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Field Trip Report the World Heritage Committee Meetings

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Field Trip Report the World Heritage Committee Meetings Field Trip Report World Heritage Convention, Helsinki, Finland. By: Francois LeBlanc, Head, Field Projects There were more than 350 participants to the twenty-fifth session of Finlandia Hall, Helsinki. UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee. I had not participated to these Designed by Finnish architect Aalto Alvar meetings for some time and it was a great pleasure for me to re-connect with some old acquaintances. The meetings have become quite a complex forum. The working papers given to us at registration were more than 3.5 inches thick. I will not attempt to summarize what happened during the meetings because this will be done by the WHC secretariat and will be available shortly on the web at http://www.unesco.org/whc. I will simply highlight some of the Finlandia Hall. Location of the World Heritage activities that may be of interest to us and list the title of the documents Committee meetings given to us. Just the list is two pages long! Should you be interested in consulting some of the documents, please contact Annette. What may also be of interest is that when such meetings are held in countries that I don’t know very well, I usually try to update my knowledge of the country’s history before I leave. I have found a brief history of Finland and will share it with you in this report. I hope that you will also Finlandia Hall find it interesting. The World Heritage Committee Meetings The meetings were held in Helsinki at Finlandia Hall, a building designed by the famous architect Alvar Aalto, and were impeccably organized by the Finns. The Director General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, the WHC Delegates President of Finland, Ms Tarja Halonen, the Minister of Culture, Ms Suvi Linden and the Minister of the environment, Ms Satu Hassi, opened the sessions. Almost all the countries of the world have signed the World Heritage Convention. This makes it the most popular inter-governmental international instrument in the field of culture and UNESCO has officially designated it as one of its “flagship” programs. The Committee of the World Heritage Convention is made up of 21 States Party elected from all those that have ratified the Convention. Then there is a Bureau made up of 7 States Party elected from among Tarja Halonen, President of Finland the 21 members of the Committee. From now on, the Bureau will meet in April of every year to prepare the Committee meeting and the Committee will meet in June. Though the meetings were well organized, many delegates felt that the Secretariat was overwhelming them with information and reports and that they did not have sufficient time to discuss the various complex issues presented to them. It appears that there will be modifications made to the Suvi Linden, Minister of Culture of Finland agenda of future meetings. There was also some reaction by Committee 1 members to the leadership role that the Secretariat was taking. They felt that the responsibility to give direction should come from them. Items of interest to us (in no particular order): • Conservation Principles: The most commonly asked question from managers of newly-designated World heritage property is the Baltic Sea in mid-winter following: “Now that our site has been designated as World Heritage, what special measures does the World Heritage Committee expect us to take to protect the site for all humanity?” The Secretariat’s suggestion to answer this question was to create a new charter for world heritage monuments and sites. But the Committee said that it would be preferable to simply extract from existing Charters, Recommendations and other similar instruments, the information necessary for managers. Finland countryside • China: The Yungang Grottos were inscribed on the WHC List. In the interest of supporting a balanced World Heritage List, the representative from China informed the Committee that China would not nominate any more grotto sites even though there are many more grotto sites of universal significance on its territory. China has four grotto sites listed on the WHL. • Site Management Plans: Much activity seems to be going on in Helsinki harbor front this area because site management plans are now required for each site nominated to the World Heritage List. Training and support is provided by the World Heritage Center to States Party that need to develop site management plans. An ICOMOS representative suggested to me that the GCI and ICCROM should look into the possibility of developing jointly a Site Management training course that would be offered every year to States Party to the Convention. This would certainly fill an important need. Helsinki, buildings off • Global Training Strategy: This Strategy integrates concerns for senate square both cultural and natural heritage. It was developed by ICCROM in cooperation with the World Heritage Center, ICOMOS and IUCN. The Strategy includes a Priority Action Plan, with a number of proposed activities. As a matter of principle, the Comittee stated that it would benefit from working within a single, stragtegic planning process, integrating all relevant training inputs and assuring training outputs reflecting a systhesis of concerns raised throughout the system. Of interest are the following statements from the paper: ” A commitment should be made to the use of professionally developed training methodologies, targeted to clearly defined learning objectives. Methodologies should integrate use of ‘best One of Finland's 188,000 practice’ case studies, and results of evaluations of past training lakes experiences, with a view to short term and long term improvements in efficiency, sustainability, and quality.” 