Cultural Heritage: Protection and/or Survival

James White
Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh, UK

With Global Climate Change (GCC) comes the potential for dramatic changes in setting for many present and future World Heritage (WH) Sites. ‘Setting’, listed as one of the four original ‘authenticities’ 1 in the WH Operational Guidelines up to 2005, has traditionally been a key component in the assessment of a place’s Outstanding Universal Value, in the context of the 1972 World Heritage Convention. Since 2005, doctrine change in World Heritage operational policy – as a result of the 1994 Nara Document on Authenticity – has led to a reassessment of conditions of authenticity and integrity in World Heritage, in particular in relation to cultural setting. Changes and new interpretations of the natural setting of cultural heritage sites in response to GCC have also in recent years begun to enter the debate on WH issues. Theoretical and practical debates on the values of WH in response to the evolving natural conditions of GCC are necessary in order to progress international perspectives on the wider concerns and interpretive potential of cultural heritage.

This paper sets out to identify key issues and points of critical debate about authenticity in WH policy in the context of dynamic changes, both natural and man-made. Can the change in natural setting resulting from GCC be considered to affect the authenticity of “location and setting” crucial to the recognised value of a WH Site? This paper is concerned with whether cultural WH zones at risk are fated to become places of mythical memory, such as Atlantis, or whether a critical debate on dynamic principles of authenticity can begin to inform approaches to present and future World Heritage sites at risk from Global Climate Change.