Synergies for World Heritage

Abstract

In this paper we want to describe current as well as heritage classifications and their effectiveness as tools to protect and preserve heritage sites in the official documents that have being written in those years. We want to emphasize that there is no inherent difference between the heritage values concealed in movable, immovable and intangible heritage assets. We are dealing with the same values differently expressed, interwoven with values of other sectors within development in one and the same spatial concept. Moreover, all heritage exists “somewhere”. Festivities, narratives, habits and customs are undertaken “somewhere” by a local population and locations that are meaningful for it. Local population makes no difference between the perception of landscape, town or village, or of movable heritage items in their churches, mosques, temples and museums, or of festivals, customs, habits and tales which live on in. They perceive this as a single synthetic whole, not segmented into analytic, rational categories of “immovable”, “movable” and “intangible”. This leads us to the insight that the interpretation and implementation of heritage values needs to take place across all heritage sectors together in an integral heritage approach, in which the responsables make take a common approach and forge the necessary synergies.