How does the World Heritage Sustainable Tourism Programme guide the evolution of rural landscapes?

Abstract

Although the World Heritage Sustainable Tourism Programme has great potential for addressing the Sustainable Development Goals, it faces a continual lack of on-the-ground community-level tools. This paper explores the potential for community-level intervention to guide the evolution of rural landscapes under the World Heritage Sustainable Tourism Programme. This community-level intervention comprises three phases (knowledge coproduction, perspective planning and community action) and nine stages (village representative assembly, internalising knowledge workshop, field trip and casual interviews, knowledge demonstration, joint fieldwork, perspective discussions, tangible landscape element design, intangible landscape element coordination, and effectiveness evaluation). Our case study, Dragon Tail Village, reveals that community-level interveners should facilitate community development by recognising the important role of rural communities—co-owners of heritage sites—and rural landscapes—sets of attributes with heritage value. Our findings therefore improve the understanding of the World Heritage Sustainable Tourism Programme’s driving rationale for community development.