Abstract
UNESCO’s world heritage program aims to protect sites of cultural and natural heritage worldwide. Issues of local communities and well-being have been given increasing attention by heritage conservation scholars, but a systemic review of UNESCO guidelines has not been performed. Here, we examine the evolution of the ‘Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention,’ documents representing the heritage conservation policies of UNESCO over the period 1994–2019. Using keyword analysis and document analysis, the findings show evidence of an increasing emphasis on local communities, growing primarily since 2005. However, the theme of well-being only first emerged in the operational guidelines in 2019. Political, economic, and environmental challenges idiosyncratic to specific places often complicate the role of local communities and well-being in heritage conservation priorities. Future research should investigate the potential implementation and implications of these changes for the guidelines at specific UNESCO world heritage sites.
Highlights
UNESCO’s world heritage program aims to protect sites of cultural and natural heritage worldwide
We argue here that heritage conservation should be considered along with local communities’ well-being, of which a critical component is the relationship between local communities and other stakeholders in heritage site management
To investigate the extent to which the issue of local communities and their well-being is recognized by UNESCO, we examine the ‘Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention’, that have been published by UNESCO on an occasional basis since 1977
Summary
Since its establishment in 1945, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural. A handful of studies have emphasized the role of well-being in heritage sites, especially in the context of community-based conservation as a way of examining the status and condition of concerned local people [13,15,17] This prior research is primarily centered around internal networks of local communities and does not explicitly address the external relations of those local communities with government agencies and with relevant international organizations, such as UNESCO, by which local communities’ traditional ways of life have been impacted. By utilizing keyword analysis and document analysis of official UNESCO publications, we investigate how attention to, acknowledgement of, and issues of local communities and their well-being have been identified and changed over the past two decades Examining these changes will contribute to an understanding of evolving UNESCO heritage conservation objectives and will provide guidance for scholars and policy-makers regarding heritage conservation, indigenous populations, and their well-being
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