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Sustainable Tourism

The World Heritage Tourism Programme encourages sustainable tourism actions at World Heritage sites. The Programme develops policies and processes for site management and for the state parties to the Convention to address this increasingly important management concern. It implements actions to preserve sites for future generations and contributes to sustainable development and intercultural dialogue. It cooperates with WH Advisory Bodies, IUCN, ICOMOS and ICCROM, other United Nations Agencies such as UNDP and UNWTO and UNEP and engages the tourism industry to maximizes tourism's benefits and minimize its impacts.

The overall mission of the Tourism Programme is to aid the WH Committee and site management using tourism as a positive force to retain WH site values and to help mitigate site threats.

The WH Sustainable Tourism Programme strategy has three main lines of activities:

  • I. Developing and expanding the WH Tourism Programme Framework to build management capacity and provide alternative livelihoods to promote conservation;
  • II. Building strategic partnerships to support sustainable tourism as a conservation tool at WH sites;
  • III. Aiding the WH Committee, the state parties, the UNESCO Secretariat, WH Centre Regional desk officers, the UNESCO field offices on tourism related issues;

Tourism is one of the largest industries and heritage tourism is its most rapidly growing international sector. With millions of tourists visiting World Heritage sites each year, tourism has become an important cross cutting issue and management concern at most World Heritage sites. However, many sites lack trained personnel and local communities and policy makers sometimes lack the experience necessary to use tourism as a tool to contribute to biodiversity and cultural diversity conservation.

The over-riding importance of tourism to World Heritage, both as an opportunity and if poorly managed as a threat, was recognized by the World Heritage Committee when it authorized the Centre, in 2001, to develop the Programme. The World Heritage Sustainable Tourism Programme focuses on seven activities. These can also be applied to other non-World Heritage sites. They can facilitate cooperation with other Programmes of both the Cultural Sector and other UNESCO Sectors. The World Heritage Centre encourages its partners, in particular the UNESCO member states and the UN Agencies within the "One UN" reform process, as well as the tourism industry to support these components of the framework.

  1. Building the capacity of World Heritage site management to deal with tourism.
  2. Training local community members in environment and culture preservation and tourism related activities to receive tourism's benefits.
  3. Aiding communities around the sites to market their products and use the World Heritage sites as a lever for local economic social and cultural development.
  4. Raising public awareness of World Heritage Outstanding Universal Values and building pride and intercultural dialogue with local communities and visitors through conservation education.
  5. Using tourism generated funds to supplement site conservation and protection costs.
  6. Spreading the lessons learned to other sites and protected areas.
  7. Building increased awareness of the objectives of the 1972 World Heritage Convention and other UNESCO conventions to the Tourism Programmes activities and policies for local and national public tourism authorities, tourism industry officials and tourists.
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Decisions
  • Decision 32COM 7B.4 Show