2 ”Experienced trainers and training institutions (operational at the national, regional, and/or international levels), where available, should be used for training activities. These trainers and institutions would both support and benefit from the World Heritage training activities.” Helsinki cathedral The Strategy’s priorities are: Area 1: Improvement of implementation of the World Heritage Convention. Area 2: Improvement of on-site management of World Heritage properties. This includes tourism management, cultural landscape management, integrated approaches to historic city management, Statues designed by Alvar risk preparedness, and citizen involvement in management. Aalto for the Helsinki train station Area 3: Strengthening of technical, scientific, and traditional skills for conservation of cultural and natural heritage. The emphasis will focus on technical, scientific, and traditional conservation processes. Priority areas for development at present include: Oulanka national park - conservation of masonry, small cottage - conservation of decorated plaster surfaces (mural paintings), - development of inventories and evaluation systems, - use of GIS and other mapping tools, - development of indicators for use in monitoring management effectiveness, - integrating parks into the surrounding landscape, - fund raising, The Finns are very - negotiation and conflict management. "design conscious". Examples of creative design can be seen • Rock Art: Meetings will be held in the Caribbean to assess the everywhere, from region’s potential to present sites to the World Heritage List. buildings to objects to clothing to electronics ICOMOS commissioned a study of Rock Art sites in South Africa. (Nokia) The draft report is being reviewed by Henry Cleere at ICOMOS’ secretariat. • Africa 2009: Africa 2009 Program is a partnership between the World Heritage Center, ICCROM, CRATerre-EAG, and African cultural heritage organizations for carrying out the strategy of the World Heritage Committee for training immovable cultural heritage professionals in sub-Saharan Africa. 2001 marked the end of the pilot phase of the program. It included a three-month course and a Directors Evaluation Seminar in Mombasa, Kenya. An independent assessment of the pilot phase of the programme was carried out by a team of Norwegian, Swedish and Ugandan experts. Designer wooden chair. Among the main findings of the Assessment Report is that the methodology applied with regional courses combined with Projets Situés (what corresponds to our field projects) has been 3 innovative and proven as a valuable approach in making the training more relevant and improved overall quality. Also of interest is the proposed printing of a manual on documentation of Rock Art Sites in Southern Africa (done in collaboration with the Southern African Rock Art Project (SARAP) and used in a SARAP course held in Kasama, Zambia). Reindeer in northern Finland. Africa 2009 has its own web page with information about the program. World Heritage Committee Working Documents List 1. Provisional Agenda and Timetable Sunset in northern 2. Decision-making guide Finland. 3. Report of the Rapporteur on the twenty-fifth session of the Bureau of the World Heritage Committee, Paris, 25-30 June 2001 4. Report of the Rapporteur on the twenty-fifth extraordinary session of the Bureau, Helsinki, Finland, 7-8 December 2001 5. Report of Reform Issues 6. Revision of the Operational Guidelines 7. Periodic Reporting: Report on the state of the World Heritage in Africa, 2001 8. Periodic Reporting: Progress report on regional strategies for periodic reporting 9. 9State of conservation of properties inscribed on the List of World Wheat field. Heritage in Danger 10. State of conservation of properties inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger 11. Progress report on regional actions for the implementation of the Global Strategy Action Plan 12. Rev. Information on Tentative Lists and examination of nominations of cultural and natural properties on the List of World Turku medieval castle. Heritage in Danger and the World Heritage List Add. Information on Tentative Lists and examination of nominations of cultural and natural properties on the List of World Heritage in Danger and the World Heritage List: The identification of un-represented or less represented categories of natural and cultural properties 13. Report on the proposed World Heritage Indigenous Peoples Council of Experts (WHIPCOE) 14. Progress Report on the Global Training Strategy 15. Statutory Documentation and Registration 16.
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