Reconciling Nature and Culture in a Global Context? - Rainforest ...

Sandra Pannell‘habitats of threatened species’ and ‘natural sites or natural areas’, which are of “outstandinguniversal value” from the point of view of science, conservation and/or aesthetics (loc. cit.) 3 .The 812 properties currently inscribed on the World Heritage List are identified as either‘natural’, ‘cultural’, or as ‘mixed’ heritage (the latter being a combination of cultural andnatural heritage, as defined by the Convention). This identification is not only based uponthe Convention’s broad definitions of heritage, but it is also justified according to the selectioncriteria presented in the Convention’s ‘Operational Guidelines’ for the assessment of‘outstanding universal value’ 4 . Up until the end of 2004, when the guidelines were againrevised, six of the ten criteria were explicitly identified as ‘cultural’, while the remaining fourcriteria were classified as ‘natural’. While the new guidelines (UNESCO 2005a) havesupposedly abolished this distinction and ‘merged’ the ten criteria, properties nominated andinscribed in 2005 are still listed according to the tri-partite, pre-2005 classifications.The merging of ‘nature and culture’ to create a “unified set of criteria” (UNESCO 1998: 3)represents the latest of UNESCO’s efforts to redefine the relationship between these two keycategories, and further identify the mediatory role played by heritage in the global expressionof this dualism. For example, in earlier operational guidelines only the criteria for naturalheritage made reference to “man’s interaction with his natural environment” or “exceptionalcombinations of natural and cultural elements”, while the category of ‘mixed’ cultural andnatural properties did not appear to recognise interactions between its constituent culturaland natural elements (Titchen 1995: 240). The 1992 introduction of a fourth World Heritagecategory, that of ‘cultural landscapes’ as the “combined works of nature and of man”(UNESCO 2005a: 83), reflects a trend towards a more holistic view of the environment, onethat moves away from previous ideas of heritage as necessarily consisting of isolated anddiscrete sites. While the inclusion of ‘cultural landscapes’ appears to address some of theabovementioned limitations of the Convention’s operational categories, and serves to extendthe definition of cultural heritage beyond the idea of just ‘monuments’– ‘groups of buildings’ and ‘sites’ – it still pivots upon the notion of nature and culture asseparate and opposed domains. Rather than addressing the fundamental dualism, whichstands as the cornerstone of the Convention, the 1992 addition of a new category of culturalproperty only served to articulate the nature-culture distinction on a broader scale – at thelandscape level.In embracing the category and definition of ‘cultural landscapes’, the Convention alsorecognised on a global scale the significance of ‘intangible cultural heritage’, leading to the2003 Draft International Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage(UNESCO 2003a). Like the notion of cultural landscapes, the recognition of intangiblecultural heritage signalled a major shift away from the Convention’s monumental concept ofcultural heritage to one, which acknowledged “new concepts of the idea of cultural heritage”(World Heritage Committee 1994: 3). This movement away from a “rigid and restricted WorldHeritage List” (ibid: 2) towards one that is “receptive to the many and varied culturalmanifestations of outstanding universal value” (loc. cit.) is one of the primary objectives of the1994 Global Strategy for a Balanced, Representative and Credible World Heritage List.3 A complete definition of ‘cultural’ and ‘natural heritage’ is given as part of the definition of WorldHeritage in 2005 ‘Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention’(UNESCO 2005a).4 As of February 2006, there are 628 ‘cultural’ properties, 160 ‘natural’ sites and 24 ‘mixed’ propertiesinscribed on the World Heritage List.2