General Information

Dates: 7 ‐ 13 July 2021

Venue: Online platform

Language: English (only)

Host: The People’s Republic of China

Organizers: The People's Republic of China, UNESCO World Heritage Centre, ICCROM-IUCN World Heritage Leadership Programme

Partner: ICOMOS

Theme of WHSMF2021

World Heritage governance – Being prepared to manage change and continuity

Governance is a term that includes the norms/rules (including the laws, customs), institutions, and processes that determine how power and responsibilities over places and landscapes are exercised, how decisions are taken, and how rights-holders and stakeholders – including women, youth, indigenous peoples and local communities – secure access to, participate in, and are impacted by the use and management of the place.

Site managers work for achieving good outcomes on conserving the values of heritage, improving and adapting the management system of the heritage, and also securing the benefits that the heritage place provides to the people associated with the place, and to wider society.

To achieve such results, site management needs to happen within appropriate, fair and inclusive governance arrangements. Governance arrangements are the formal, traditional and informal, national and local, frameworks for making decisions within which management occurs. Aspects such as its legitimacy, transparency, accountability, respect for law (rule of law) and capacity to adapt to change, demonstrate the qualities of governance. Governance arrangements should enable the inclusion and participation of people associated with the heritage place, including those who hold particular rights in relation to the place. In its broadest sense, governance is concerned with holding the balance between economic and social goals and between individual and communal goals. The governance framework is there to encourage the efficient use of resources and equally to require accountability for the stewardship of those resources. The aim is to align as nearly as possible the interests of individuals, of heritage and of society.

As part of the bigger framework of World Heritage governance, it is crucial for site managers to fully understand the governance arrangements, and to promote proactive participation measures for improving World Heritage site management for long-term sustainable development.

Sub-topics

•World Heritage Convention and working processes;

•World Heritage management and available tools;

•Management systems, plans and governance arrangements/mechanisms – Understanding the framework and the role of site managers within;

•Sustainable development of community and being prepared for change – Gradual, sudden, economic, social and developmental change;

•Who to involve for change preparation and how? – Stakeholders, rightsholders, community engagement.

Aims of the Forum

The major objectives of the 2021 edition of World Heritage Site Managers’ Forum are to:

•Promote international cooperation of World Heritage Site Managers and co-ordinate worldwide actions in favor of the protection and conservation of humankind’s historical heritage through activities and interventions aimed at raising the awareness of States Parties to this heritage;

•To form an international network that defines, improves and promotes conservation principles, standards, research, responsible practice, innovation about the protection of worldwide heritage;

•to assist Site Managers through appropriate guidance, to harness the potential of World Heritage properties and heritage in general, to contribute to sustainable development and increase the effectiveness and relevance of the World Heritage Convention whilst respecting its primary purpose and mandate of protecting the Outstanding Universal value of World Heritage properties;

•Strengthen the enabling environment by advocating policies, strategies, frameworks and tools that support sustainable tourism as an important vehicle for protecting and managing cultural and natural heritage of Outstanding Universal Value;

•Directly expose the Site Managers to the issues discussed during the World Heritage Committee sessions on the state of conservation (SOC) reports.

Participants

The Forum attended about 99 participants from 55 State-Parties from around the world, selected from World Heritage Sites for which a State of Conservation (SOC) report has been prepared and presented for decision making at 44th Session of the World Heritage Committee. Site managers from natural, cultural and mixed sites are selected for full representativeness.

tatement of the World Heritage Site Managers’ Forum 
Background for organization

The World Heritage Convention sets out the responsibilities of the States Parties to identify, protect, conserve and present natural and cultural heritage of OUV. While appropriate conditions for proper protection are nearly always generated at national level, most of the obligations associated with the inscription of a site on the World Heritage List are usually met at the level of the specific sites themselves, and this is best achieved with the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders. Their knowledge of the Convention and their understanding of the World Heritage system has a significant impact on the protection of the OUV. Within each group of stakeholders, a site management team often emerges as the key responsibility holder who oversees and leads site-specific managerial decision-making and who, for the purposes of this introductory note, we will call World Heritage “Site Managers”.

Depending on the type of heritage at stake, Site Managers can come from very different realities – the public or private sector, heritage or non-heritage organizations, etc. They are often the team which plays the most crucial role in ensuring the implementation of the Convention. Site Managers reconcile the expectations and requirements of the international heritage community with the needs and potential of the specific heritage site with which they are involved. Their role is not only the channel of transmission and communication between relevant policies and site work, but also the provider of wisdom and strength in the process of upgrading the governance, improving the environment, and innovating the management mechanism.

The level of protection of a World Heritage property’s OUV and its state of conservation are monitored by the World Heritage Committee, supported by the World Heritage Centre and the Advisory Bodies (ICCROM, ICOMOS and IUCN), through processes known as ‘Reactive Monitoring’ and ‘Periodic Reporting’. The Reactive Monitoring process responds to a certain situation at a certain time and involves the collection of data from the States Parties concerned, dispatching Reactive Monitoring missions to the site, and the drafting of state of conservation reports (SOC) by the World Heritage Centre and the Advisory Bodies. These reports are then examined at the annual session of the World Heritage Committee and the decisions, which are adopted, are sent to the States Parties concerned for implementation. Responsibility for carrying out these requests lies primarily in the hands of the Site Managers. However, too often, they have no or limited direct involvement in the information exchange and development of content for the related recommendations. The recommendations then land on their desks and, in the absence of a consolidated understanding of the entire decision-making process, Site Managers are not empowered to act upon them effectively or help other stakeholders engage in the World Heritage processes to this same end.

Providing ample capacity building opportunities for the site management team will allow the Convention to fulfil its potential as a tool and catalyst for World Heritage protection and heritage protection in general. At the same time, future improvements to the World Heritage decision-making procedures must build on and respond to greater engagement of those dealing with World Heritage on a day-to-day basis. Stronger bridges should be built between the procedural core of the World Heritage system and its outer segments – those in the field whose ongoing work to safeguard the OUV of World Heritage properties constitutes the real expression of the Convention.

It is in this context that the People’s Republic of China, as host of the extended 44th session of the World Heritage Committee, is fully committed to organize the 4th edition of the World Heritage Site Managers’ Forum, exploring the theme “World Heritage governance – Being prepared to manage change and continuity” to unite representatives from World Heritage properties with those at the heart of World Heritage procedures.

The Statements of participants from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd editions of the Site Managers’ Forum, which took place in Poland (Krakow, 2017), Bahrain (Manama, 2018), and Azerbaijan (Baku, 2019) can be found here: 2017 | 2018 | 2019.

Host

The People’s Republic of China

Organizers

The People's Republic of China,

UNESCO World Heritage Centre,

ICCROM-IUCN World Heritage Leadership Programme

Partners

ICOMOS