part of ancient trade routes from the Central Asian ...

The 40th session of the World Heritage Committee is taking place in Istanbul from 10 to 20 July 2016, and we are extremely grateful to Turkey for generously hosting this session. Turkey is a country at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, with a diverse heritage of civilizations that have been a cultural and historical influence worldwide. It is home to fifteen World ...

Wetlands are an essential, but often overlooked, aspect of our natural environment. They are vital sources of biodiversity and take many different forms – from lakes, rivers and swamps, to deltas and tidal flats, mangroves and coral reefs. Wetlands are found nearly everywhere, are essential to the survival of countless species of plants and animals, and are therefore ...

Traditions, ancestral knowledge and ways of life of local communities are essential elements of World Heritage. In the quest to continue safeguarding and promoting cultural and natural treasures of our humanity, UNESCO recognizes the importance of their active participation in World Heritage preservation and management, ensuring their integrity and authenticity. In this ...

Table of Contents In Focus World Heritage: cooperation, communication and capacity buildingThe inscription of a site can result in specific preservation challenges, making skilled and sustainable management practices crucial to protect its Outstanding Universal Value. Jiuzhaigou ValleyFrom isolation to ‘smart park’Jiuzhaigou Valley has completed the perfect transition from ...

World Heritage sites require an enormous number of resources for their protection. Conservation needs are met in different ways by governments, vibrant communities, or donors of many types. But increasingly the private sector is taking action with a powerful impact on conservation and management. Natural sites especially are impacted by industrial activities, and ‘no-go’ ...

The 1972 World Heritage Convention is truly unique. It is the only legal instrument conceived to protect both cultural and natural heritage, based on the principle of Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) – the value of a site that is irreplaceable and must be protected for the future. Each year, during its annual session, the World Heritage Committee adds new sites to the ...

The 14 World Heritage sites of Canada presented in this issue offer a fascinating pattern. Indeed, they reflect key aspects of the evolution of the very concept of World Heritage over the past 32 years. The sites predictably include historic cities like Old Québec and Lunenburg, great natural sites like Nahanni National Park, Wood Buffalo National Park, the Canadian ...

A number of World Heritage routes have played a significant part in the history of the five continents – and the way we focus on them in this issue illustrates how far our thinking has evolved in the thirty-five years since the World Heritage Convention was drafted and adopted. The initial idea was the logical outgrowth of the need to protect significant monuments ...

In this issue we are pleased to focus on the heritage of Africa and its sustainable development. The diversity and wealth of African heritage is extraordinary, from its large-scale ecosystems to modern architecture; from the memory of slavery and colonial heritage to cultural landscapes and sacred sites. Preserving this heritage is an ambitious and challenging task. Once ...

The year 2020 began with an unprecedented health crisis that has affected each one of us, and we still cannot predict its long-term effects. Not only have we been touched in our personal lives. Lockdown has perturbed our work, our communities and our industries, at times with devastating consequences. And this crisis is not yet over.  Inevitably, our World Heritage sites ...

This year, the World Heritage Committee will meet for its 41st session in the World Heritage site of the Historic Centre of Krakow. We are very pleased to be hosted by Poland, an early supporter of the World Heritage Convention whose experts even participated in the drafting of the Convention itself. Poland’s heritage sites represent many aspects of World Heritage: a ...

The World Heritage Convention was created in 1972 – nearly half a century ago – as a legal instrument to protect our most outstanding cultural and natural sites around the world. It has been adopted since by 194 countries, nearing universality. Concretely, the World Heritage Convention is implemented in myriad ways, big and small, by people around the world. In this issue, ...

Each year, the special issue of World Heritage coinciding with the annual World Heritage Committee session gives us the opportunity to focus on the heritage of a particular country or region. This year the 38th session of the Committee is hosted by the State of Qatar so we are taking a closer look at the cultural and natural heritage of this country, which deserves to be ...

Observing heritage sites from space for the sake of preservation has a long history. In the early 1920s, scientists were already using aerial photographs to map archaeological sites and to help detect changes not visible from the ground, such as buried roads and other remains. In 1972, the World Heritage Convention was adopted by UNESCO’s General Conference, and that same ...

The annual session of the World Heritage Committee is a crucial period for the Convention, and we are grateful to Germany for hosting us this year. The 39th session of the Committee is taking place as we celebrate the 70th anniversary of UNESCO, marking its accomplishments thus far and defining the way forward in the years to come. At the 39th session, the first annual ...

This year we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention: a unique legal instrument that protects both both cultural and natural heritage. Because of this, the World Heritage List includes the most spectacular sites across the globe, and continues to grow. The World Heritage Committee, made up of 21 elected countries, meets each year to assess the ...

Water: its role in human evolution. World Heritage sites offer a wide spectrum of water elements, from glorious water gardens to spectacular aqueducts, grand transport canals to ingenious water mills. This display of human creativity and ingenuity reveals the brilliance of our common heritage and the potential for future technological advances. By gaining a deeper ...