ENGLISH VERSION
16 April 2010
To: Permanent Delegations and National Commissions of the States Parties to the World Heritage Convention
Subject : World Heritage paper n°26: "World Heritage Cultural Landscapes. A Handbook for Conservation and Management".
Madam/Sir,
I am pleased to inform you that World Heritage paper n°26: "World Heritage Cultural Landscapes. A handbook for Conservation and Management" is now available.
World Heritage Cultural Landscapes, a category adopted by the World Heritage Committee in 1992, has been, in a way, the precursor of the considerations of the Global Strategy for a balanced and representative World Heritage List of 1994, and of the major considerations by expert groups and the World Heritage Committee in bringing nature and culture closer together in the implementation of the World Heritage Convention.
This concept demonstrated a major change in the interpretation of this global conservation instrument that is the World Heritage Convention:
- an opening towards cultures in regions other than Europe (and specifically Pacific, Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa);
- a recognition of the non-monumental character of the heritage of cultural landscapes;
- the acknowledgement of the links between cultural and biological diversity, specifically with sustainable land-use.
"World Heritage Cultural Landscapes. A Handbook for Conservation and Management" fulfils a need identified by the World Heritage Committee and many site managers, as it specifically examines the particular issues involved in managing cultural landscapes of outstanding universal value.
This book is directed especially towards two groups of experts and officials: those preparing nominations and those managing cultural landscapes already inscribed on the World Heritage List. More generally, this publication will help to promote good practice in the management of all cultural landscapes, using World Heritage listed and potential cultural landscapes as examples.
The English version of the book is hereby transmitted to all Permanent Delegations and National Commissions of the States Parties to the World Heritage Convention who are subscribed to English-reading distribution lists in the centralized UNESCO mailing system.
The French version of the book is currently under preparation. The completion of translation and printing is tentatively foreseen for the end of October 2010 (due to the heavy workload related to the production of the documents for the World Heritage Committee). In the meantime, States Parties subscribed to French-reading distribution lists may access the English version on-line, for information: click here.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Irish sites seek world heritage status
The Historic City of Dublin, Royal Tara, Georgian Dublin, the Céide Fields in northwest Mayo, Dún Aonghusa in Aran, the monastic site of Clonmacnoise and the Burren in Co Clare are included on a “tentative list” of nominees to Unesco for designation as world heritage sites.
To find out more, click here.
To find out more, click here.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Australian Salvage Crews Successfully Refloat Stricken Coal Carrier at Great Barrier Reef
For the complete story, click here.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Putin about-face on paper mill threatens freshwater treasure
BAIKALSK, Russia — The future of 20 percent of the world's supply of pure fresh water is in jeopardy because a surprise decree by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will allow a heavily polluting pulp mill to reopen on the southern shore of Lake Baikal in southern Siberia. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/07/91779/putin-about-face-on-paper-mill.html#ixzz0ktzouObL
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Suspicion Of Arson At Royal Tombs Fuels Deadly Clashes In Uganda
KIGALI, Rwanda - Riots erupted at venerated burial grounds in Uganda on Wednesday, and witnesses said that police officers shot and killed three protesters. The violence was a sign of continuing troubles between the Ugandan government and members of the Buganda traditional kingdom who want more local power.
The trouble started on Tuesday night in Uganda's capital, Kampala, when a suspicious fire engulfed the Kasubi tombs, built in 1882 and later converted into a royal burial ground for the Buganda kingdom. The tombs are a World Heritage site, and according to Unesco, the United Nations agency that bestows the recognition, they are "a masterpiece of human creativity" and "the most active religious place in the kingdom."
By Wednesday evening, hundreds of members of the Buganda community were still streaming toward the remains of the tombs, and kingdom officials called for a week of mourning.
"People are camped there, they lit fires, they keep on singing the kingdom's anthem," said Peter Myiga, a spokesman for the kingdom. "But there is tension that you can notice."
Those tensions exploded earlier on Wednesday when Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, visited the scene of the fire and protesters tried to prevent him from approaching the tombs. The main tomb, made of wood, thatch, reed and wattle, had burned to the ground, and supporters of the Buganda king, whose title is the kabaka, blamed arson. Some supporters accused the government of setting the fire.
Click here for more information and the rest of the story.
The trouble started on Tuesday night in Uganda's capital, Kampala, when a suspicious fire engulfed the Kasubi tombs, built in 1882 and later converted into a royal burial ground for the Buganda kingdom. The tombs are a World Heritage site, and according to Unesco, the United Nations agency that bestows the recognition, they are "a masterpiece of human creativity" and "the most active religious place in the kingdom."
