The UNESCO World
Heritage Convention 1972 and the PUSH
Project
Paper
presented by Henry Cleere
Honorary Professor, Institute of Archaeology, University
College London;
World Heritage Coordinator, International Council on
Monuments and Sites, 1992–2002.
Introduction
There appear at first sight to be a number of
similarities between the objectives and structures of the
1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention and the PUSH
Partnership for Peace Project. The object of this paper is
to identify those similarities and also to highlight some
fundamental differences between the two concepts, so as to
enable PUSH to benefit from the successes of the UNESCO
Convention and at the same time to avoid the adoption of
policies and procedures that are not appropriate for PUSH.
The paper will concentrate on the cultural heritage, but
the same considerations and parameters apply equally to the
natural heritage.
The Convention
Awareness of the
significance of the cultural heritage of humankind at
national level may be claimed to have begun in 1666, with
the promulgation of a Royal Proclamation in Sweden. There
has been a steady build-up of legislation and the
concomitant administrative mechanisms since that time
(Cleere 1989; Prott & O’Keefe 1984; 1989). It was,
however, not until the 1920s that concern began to be
expressed regarding the protection of the cultural heritage
of the entire world, as distinct from that of individual
states, as part of the work of the League of Nations. Much
discussion followed but virtually no action: the only
positive result was the work on the convention on the
protection of the cultural heritage in time of war (the
Hague Convention 1954). With the establishment of the
United Nations, this work fell into programme of UNESCO.
However, there was no strong impetus to draft the
Convention until the 1960s, when international awareness of
threats to the natural heritage developed,
starting in the USA, and work began on drafting an
international convention.
Awareness of threats to the cultural heritage
quickly followed, however. UNESCO had supported the
conference of architects which in 1964 produced the seminal
HYPERLINK
"http://www.international.icomos.org/charters/venice_e.htm"
\t "new" International Charter for the Conservation and
Restoration of Monuments and Sites, better known as the
Venice Charter (ICOMOS, 2001). This led to the creation –
again with UNESCO support – of ICOMOS (the International
Council on Monuments and Sites) in the following year. The
idea of protecting the cultural heritage was integrated
into the natural heritage drafting, and the final text was
approved, as the Convention concerning the protection
of the world cultural and natural heritage (better
known as the World Heritage Convention), by the UNESCO
General Conference in November 1972. There are several
excellent general accounts of the genesis of the Convention
(eg Slatyer 1984; Batisse and Bolla, 2005). The
authoritative history is to be found in an unpublished PhD
thesis (Titchen, 2005).
The Convention is very much a product of the 1960s, with
its emphasis on threats – post-war reconstruction, the
economic boom years, the opening up of Third World
countries to investment from the developed countries,
improvements in agricultural techniques, the immense
expansion of extractive industries, and the post-World War
II population explosion. In its Preamble it stresses "the
importance, for all the peoples of the world, of
safeguarding this unique and irreplaceable property," and
goes on to state that "parts of the cultural or natural
heritage are of outstanding interest and therefore need to
be preserved as part of the world heritage of mankind as a
whole." This statement introduced two important concepts
regarding the heritage – those of "outstanding universal
value" and the role of all nations in protecting certain
aspects of that heritage and its values.
Article 1 of the Convention defines three broad categories
of cultural property:
Monuments: architectural works, works of
monumental sculpture and painting, elements and structures
of an archaeological nature, inscriptions, cave dwellings
and combinations of features, which are of outstanding
universal value from the point of view of history, art or
science;
Groups of
buildings: groups
of separate or connected buildings which, because of their
architecture, their homogeneity or their place in the
landscape, are of outstanding universal value from the
point of view of history, art or science;
Sites: works of man or the combined works of
nature and of man, and areas including archaeological sites
which are of outstanding universal value from the
historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological
points of view.
Article 2
defines the categories of natural property:
natural features consisting of physical and biological
formations or groups of such formations, which are of
outstanding universal value from the aesthetic or
scientific point of view;
geological and physiographical formations and precisely
delineated areas which constitute the habitat of threatened
species of animals and plants of outstanding universal
value from the point of view of science or conservation;
natural sites or precisely delineated natural areas of
outstanding universal value from the point of view of
science, conservation or natural beauty.
The fundamental criterion common to these
definitions is that of "outstanding universal value," a
criterion that is impressive but vague. In the period
between the signing of the Convention in 1972 and its
ratification by twenty countries in 1975, the World
Heritage Committee set up after the implementation of the
Convention, conscious of the impossibility of working with
a single criterion, expanded this in more precise terms.
