On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports and the Permanent Delegation of Greece to UNESCO in cooperation with the UNESCO World Heritage Centre organised an international Conference in Delphi (Greece) on 16 -18 November 2022, entitled: 'The Next 50 - The future of World Heritage in challenging times enhancing resilience and sustainability'.
The celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage as an international conference brought together several dozen experts from all over the world for two days on the site of Delphi.
Alongside representatives of UNESCO and the States Parties serving on the World Heritage Committee, the experts took stock of the Convention’s achievement and examined the challenges it faces in the 21st century.
The event was opened on Thursday 17 November at 11am by Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, and Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Prime Minister of Greece. To watch the proceedings folow the link here.
The Director-General of UNESCO announced a three-pronged action plan to make World Heritage more representative, accessible and sustainable over the coming decades.
Representativeness
Fifty years after its creation, the World Heritage Convention has been ratified by 194 States Parties, giving it a truly universal scope. It has paved the way for the inscription of 1,154 sites in more than 167 countries, recognizing a great diversity of cultural and natural heritage.
Nevertheless, significant geographical disparities persist in the World Heritage List. While some countries have more than 50 inscribed properties, others have none, as is the case of 12 African States Parties to the Convention. The whole of Africa only accounts for 9% of World Heritage sites.
Representativeness also requires greater inclusion of local and indigenous populations, who should be able to participate fully in the process from the nomination of sites for inscription to their management. They should also be able to reap the benefits of inscription.
Accessibility
The inscription of sites on the World Heritage List recognizes their outstanding universal value to be shared by all of humanity. The Convention’s main purpose is to ensure that such properties are preserved and transmitted to future generations.
While sharing and transmission are the two pillars of World Heritage, much remains to be done to ensure that sites are truly accessible to everyone, and in particular to the youngest. To help meet this challenge in the years to come, the international community disposes of new tools made available by digital technologies.
Sustainability
Today, there are 52 World Heritage sites “in danger”. Almost half of them are located on the African continent. They require the deployment of urgent safeguarding measures.
Faced with multiple human pressures including urban development, exploitation of resources, pollution, and overtourism, as well the resurgence of conflicts, all World Heritage sites need better protection.
Climate change has become the number one threat to natural World Heritage sites. It is already having negative impacts on 34% of them, and on 70% of marine sites. By 2100, half of all World Heritage glaciers and all World Heritage coral reefs could disappear.
World Heritage in numbers:
There are currently 1,154 sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage List:
897 cultural sites
218 natural sites
39 mixed sites (both cultural and natural)
43 transboundary sites (straddling the territories of two or more countries
52 sites are currently listed as being in danger.
In 50 years, three sites have been removed from the World Heritage List.
World Heritage sites are to be found in 167 countries.
BCRPM reflections: A great convention that embraced climate change and world cultural heritage and tourism. Important for nations to understand the seriousness of the situation and to make recommendations, resolutions within an international framework, however what is also needed is the political will, something we were also made aware of at COP27. And we could add that it is political will that continues to evade the campaign for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles too.
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