By Wednesday evening, hundreds of members of the Buganda community were still streaming toward the remains of the tombs, and kingdom officials called for a week of mourning.
"People are camped there, they lit fires, they keep on singing the kingdom's anthem," said Peter Myiga, a spokesman for the kingdom. "But there is tension that you can notice."
Those tensions exploded earlier on Wednesday when Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, visited the scene of the fire and protesters tried to prevent him from approaching the tombs. The main tomb, made of wood, thatch, reed and wattle, had burned to the ground, and supporters of the Buganda king, whose title is the kabaka, blamed arson. Some supporters accused the government of setting the fire.
Click here for more information and the rest of the story.
The New World Heritage Site You Can't Enter
The treasure-packed interior of Brussels' Stoclet Palace is a mystery to all but a privileged handful.
(By Paul Ames)
BRUSSELS, Belgium — The marble-clad palace, crowned with a quartet of muscular copper nudes, is a familiar landmark for thousands of Brussels' commuters who drive past every evening on their way to the leafy eastern suburbs.
But the treasure-packed interior of the Stoclet Palace is a mystery to all but a privileged handful and the unique artworks it contains are more remote to inhabitants of the Belgian capital than the Taj Mahal or Pyramids of Giza.
Last year, the Stoclet Palace joined the United Nations’ list of the world's greatest heritage sites.
It was one of just four European monuments added to the list, a reflection of the palace’s importance to the history of modern art, architecture and design.
The masterpiece, generally considered one of the finest private houses built in the 20th century, remains in private hands. Although the state is financing repairs and maintenance, the palace remains strictly off limits to the public.
"Very few people have ever visited it and there are hardly any photographs. That’s crazy when you think the Belgian taxpayer is paying for its repairs," said local councilor Gauthier van Outryve d’Ydewalle.
Brussels banker Adolphe Stoclet ordered the palace built in 1901 on the designs of the Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann, founder of the Wiener Werkstatte movement, which was revolutionizing art and design in Vienna.
The palace is the movement’s masterwork. Hoffmann broke with the ornate art nouveau style then fashionable in the Belgian capital, creating a grand home with clean, rectangular lines that would deeply influence the modernist and art deco movements in the decades that followed.
The Viennese movement aimed to move beyond mere architecture to create complete works of art in which the furniture, lighting, garden, floor tiles, carpets and all other elements of decoration were designed down by to the last detail to produce a unified whole.
To cap it all, Hoffman invited the great Viennese painter Gustav Klimt to create a monumental frieze — "The Tree of Life" — a mosaic encrusted with gold and precious stones that covers the dining room walls. There are also sculptures and paintings by other leading artists of the time.
"The interest of the house is acknowledged all over the world," said the citation from the U.N.’s cultural agency UNESCO including the building on the world heritage list.
"It is a remarkable illustration of the birth of constructive and decorative modernity, and is frequently presented as an example in schools of architecture all over the world."
After its completion in 1911, the palace played host to glamorous parties for the cultural glitterati of the time. Guests included Igor Stravinsky, Jean Cocteau and Claude Debussy.
In recent times, however, the palace has fallen on hard times. It has lain empty for years, apart from the live-in caretakers, while the descendents of Aldolphe Stoclet squabble over the property’s future. Estimates have put the value of the house at at least 100 million euros ($137 million), but they may be conservative, given the fact that a single painting by Klimt sold for $137.5 million in 2006.
Ownership of the house and contents is shared among seven Stoclet heirs. The Belgian government recently won a legal battle to prevent some of the heirs from selling off pieces of furniture, but while the house and its contents are now protected, there is no clear idea as to what will happen to the property.
Some of the owners have indicated they would agree to a limited opening to the public, others are firmly opposed, claiming hordes of visitors would ruin the building.
"It’s up to the owners to decide what to do with the property and they have the right to keep it completely private if they wish. There is no obligation linked to the UNESCO decision to open it to the public," said Pascale Ingelaere, a senior adviser on heritage issues to the president of Brussels’ regional government.
The regional government is hoping, however, to open exploratory talks with the family on the building's future in the next few months, she said.
"We would like to discuss this with the owners, to see to what extent we could envisage in the short- or medium-term an eventual opening to the public," Ingelaere said.
In the meantime, the regional government is paying almost half the costs of a 1.3 million euro ($1.8 million) program to carry out the most urgent preservation work up to 2014.
