UNESCO’s Protection of World Heritage Sites: Universal Goals, Political Realities
Maya Garner
The UNESCO World Heritage Sites is a list of places deemed to have universally exceptional cultural or natural significance to the world. Some of these are listed as World Heritage Sites in danger. Yet the realities of the world’s politics and bureaucracy are an obstacle to UNESCO’s mission as an independent agency, whose World Heritage Committee is dedicated to objective preservation of sites based on cultural or natural value.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is a Paris-based specialized UN agency. Specialized UN agencies are autonomous bodies whose cooperation is coordinated in through the United Nations Economic and Social Council, one of the six principal organs of the UN. UNESCO was established on Nov 6, 1945, less than a month after the establishment of the United Nations’ Charter, and it can be seen as a continuation of the League of Nations’ International Committee on Intellectual Coordination (ICIC). The move toward cultural preservation began in the 1950’s, when Egypt announced plans to build a dam that would submerge hundreds archeological sites in water. As a response, UNESCO launched a campaign in 1960 to rescue these sites. In the aftermath, the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage was adopted in 1972, and the World Heritage Committee established in 1976 – inscribing its first sites in 1978.
The World Heritage Committee consists of representatives from 21 of the Conventions’s State Parties elected by the UN General Assembly. The Committee holds annual sessions and adopted its rules of procedure at its first session. Funding for the protection and preservation of the sites come in part from the World Heritage Fund, and in part from a variety of national and international organizations, NGO’s, and private bodies. To designate a place as a World Heritage Site, it must fulfill one of ten selection criteria (i.e. six cultural and four natural). These include preserving sites representing human creative genius, exhibiting a significant human time period or interchange of developments of architecture or technology, or being testimony to a cultural civilization, living or disappeared. In addition, the criteria include areas or phenomena of exceptional natural beauty, representations of major stages of earth’s history or ongoing biological processes, or areas with significant biodiversity. These criteria are rather broad and vague, though perhaps necessary to ensure global inclusion of sites. A Member State has to submit the application and cannot be forced to nominate a site. This may pose an obstacle to UNESCO, as this rule adds a layer of political complication to the selection process.
The vagueness of the definition may allow for the nomination of sites that do not necessarily live up to the standard of value and significance placed on the World Heritage Sites, but are accepted due to lobbying from the member states, who recognize the potential for the tourism to these sites. One such example lies in the 2007 designation of the Iwami Ginzan silver mine in Japan as a World Heritage Site—an abandoned silver mine from the 1600’s, closed since the 1923. A local businessman Toshiro Nakamura decided to turn the site into a tourist destination and worked with Tokyo diplomats to lobby for its designation as a World Heritage Site, arguing that it fulfilled three of the criterias. However, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, which acted as an advisor to the Committee, disagreed. Yet the site was eventually accepted, and the annual amount of tourists boomed from 15,000 annually to 1 million in the following year after its designation.
The prestige of the UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites and the resulting tourism is problematic for several reasons and raises questions about the purpose of the designations. As in the case of the Iwani Silvermine, some sites may be accepted due to political lobbying for the sake of creating tourism sites. While relatively harmless in the case of Iwami, the premise of the designations is easily undermined, as the official purpose of “public education” takes the form as tourism for paying visitors, which is desirable for a member state. This may easily lead to a scenario in which sites with the potential to create a significant income from paying tourists are prioritized over sites that do not have this financial component. Additionally, some Member States may not wish to highlight sites that hold evidence of history that conflict with its religious, national or cultural narrative. In order to preserve the integrity of the list, the flaw that Member States nominate their own sites could be dealt with by taking away this responsibility from Member States and instead establish independent groups of experts, such as archeologists and ecologists, to carry out the research and recommendations, which could help prevent national and political interests taking priority over universal interests during the nomination process.
Furthermore, increased tourism to UNESCO World Heritage Sites poses the risk of destroying fragile historical or natural sites. Sites may be designated in places that are not properly equipped to handle large amount of tourists. Such examples include the temples of Angkor in Cambodia, whose ancient stones are slowly worn away by tourist streams, while a natural site, such as the Galápagos islands, may suffer from unbridled tourist traffic and ruining of the wildlife. (In the case of Galápagos, it was declared a World Heritage Site in Danger in 2007, yet removed it from this list in 2010, recognizing “significant progress” by Ecuador). While tourism may compromise a site, undermining the intended UNESCO’s purposes, the World Heritage Committee faces a different set of political obstacles when seeking to protect and preserve a World Heritage Site in Danger.
UNESCO is responsible for protecting World Heritage Sites in danger of damage or destruction from a variety of political factors, ranging from urban development to warfare and insurgencies. In the case of development of buildings or infrastructure, such as the proposal to create a bored tunnel running underneath Stonehenge in the United Kingdom, which through several modifications still fails to address the concerns posed by UNESCO. In 2018, the U.S. decided to pull out of UNESCO over the decision to declare Hebron’s old city a World Heritage Site in Danger. In 2001, many large Buddha statues carved into the side of the rock of the Bamyan valley of Afghanistan were deliberately ruined with explosive dynamite by members of the Taliban. All six UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Syria have been damaged during the Syrian Civil War. And the Saudi-led coalition’s aerial bombardment of Yemen and the resulting collateral damage has taken a deep toll on Yemen’s cultural and historic sites, including three UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
The World Heritage Committee is obliged to act to preserve and protect places in the world that are in danger of damage and destruction, promoting universalist values in a world run by politics. The labeling as a World Heritage Site is both a tool for preservation, as well as a tool of tourist promotion, carrying the risk of undermining UNESCO’s purposes—clearly underlining the need for extensive review of the ability of a site and its managers to withstand the flows of tourism. The designation, funding or protection of one site, while ignoring another, is a bureaucratic reality — as well as a political tool with the potential to pressure governments into action. The nomination and selection process is in need of being carried out by non-state actors, rather than by Member States. UNESCO ought to additionally carry out more proactive measures and monitoring of sites that are in danger of being destroyed by a change in the political situation of its surroundings for the sake of providing adequate protection.