On the construction of ‘outstanding universal value’: Some comments on the implementation of the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention

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A number of imbalances in the implementation of the World Heritage Convention and in the composition of the World Heritage List have recently been noted. This paper restates the intention of the Convention to establish a select list of cultural and natural heritage of ‘outstanding universal value’. Criteria established to assist in the assessment of this World Heritage value are noted here as being indistinct in their articulation of type and level of value and their wording is assessed as having made it difficult to ensure the recognition of interactions between people and the environment of ‘outstanding universal value’. In a recent initiative cultural landscapes of World Heritage value are now beginning to be inscribed in the World Heritage List and are interpreted as being just one part of the whole range of interactions between nature and culture. At its 20th session in December 1996 the World Heritage Committee will consider the development of an overarching Global Strategy for a representative World Heritage List and a single common set of criteria and conditions of integrity to be applied when assessing and evaluating both cultural and natural heritage as recommended by the ‘Expert Meeting on Evaluation of general principles and criteria for nominations of natural World Heritage sites’. The paper concludes by noting the pragmatic necessity of defining ‘outstanding universal value’ as an extraordinary combination of the unique and the representative.