Sustainability – A Guiding Principle of the World Heritage Convention – What Has Been Achieved – What Is Missing – What Is the Future Perspective

Abstract

The World Heritage Convention (WHC), as the premier charter for heritage protection, has long adopted sustainability as a core principle. With today’s understanding of heritage management as an important driver of economic growth, social capital and environmental protection, its reconciliation with sustainable practices is inevitable. Fifty years on, the WHC faces new challenges concerning promoting and supporting sustainable development. With the broad adoption of SDGs, heritage actors working under the WHC framework frequently encounter conflicting objectives. While in theory, the social, ecological and economic dimensions of sustainable development can be reconciled, in practice, this often requires finding viable and balanced trade-offs. The growing awareness for climate change in the last ten years results in the need to reprioritise the different dimensions and can lead to hard choices that have been framed as dilemma situations. This paper takes a closer look at those dilemma situations and discusses how the WHC can help tackle these and make the right decisions in the face of complex sustainability choices.