Many Voices, One Vision: The Early Years of the World Heritage Convention

Christina Cameron, Mechtild Rössler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138248083
• eBook ISBN: 9781317101017
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

In 1972, UNESCO put in place the World Heritage Convention, a highly successful international treaty that influences heritage activity in virtually every country in the world. Focusing on the Convention's creation and early implementation, this book examines the World Heritage system and its global impact through diverse prisms, including its normative frameworks, constituent bodies, programme activities, personalities and key issues. The authors concentrate on the period between 1972 and 2000 because implementation of the World Heritage Convention during these years sets the stage for future activity and provides a foil for understanding the subsequent evolution in the decade that follows. This innovative book project seeks out the voices of the pioneers - some 40 key players who participated in the creation and early implementation of the Convention - and combines these insightful interviews with original research drawn from a broad range of both published and archival sources. The World Heritage Convention has been significantly influenced by 40 years of history. Although the text of the Convention remains unchanged, the way it has been implemented reflects global trends as well as evolving perceptions of the nature of heritage itself and approaches to conservation. Some are sounding the alarm, claiming that the system is imploding under its own weight. Others believe that the Convention is being compromised by geopolitical considerations and rivalries. This book stimulates reflection on the meaning of the Convention in the twenty-first century.

Chapter 1 Creation of the World Heritage Convention

DOI: 10.4324/9781315593777-1

The creation of the World Heritage Convention is a complex story that involves drafts, counter-drafts, dramatic debates and institutional rivalries. The key objective of establishing an international system of cooperation to protect globally significant heritage places was never in doubt, but the means to accomplish it were subject to institutional positioning and diplomatic manoeuvres. Building on an international discourse that began in the cultural field in the 1920s and continued after the Second World War with an added focus on natural resources protection, the Convention was clearly a product of its time in its reflection of a new global sensitivity to urban development and environmental degradation. Through its collective measures to identify and conserve the world’s most significant places, the 1972 World Heritage Convention represents an extraordinary achievement in the annals of international agreements.

With hindsight, the creation of the World Heritage Convention seems inevitable. No single person or group can claim parenthood for the achievement of this international treaty because it is the result of decades of discussion and several separate independent initiatives. One could argue that the emergence of the World Heritage Convention reflects the zeitgeist or spirit of the era. During the 1920s and 1930s under the auspices of the League of Nations, as explained by Sarah Titchen in her unpublished doctoral thesis, concepts of common heritage and international cooperation as well as a distinctive style of international diplomacy emerged. Titchen points to the 1931 Athens Conference organized by the League’s International Museums Office as an important marker for these ideas which eventually found their way into the World Heritage Convention.¹ As part of the 1931 conference, the first International Congress of Architects and Technicians of Historic Monuments developed the Athens Charter for the Restoration of Historic Monuments which includes the statement that “the conservation of the artistic and archaeological property of mankind is one that interests the community of the States, which are wardens of civilisation.”² Titchen concludes that the League of Nations activities promoted “the idea of a common heritage of humankind deserving of international conservation through international cooperation and collaboration – a style and an idea that were to feature again when the functions of the League were taken over by UNESCO in December 1946. From these origins came the development of the World Heritage Convention.”³

1 Sarah Titchen, On the construction of outstanding 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 Heritage List (Canberra, 1995), pp. 12–24. 2 The Athens Charter for the Restoration of Historic Monuments, art. VII. Retrieved from http://icomos.org/index.php/en/charters-and-texts?id=167:the-athens-charter-for-the-restoration-of-historic-monuments&catid=179:charters-and-standards 3 Titchen, Construction, p. 35.

In the late 1940s, inter-twined initiatives reveal the gathering strength of the environmental movement. In 1948, preparatory work was underway to establish the International Union for the Protection of Nature (IUPN, later IUCN).⁴ The 1949 United Nations Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of Resources (UNSCCUR) at Lake Success, New York, was organized by a powerful line-up of international bodies including the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), UNESCO, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO). In his overview of the subject, McCormick regrets that “most environmental historians unfairly ignore UNSCCUR” and concludes: “Without question, it was a major step in the rise of the global environmental movement.”⁵

4 See chapter 5 for the establishment of IUPN, later IUCN. 5 John McCormick, The Global Environmental Movement (Chichester, 1995), p. 41.

The move to protect special places can be seen as part of a more general international response to the unparalleled destruction of heritage in two world wars. Bombardments, looting and illicit trafficking of cultural property mobilized UNESCO and other organizations to take measures to prevent such loss in the future. In the 1960s, as memories of war grew distant, new concerns arose. Industrialization and urban development occurred at a dizzying pace, threatening the survival of ecosystems and cultural monuments. International institutions were gaining influence as communications improved and long-distance travel became more accessible. In this period, momentum to create international agreements for the protection of special places in the world occurred simultaneously and unconnectedly. The emergence of parallel international initiatives, one for natural heritage, the other for cultural heritage, each apparently unknown to the other until 1970, reflects the decade’s heightened awareness of environmental degradation and cultural loss. They popped up at about the same time in different organizations involved in the protection of culture and the environment.⁶

6 For a view from one participant, see Michel Batisse, “The struggle to save our world heritage,” Environment, 34/10 (1992), pp. 12–32.