For the immediate future, though, there is little chance the authorities would be able to find the millions of euros needed to buy the property, even if the family could be persuaded to sell the property.
"Just now, we have some rather serious budget problems, so it’s not really the right moment," Ingelaere acknowledged. "However, if ever we had a really serious threat to the building, we’d get around the table and find a solution. We won’t let the Stoclet Palace fall down."
That at least is a sign of progress in a city that has a bad reputation for protecting its architectural heritage.
While four turn-of-the-century homes built by the city’s own art nouveau genius Victor Horta have been included on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 2000, his masterpiece — the House of the People — was demolished in 1965 and replaced by a non-descript office block.
(By Paul Ames)
BRUSSELS, Belgium — The marble-clad palace, crowned with a quartet of muscular copper nudes, is a familiar landmark for thousands of Brussels' commuters who drive past every evening on their way to the leafy eastern suburbs.
But the treasure-packed interior of the Stoclet Palace is a mystery to all but a privileged handful and the unique artworks it contains are more remote to inhabitants of the Belgian capital than the Taj Mahal or Pyramids of Giza.
Last year, the Stoclet Palace joined the United Nations’ list of the world's greatest heritage sites.
It was one of just four European monuments added to the list, a reflection of the palace’s importance to the history of modern art, architecture and design.
The masterpiece, generally considered one of the finest private houses built in the 20th century, remains in private hands. Although the state is financing repairs and maintenance, the palace remains strictly off limits to the public.
"Very few people have ever visited it and there are hardly any photographs. That’s crazy when you think the Belgian taxpayer is paying for its repairs," said local councilor Gauthier van Outryve d’Ydewalle.
Brussels banker Adolphe Stoclet ordered the palace built in 1901 on the designs of the Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann, founder of the Wiener Werkstatte movement, which was revolutionizing art and design in Vienna.
The palace is the movement’s masterwork. Hoffmann broke with the ornate art nouveau style then fashionable in the Belgian capital, creating a grand home with clean, rectangular lines that would deeply influence the modernist and art deco movements in the decades that followed.
The Viennese movement aimed to move beyond mere architecture to create complete works of art in which the furniture, lighting, garden, floor tiles, carpets and all other elements of decoration were designed down by to the last detail to produce a unified whole.
To cap it all, Hoffman invited the great Viennese painter Gustav Klimt to create a monumental frieze — "The Tree of Life" — a mosaic encrusted with gold and precious stones that covers the dining room walls. There are also sculptures and paintings by other leading artists of the time.
"The interest of the house is acknowledged all over the world," said the citation from the U.N.’s cultural agency UNESCO including the building on the world heritage list.
"It is a remarkable illustration of the birth of constructive and decorative modernity, and is frequently presented as an example in schools of architecture all over the world."
After its completion in 1911, the palace played host to glamorous parties for the cultural glitterati of the time. Guests included Igor Stravinsky, Jean Cocteau and Claude Debussy.
In recent times, however, the palace has fallen on hard times. It has lain empty for years, apart from the live-in caretakers, while the descendents of Aldolphe Stoclet squabble over the property’s future. Estimates have put the value of the house at at least 100 million euros ($137 million), but they may be conservative, given the fact that a single painting by Klimt sold for $137.5 million in 2006.
Ownership of the house and contents is shared among seven Stoclet heirs. The Belgian government recently won a legal battle to prevent some of the heirs from selling off pieces of furniture, but while the house and its contents are now protected, there is no clear idea as to what will happen to the property.
Some of the owners have indicated they would agree to a limited opening to the public, others are firmly opposed, claiming hordes of visitors would ruin the building.
"It’s up to the owners to decide what to do with the property and they have the right to keep it completely private if they wish. There is no obligation linked to the UNESCO decision to open it to the public," said Pascale Ingelaere, a senior adviser on heritage issues to the president of Brussels’ regional government.
The regional government is hoping, however, to open exploratory talks with the family on the building's future in the next few months, she said.
"We would like to discuss this with the owners, to see to what extent we could envisage in the short- or medium-term an eventual opening to the public," Ingelaere said.
In the meantime, the regional government is paying almost half the costs of a 1.3 million euro ($1.8 million) program to carry out the most urgent preservation work up to 2014.
For the immediate future, though, there is little chance the authorities would be able to find the millions of euros needed to buy the property, even if the family could be persuaded to sell the property.
