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UNESCO & World Heritage

Rodica Woodbury, January 2006

"Heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations."

UNESCO World Heritage Sites are the prized marbles in the traveler's rucksack of collected experiences. Maybe it's the exquisite fusion of the momentary and eternal as we add our footprints to the dust of the myriad before us... maybe it's an inherently personal need to pay tribute to the cultural and natural superlatives of our collective humanity. Whatever the reason, we seek out these ethereal places on the far-flung corners of the map and join the pilgrimage to answer the universal call of wonder.

The roots of World Heritage:
Two years before the end of World War II, the Education Ministers of the European countries fighting Nazi Germany met in Britain to devise a plan to rebuild their collapsed education systems. The project struck a universal chord and, over the next couple of years, many other governments (including the U.S.) joined the conference. Shortly after the war ended, on 16 November 1945, thirty-seven countries founded the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization--UNESCO--with the goal of establishing the "intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind" and, hopefully, thereby eliminating the causes for a future world war.

Over the next two and a half decades, UNESCO turned its globally-minded, education-focused spotlight on both manmade and natural places with intrinsic and enduring value. The concept of universal heritage was born, and, in 1972, an international treaty--the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage--was established "to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity."

Making it onto the List:
The process of inscribing a site to the World Heritage List begins with the submission by a country (Member State) of a "Tentative List"--a comprehensive inventory of all its significant cultural and natural places. (Without this list, a country may not nominate any individual property for consideration as a World Heritage Site.) Next, the country selects a specific property from the Tentative List and creates a "Nomination File" to be turned over to the International Council on Monuments and Sites, and the World Conservation Union for independent review and evaluation.

In addition to having "outstanding universal value," the site must meet at least one of the ten established criteria for being inscribed onto the List. For example, among the "Cultural Criteria" is: "to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared." And, on the list of "Natural Criteria" is: "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."

As the final step, the World Heritage Committee (191 countries), in their annual meeting, reviews the recommendations and determines whether or not the site becomes an official part of the World Heritage List.

Currently, the World Heritage List includes 812 properties in 137 countries which UNESCO has deemed universally valuable. Of these, 628 are cultural sites, 160 are natural spaces, and 24 combine the two. As you read this piece, UNESCO celebrates its 60th anniversary with international events planned throughout 2006.