Independent yet similar, these proposals reflect a growing interaction among conservation professionals from different countries and an exciting swirl of new holistic approaches to environmental protection and territorial planning. They also reflect the isolation of the disciplines of natural and cultural sciences. The creative solutions and innovative approaches that emerged in the decade leading up to the 1972 Convention stand unrivalled in the following 40 years. An analysis of the documents from the 1960s and the recollections of the pioneers confirm that it was this dynamic period of the 1960s that laid the foundation for the subsequent conceptual and operational development of the World Heritage system.

The Natural Heritage Initiative

The history of the natural component of the World Heritage Convention involves the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), the Science Sector of UNESCO and a group of influential American environmentalists. IUCN, as an international environmental organization founded through support from UNESCO in 1948, brought a scientific focus to its concern for the careful use and conservation of natural resources. UNESCO, as an intergovernmental organization, viewed use and protection of natural resources from a scientific as well as from a more political perspective. To further their goals, both IUCN and UNESCO concentrated on research, information exchange and targeted programmes. It was only in 1965, when the White House Conference on International Cooperation brought forward the idea of a World Heritage Trust, that a proposal for a formal international agreement gained momentum. The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972 was the catalyst that led IUCN to prepare a draft convention on the conservation of the world’s heritage places.

In his history of IUCN, Martin Holdgate refers to the 1960s as a decade of “environmental explosion”.⁷ It was during this period that IUCN spearheaded an initiative for international protection of natural heritage. The origins of an international effort to protect ecologically important areas can be traced to IUCN’s 1958 proposal to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to create a list of the world’s most important national parks and equivalent reserves. Endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1962, the first United Nations List of Protected Areas and Equivalent Reserves was prepared by IUCN and published that same year.⁸ It is interesting to note that right from the start the list included several cultural heritage parks and landscapes, including the vast Khmer archaeological fields at Angkor (Cambodia) and the mediaeval open parliament site at Thingvellir (Iceland), both now listed as World Heritage Sites.⁹

7 Martin Holdgate, The Green Web: A Union for World Conservation (London, 1999), p. 106. 8 Alexander Gillespie, Protected Areas and International Environmental Law (Leiden/Boston, 2008), p. 111. 9 IUCN International Commission on National Parks, United Nations List of National Parks and Equivalent Reserves: Part Two and Addenda to Part One (Morges, 1962), pp. 5, 11.

The initiative was further developed at IUCN’s First World Conference on National Parks held in Seattle, Washington in 1962. The purpose of this large international gathering of conservationists from over sixty countries, including many American delegates, was to improve global understanding and to encourage a national parks movement on a worldwide basis.¹⁰ Among the twenty-eight wide-ranging recommendations that covered endangered species, animal habitats, agricultural lands, terrestrial and marine parks as well as interdisciplinary research, management and training matters, two stand out from a World Heritage perspective. Recommendation 12 proposes further work on park planning to include among others “nature reserves, scientific areas, prehistoric, historic and cultural sites.”¹¹ In a surprisingly early recognition of the links between culture and nature, recommendation 4 encourages support for UNESCO’s proposal from the Cultural Sector to safeguard the beauty and character of landscapes because of the obvious connection to national parks and equivalent reserves.¹² In his reflections on World Heritage, UNESCO staff member Michel Batisse (who did not attend the Seattle meeting) argues that “this intimate association of natural and cultural sites could only be conceived in the United States where the protection of these two types of sites is the responsibility of the National Park Service.”¹³

10 Alexander B. Adams, First World Conference on National Park (Washington, 1962), p. xxxii. 11 Adams, First World, p. 380. 12 Adams, First World, p. 377. 13 Michel Batisse and Gérard Bolla, The Invention of World Heritage (Paris, 2005), p. 17.

A World Heritage Trust: 1965

IUCN might well have continued with its ten-year programme approved in Seattle if American President Lyndon Johnson had not decided to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the United Nations by designating 1965 as International Cooperation Year. This declaration led to the White House Conference on International Cooperation during which the idea of a World Heritage Trust first took shape. The conference challenged different economic and social sectors, including the natural resources sector, to explore how international cooperation could be improved.

Historian Peter Stott, in his carefully documented study of the Committee on Natural Resources Conservation and Development, makes a compelling case that it was the Chairperson Joseph Fisher who conceived the idea.¹⁴ Russell Train, then head of the Conservation Foundation and a member of Fisher’s committee, recalls in an interview how Fisher told him to work up the idea of a World Heritage Trust:

14 Peter H. Stott, “The World Heritage Convention and the National Park Service, 1962–1972,” The George Wright Forum, 28/3 (2011), pp. 281–3.

Joe was then president of an organisation called Resources for the Future which was a Ford Foundation-funded economic think-tank, I guess you might call it, dealing with resource issues primarily. And as I said, he chaired the committee. And he brought into one of our meetings a proposal for a World Heritage Trust. I don’t think it had been fleshed out in any way. It was conceptual, what h...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Creation of the World Heritage Convention
• 2 Process for Identifying World Heritage Sites
• 3 Populating the World Heritage List: 1978–2000
• 4 Conserving World Heritage Sites
• 5 The Players
• 6 Assessment of the World Heritage System: 1972–2000
• Appendix: Vignettes of Interviewees
• Secondary Sources
• Index