Our World Heritage, an initiative by an apparently broad-based group of individuals in the heritage conservation business, has been launched with an agenda to act as watchdog for (and maybe even reform) UNESCO’s Convention on World Heritage.
Unofficial and independent, Our World Heritage has an impressive collection of participants and supports from academia, NGOs, and local and international heritage groups. As the press launch put it, this represents “a rich diversity of cultures, ages, genders, background and expertise to bear on the challenges our heritage is facing”.
Their starting point is of course that “in our rapidly changing world there is an urgent need to preserve all heritage, at international, national and local levels”.
Beyond that, however, there’s a clear view that the World Heritage Convention – “an important international treaty that has for almost 50 years played a major role in expanding heritage legislation worldwide and identifying and promoting the protection of a growing list of the World’s most unique sites” – is in urgent need of a refresh.
Intergovernmental bureaucracies can be clumsy and unwieldy, bogged down in wordy legalese, burdened by innumerable committees that appear to be a substitute for real action, and subject to politics, posturing, and PR. Equally, they can be a substantial force for good, bringing together disparate actors and finding common ground.
Most will fall somewhere in the middle, and that seems to the fate of UNESCO’s Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. Established in 1972 and now ratified by 192 states, it was described during the press launch as “the most widely ratified international convention in human history”.
That came from Irina Bokova, DG of UNESCO between 2009 and 2017 and probably the most successful incumbent of that role. She also acknowledged that the Convention has to some extent become a victim of its own success; it’s easy for a government to pay lip service to its ideals and goals, and for a subsequent government to ignore or reverse heritage protection measures implemented by domestic political foes.
In the face of such obstacles – compounded by climate change, pandemics, pressures to increase tourism revenues, infrastructure investments, and wars and their consequences for local populations as well as heritage sites – it’s no surprise that UNESCO’s Big Idea has suffered a lack of positive action. Our World Heritage has no problem with the ambition of the Convention on World Heritage – “when [it] was created in 1972, it was the expression of a collective vision for the protection of the masterpieces of human genius and of the marvels of nature”.
The Convention outlines “protection and conservation” imperatives; but instead forcing someone to actually do something the main body in charge of the implementation of the Convention, the World Heritage Committee, has resorted to making lists. It has developed precise criteria for adding properties to the World Heritage List, and there are now 1,121 of these threatened heritage issues – all deserving of protection (they must be if they fulfil those elaborately calculated criteria) and all cleverly documented with lots of data analysis and pie-chart summaries.
But still Venice is threatened by cruise-ship tourism, there’s an airport planned for Machu Picchu, and at least 1,000 sq km in one of Africa’s largest wilderness areas is at risk from the construction of a major Tanzanian hydroelectric project.
That last one is something of an object lesson. The Selous Game Reserve was added to the Convention’s World Heritage List in 1982 (and in 2014 to the List of World Heritage in Danger after the population of elephants there plummeted due to poaching). “The Stiegler’s Gorge dam project is unacceptable – it would cut the heart out of the Selous reserve, with catastrophic impacts on the site’s wildlife and habitats,” says Peter Shadie, Director of IUCN’s World Heritage Programme (the official advisor on natural World Heritage).
“The commitment to protect World Heritage sites for future generations is a collective one, which neither Tanzania nor any other country can choose to ignore.”
And what’s the upshot? Selous could be removed from the World Heritage List, which in turn means it can’t access the modest sums available from the World Heritage Fund. That’ll show ‘em.
Incidentally, there are just 52 other properties that the World Heritage Committee has decided to include on the List of World Heritage in danger. So that’s 1,068 on the full World Heritage List which are ok then.
Our World Heritage says “mechanisms that can help in monitoring and preventing damage to properties barely exist … The public – from local communities to international organisations – are seldom aware of how their States vote and behave at sessions of the international World Heritage Committee and often have very limited information on a site’s true state of conservation”.
It aims to counter these destructive trends and refresh the original mission of the World Heritage Convention. It says it will do this “by engaging citizens, civil society groups and professional and academic organisations”, using “new information gathering and monitoring tools open to the public” that it intends to develop during 2021 in a series of monthly online open-to-all ‘activities’. The end goal: “to adapt the world heritage system to the needs of the 21st century”.
Exactly what these ‘tools’ will be and how they will operate – presumably that’s the task of the online group meetings. But a number of possibles have been listed by Our World Heritage.
The most explicit is “a major global event and conference on the future of the world’s heritage … [it] will be organised in April 2022, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention”. There’s no word on what it will comprise, where it will be held, or indeed who will be doing the organising – five months is a short time to set up any kind of event, let alone a major global one, and there is the small matter of a major global pandemic that might confuse the issue. Still, at least something firm has been promised.
Not so firm (yet) but potentially more immediate is what’s being called a ‘global partnership network’ comprising individuals, organisations and institutions, academic and professional. This will exchange information, raise public awareness, create petitions and campaigns, use social and traditional media to get information into the public realm, and (of course) “engage local and regional communities” (all such initiatives seem to want to engage communities).
An interesting complement to this might be the proposed ‘crisis forum’, an open, online, real-time message board to flag up situations where heritage sites are threatened and track developments.
Tracking could be done by a comprehensive online monitoring tool, presumably a formalised method of assessing risk and comparing progress (or lack of it) against plans. “This will be supported by a global heritage index, assessing heritage protection over time”. There could also be a repository of information on critical issues facing sites, “to help broaden public understanding of the fragility of our heritage”.
And just to make sure everyone knows what they ought to be talking about, what Our World Heritage is actually for, and what we can do next, there will be a series of advocacy forums. These could end up being a tad academic, but at least they won’t be committees – as yet, there is no talk of committees. These forums carry a bold and high-minded ambition to refocus decision-making (and presumably to hold the World Heritage Convention to account) via “a thorough shared understanding of universal, national and local values and their socio-ecological context by all stakeholders, including local communities and indigenous peoples; a respect for diversity, equity, gender equality and human rights and the use of inclusive and participatory planning and stakeholder consultation processes”.
Phew. And all that’s going to be done by “a series of advocacy forums”?
Clearly Our World Heritage is going to need some direction. At the moment it seems open in its construction, democratic in its operation, and noble in its aspirations. No one is being asked for subscriptions, and no one is calling themselves ‘the organising committee’.
But if it really is to push hard for increased appreciation of the value of heritage on a world scale, and the dangers of losing it, there may have to be some organisation – and maybe even some direction. We’ll keep you posted.
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