The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Toward a Realistic World Heritage List
This week the United Nations committee that oversees the World Heritage Programme meets in St. Petersburg’s Tauride Palace to decide whether 33 sites around the world have enough “outstanding universal value” to be worthy of preservation by the international community. The host palace—the city residence of Prince Potemkin, which Catherine the Great rehabbed into her summer townhouse—as well as the rest of historic St. Petersburg, has already been so recognized.
2012 is the ruby jubilee for the program, marking 40 years since it was signed into existence. Celebrations of the anniversary have been scheduled throughout the year, all over the globe. And it’s not hard to find things about the program to celebrate. Since its creation nearly a thousand sites have been added to the program’s eponymous list, and the World Heritage brand, as it were, has never been healthier. Inclusion on the registry validates the cultural or natural value of a place—whether a single building or an entire ecosystem—and confirms it worthy of international protection and notice. In many ways the World Heritage Programme seems to be everything you would hope for in a UN initiative: focused, effective, and popular. The accord that created it has been adopted by more countries than any other preservation-minded treaty.
But what gets preserved? Most of the spots you would expect to make the honor roll of human patrimony are indeed on the World Heritage map: the Great Wall of China, Angkor Wat, the Grand Canyon, the leaning tower of Pisa. And it’s easy to see how such places fit the bill.