"Just now, we have some rather serious budget problems, so it’s not really the right moment," Ingelaere acknowledged. "However, if ever we had a really serious threat to the building, we’d get around the table and find a solution. We won’t let the Stoclet Palace fall down."
That at least is a sign of progress in a city that has a bad reputation for protecting its architectural heritage.
While four turn-of-the-century homes built by the city’s own art nouveau genius Victor Horta have been included on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 2000, his masterpiece — the House of the People — was demolished in 1965 and replaced by a non-descript office block.
Friday, March 5, 2010
India's Majuli Island
"Following the World Heritage Committee's decision to defer the inscription of India's Majuli Island on the World Heritage List in 2008, the State Government of Assam is working on a substantially revised nomination dossier..."
To read the whole article, click here.
To read the whole article, click here.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
British Columbia Officials Say "No" To Mining in Canadian Flathead North Of Glacier National Park
On the eve of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the lieutenant governor of British Columbia has announced that the province will not allow mining in the Canadian Flathead just north of Glacier National Park and due west of Waterton Lakes National Park.
To read the whole article, click here.
To read the whole article, click here.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Men Defend Historic Mandela Site ... From Rabbits
ROBBEN ISLAND, South Africa — This dollop of land, just 1 mile wide and 2 miles long, is where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. Now venerated as a World Heritage Site, it is one of South Africa’s biggest tourist attractions, with 1,200 or so people each day boarding ferries in Cape Town that in 45 minutes carry them back into history.
To read more about the rabbits, click here.
To read more about the rabbits, click here.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Coalition Donates Hydro Plant in Bid to Save World Heritage Site
A venture by an international coalition of power companies aims to shore up world-famous rice terraces in the northern Philippines and bring a sustainable source of electricity to an area that desperately needs it.
To read more, click here.
To read more, click here.
Culture Minister tightens bidding process for UK World Heritage Sites
The government has tightened the selection process for potential UK World Heritage Sites in a bid to find "sure-fire winners" from a "more focused" shortlist.
A smaller Tentative List of locations will be put forward to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) for the first time since 1999, with an independent panel judging nominations from local authorities.
"Being designated as a World Heritage Site is a real honour and a rare privilege," said Culture Minister Margaret Hodge, citing the social, economic and tourism benefits of the scheme.
Click here to read the whole article.
A smaller Tentative List of locations will be put forward to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) for the first time since 1999, with an independent panel judging nominations from local authorities.
"Being designated as a World Heritage Site is a real honour and a rare privilege," said Culture Minister Margaret Hodge, citing the social, economic and tourism benefits of the scheme.
Click here to read the whole article.
International cooperation helping restore fisher population in Olympic National Park
In a projecting highlighting international cooperation between the British Columbia Ministry of Environment, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and Olympic National Park, twelve fishers were released yesterday in Olympic National Park, continuing a three-year effort to reintroduce the animal to Washington State. About the size of a cat, fishers are members of the weasel family, and are native to the forests of Washington, including the Olympic Peninsula. The species vanished from the state decades ago because of over-trapping in the late 1800s and early 1900s and habitat loss and fragmentation.
For more information, click here.
For more information, click here.
Friday, January 22, 2010
International Team Says Mining In Canadian Flathead Would Harm Glacier
An international team of scientists has concluded that mining in the "Canadian Flathead" north of Glacier National Park would harm both Glacier and the adjoining Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada.
Read the whole story here.
Read the whole story here.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Climbing on Uluru
Tourists will be able to climb the World Heritage-listed Uluru for at least 18 months after the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, backed away from a move to ban it.
Mr Garrett, who as a rock singer for the band Midnight Oil sang about land rights at the base of rock 20 years ago, supported the view of Aboriginal traditional owners who regard it as a sacred site and wanted climbing banned.
There were also concerns that some of the 100,000 tourists who climb the rock each year were defecating on it.
But under a new 10-year management plan announced by Mr Garrett yesterday, the 348-metre rock will remain open to climbers until its popularity dwindles or new visitor experiences are developed.
For more information, see this link.
Mr Garrett, who as a rock singer for the band Midnight Oil sang about land rights at the base of rock 20 years ago, supported the view of Aboriginal traditional owners who regard it as a sacred site and wanted climbing banned.
There were also concerns that some of the 100,000 tourists who climb the rock each year were defecating on it.
But under a new 10-year management plan announced by Mr Garrett yesterday, the 348-metre rock will remain open to climbers until its popularity dwindles or new visitor experiences are developed.
For more information, see this link.
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