World Heritage: Concepts, Management and Conservation

World Heritage: Concepts, Management and Conservation presents an insight into discussions and debates surrounding the UNESCO World Heritage List, and the properties on it.

Since its creation 50 years ago, the World Heritage Convention has been lauded as one of the most successful international expressions of cooperation, whilst at the same time being widely criticised as producing an overly commercialised and globalised sense of heritage. Offering an in-depth discussion of both sides of the debate, this book explores these issues by discussing the following topics:

- How the World Heritage Convention was conceived and how it is operationalised;

- How the World Heritage concept is currently being used and misused;

- The benefits of inscription - perceived and actual existential threats faced by World Heritage Site managers including climate change, urban development, overtourism, military action and natural disaster;

- The future of World Heritage as an instrument for conservation and economic development.

Case studies from a global range of World Heritage Sites are included throughout, to showcase some of the successes and also missuses of World Heritage status.

This book will be of pivotal interest to students and scholars in the fields of tourism, heritage, archaeology, natural resource management and development studies.

Simon C. Woodward is a Geographer by training and Principal Lecturer in the School of Events, Tourism and Hospitality Management at Leeds Beckett University where he teaches on both the undergraduate and postgraduate tourism management programmes, specialising in cultural and heritage tourism; destination development and business management. Prior to joining the University in 2008, he spent 20 years as a full-time management consultant to the global heritage tourism sector, working in many developed and emerging destinations in the Middle East; East, West and Southern Africa and in Western Europe, including the UK. Simon has a particular interest in developing and managing community-based heritage.

Louise Cooke is Senior Lecturer in Conservation in the Department of Archaeology at University of York, with interests in sustainability, historic buildings, archaeological sites and cultural landscapes. She has undertaken fieldwork in Central Asia and the Middle East and has a wide-ranging portfolio of freelance and project-based work overseas in the UEA, Peru and Turkey, as well as across the UK. She joined the Archaeology Department in York in 2016, further developing connections and research with South Asia. Louise has a particular interest in creative responses to heritage management and conservation in a changing climate.