There are now ten criteria, which are set out in the
Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the
World Heritage Convention (UNESCO 2005, paragraph 77):
represent a masterpiece of
human creative genius;
exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a
span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on
developments in architecture or technology, monumental
arts, town-planning or landscape design;
bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a
cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or
which has disappeared;
be an outstanding example of a type of building,
architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which
illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history;
be an outstanding example of a traditional human
settlement, land-use, or sea-use which is representative of
a culture (or cultures), or human interaction with the
environment especially when it has become vulnerable under
the impact of irreversible change;
be directly or tangibly associated with events or living
traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and
literary works of outstanding universal significance;
contain superlative natural phenomena or areas of
exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance;
be outstanding examples representing major stages of
earth's history, including the record of life, significant
on-going geological processes in the development of
landforms, or significant geomorphic or physiographic
features;
be outstanding examples representing significant ongoing
ecological and biological processes in the evolution and
development of terrestrial, fresh water, coastal and marine
ecosystems and communities of plants and animals;
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.
To qualify for inscription on the World
Heritage List, a property must conform with one or more of
these criteria. It must also meet the test of
authenticity in design, material, workmanship, or
setting and it must comply with stringent requirements
relating to its protection, planning, and
management.
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has three professional
advisory bodies. For cultural properties it is ICOMOS and
for natural properties it is the World Conservation Union –
IUCN. The HYPERLINK "http://whc.unesco.org/ab_iccro.htm"
International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and
Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) is the
professional adviser on all matters relating to training
for cultural properties. ICOMOS and IUCN make
recommendations based on consultation and desk studies and
on site evaluation missions to the UNESCO World Heritage
Committee on the suitability of nominated properties for
inscription on the World Heritage List. Decision-making is
the sole responsibility of the Committee, which consists of
the delegates of twenty-one countries elected from the
nearly two hundred countries that have ratified the
Convention (known as States Parties) and which meets
annually, in a different country each year.
Weaknesses and strengths of the Convention
One of the weaknesses of the Convention stems
from the fact that nominations to the World Heritage List
may only be made by the governments of sovereign states
that have ratified the Convention (States Parties). Any
form of objective selection is largely negated by the
existence of differing political, ideological, and economic
systems within those governments and the present-day
frontiers, which have little or no relevance to cultural
history and geography. To take an example, a number of
individual European states have successfully nominated
their finest medieval Gothic cathedrals, but there has been
no attempt to select the most outstanding monuments of this
category across the entire geo-cultural province of Gothic
religious architecture, regardless of the latter-day
frontiers. As a result the List includes several Gothic
cathedrals that re the best in individual countries but
cannot lay claim to “outstanding universal value” within
that category of cultural property.
Another serious weakness of the World Heritage Convention
is the piecemeal approach that has been adopted towards
nomination and inscription. In its early years, the
emphasis within the Convention was based largely on western
perceptions of heritage value, in the form of classical
Greek and Roman, medieval, and later art and architecture.
Certain ancient civilizations, such as those of Egypt and
prehispanic Latin America, were recognized, along with the
long and rich heritage of the Indian subcontinent and,
latterly, China, but the World Heritage List remains skewed
both culturally and geographically. It is only in recent
years that the net has been cast more widely, to embrace
cultural landscapes, the industrial heritage, and the art
and architecture of the late 19th and 20th centuries, which
have made it possible for more countries to find their
heritage on the List.
A major analysis of the World Heritage List and the
tentative lists (of potential nominations) prepared by the
States Parties was carried out by the Advisory Bodies in
2003 and 2004, with the objective of identifying those
regions and types of property that are poorly represented
on the List . That for the cultural heritage (ICOMOS, 2005)
recognizes the need for a more holistic and culturally more
eclectic approach to the identification of potential World
Heritage sites and monuments so as to make the World
Heritage List more representative of the vast sweep of
human achievement and balanced in its content.
This broad approach, long advocated by the Advisory Bodies,
has recently been adopted by the World Heritage Committee.
One element of the Committee’s current policy has
resonances with the PUSH project. Encouragement is being
given to what are known as “serial transboundary [or
transnational] properties.” Transboundary properties are
defined in the Operational Guidelines for the
Implementation of the World Heritage Convention
(UNESCO, 2005, paragraph 134) as occurring “on the
territory of all concerned States Parties having adjacent
borders,” whilst serial nominations (op. cit.,
paragraph 137) “include
component parts related because they belong to:
a) the same
historico-cultural group;
b) the same type of property which is characteristic of the
geographical zone;
c) the same geological, geomorphological formation, the same
biogeographic province, or the same ecosystem type;
and provided it is the series as a whole – and
not necessarily the individual parts of it – which are of
outstanding universal value.” Paragraph 138 goes on to
specify that a serial nominated property “may occur:
a) on the territory of a single State Party (serial
national property); or
b) within the territory of different States Parties, which
need not be contiguous and is nominated with the consent of
all States Parties concerned (serial transnational
property).”
Among the handful of serial transnational properties that
are already on the List are the Jesuit missions of the
Guayrá in Argentina and Brazil (though not yet including
the closely related missions in Paraguay), the Pilgrimage
Routes of Santiago de Compostela (though still two separate
properties, one in Spain and the other in France), and the
Roman frontier works (Limes) in Germany and the
United Kingdom, eventually to be extended down to the Black
Sea. Ambitious projects that are in the pipeline include
the Silk Routes from China to Turkey and the Great Rift
Valley.
What can
the PUSH Project learn from the World Heritage Convention?
It would be undesirable – and, indeed, unwise
– for the PUSH Project slavishly to model itself on the
World Heritage Convention, since the fundamental objectives
of the two systems do not coincide. World Heritage Listing
is, as its name implies, designed to preserve and protect
the most outstanding elements of the heritage of humankind,
and so the highest cultural values and management
provisions are essential. The PUSH Project, with its basic
premise of shared heritage, is regional in its application
and deliberately focused on the identification of heritage
elements that demonstrate the physical and historical
communalities of this group of states. The World Heritage
Convention serves as a highly relevant and well established
model, in that it represents a process of thought and
overall format based not on universal
value, but rather on shared regional
value. Here, therefore, are some points that should be
taken into account when setting up and implementing the
operating parameters for PUSH.
The need for objective selection
criteria
It is essential that there should be agreed criteria for
the selection of sites and groups for PUSH recognition. The
World Heritage criteria (see above) are stringent, and
there is no case for the imposition of this level of
cultural value as a criterion. It is the shared cultural
significance of sites and monuments that must determine
their recognition under the PUSH criteria. However, it is
important that there should be comparability between the
sites and monuments making up a PUSH transboundary serial
group, in terms both of historical and symbolic
significance and of overall state of protection and
conservation. Serious discrepancies between components
could seriously devalue the overall impact of the group.
Management and conservation
Similarly, outline plans must be drawn up and their
implementation initiated that define a compatible level of
conservation and management of components. Once again,
overall minimum standards must be laid down to prevent
unfavourable comparisons being made between individual
component sites. The opportunities for collaborative action
in this case should be seized, in order to emphasize the
shared nature of the heritage and the approach to its
preservation.
Presentation and education
Here again compatibility is all-important, so as to
underline the concept of shared heritage. An agreed message
is, of course, fundamental, but this should be reinforced
in the form of a common format for all forms of
presentation – signage, guides, publications,
interpretation centres, etc. This is one of the most
important and in many ways easiest media for delivering the
PUSH message.
It is very important that emphasis should be laid on common
educational facilities. For example, teachers’ notes
prepared to an agreed format, and in the same way material
for students, as well as facilities for handling
artefactual material and carrying out simple tasks such as
excavation and site surveying, should be produced to a
common standard and format.
Pilot projects
The eventual success of PUSH will depend upon the selection
of successful pilot projects. These should be i.
representative and ii. relatively straightforward to
implement.
References
Batisse, M., and Bolla, G. (2005)
The invention of “World
Heritage,”’ Paper No . 2. Paris: History Club.
Association of Former UNESCO Staff Members.
Cleere, H. F. (1989b) ‘Introduction: the rationale of
archaeological heritage management,’ in Cleere, H.
(ed.) Archaeological heritage management in
the modern world (One World Archaeology
No. 9). London: Unwin Hyman
[Routledge], 54–62.
ICOMOS (2001) International Charters for
Conservation and Restoration. Paris: International Council on
Monuments and Sites, pp 13–14.
–––––– (2005) The
World Heritage List: Filling the Gaps – an Action Plan for
the Future (Monuments and Sites
XII). Paris: International
Council on Monuments and Sites.
Prott, L.V. , and O’Keefe, P.J.
(1984) Law and the
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excavation.
Abingdon: Professional Books.
–––– (1989) Law
and the cultural heritage. Vol. 3:
Movement. London
and Edinburgh: Butterworths.
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universal value. UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention
(Convention concerning the protection of the world cultural
and natural heritage, 1972) and the identification and
assessment of cultural places for inclusion in the World
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Unpublished PhD thesis, Australian National
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52–53. Paris: UNESCO.