The world’s cultural heritage is vulnerable to numerous types of risks, ranging from climate crisis to pandemics and wars. In the face of both current and future threats, states have the power to choose which cultural items should be conserved and which can be allowed to be destroyed. Consequently, there are legal provisions in place to safeguard the chosen pieces of cultural heritage as World Heritage for future generations. This article explores the essence of World Heritage as a legal phenomenon within the body of international cultural heritage law, applying a human rights perspective and taking in distinctive features of Nordic law. Using the framework developed by Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, the article outlines theoretical guidelines for locating and examining World-Heritage-related legal relations. This theoretical Hohfeldian approach is combined with practical examples from the Finnish World Heritage Site of Old Rauma, among others. The article argues that World Heritage is currently threatened for reasons typical of capital-centric society. The related threats are not adequately recognized, nor are they appropriately addressed by either state authorities or the law. To prevent conflicts from arising in relation to the safeguarding of World Heritage, this article emphasizes the importance of fostering resilience through elastic legal mechanisms, as exemplified by the Nordic right to roam.

The language of shared heritage for humanity holds a central position within UNESCO's World Heritage. However, the “Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution” as World Heritage is primarily Japan's national project for globalizing a glorious historical narrative of Meiji Japan. While this national nostalgia matches the contemporary political discourse of overcoming domestic and international challenges in twenty-first century Japan, it also encourages people to forget alternative perspectives related to Korean memories of forced labor, colonialism, and war. Ministry officials and cultural council members expressed concerns over possible critical reactions from South Korea, but the Japanese government accelerated its campaign for UNESCO's World Heritage designation and achieved its objective in 2015. Why did the Japanese government take this step despite the alarming voices within Japan? This paper uncovers the process in which Japan's industrial heritage was constructed and promoted as World Heritage. It points to the role of Japanese and Western heritage experts in a newly established committee outside the conventional procedure for Japan's World Heritage nomination and concludes that Japan's heritage diplomacy pushes alternative historical narratives into oblivion.

Religious architecture, often called ‘monuments’ within the current understanding of ancient shrines, are prominent features of the landscape in South and Southeast Asia. Many of these sites are admired for their artistic and aesthetic appeal and are centres of tourism and travel. This paper traces the historical trajectory of three contemporary monuments of Buddhist affiliation across the Bay of Bengal, namely Nalanda in north India, Borobudur in Central Java, and Nakhon Pathom in Central Thailand to address both their distinctiveness and their interconnectedness. The paper also focuses on the extent to which these shrines reflect the religious theories that prevailed between the sixth and the thirteenth centuries AD and are currently known to us through religious texts. It is not often appreciated that ‘collections’ of religious texts, as well as the ‘discovery’ of monuments were mediated through the priorities and practices of European and Western scholars from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The history of the study of Buddhism shows that it centred on religious texts and philosophical doctrines produced by a small group of monastic elites, with little attention paid to the more difficult questions of the contexts underlying textual production and circulation. This paper suggests that it is important to factor in the colonization of South and Southeast Asia into any discussion on the understanding of religions and monuments, as well as current interest in these monuments, which are also World Heritage Sites and associated with present interests in maritime heritage.

Indigenous peoples’ emphasis on protecting their cultural heritage (including land) through a human rights-based approach reveals the synergies and conflicts between the World Heritage Convention and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). This article focuses on how their insistence on the right to participate effectively in decision-making and centrality of free, prior, and informed consent as defined in the UNDRIP exposes the limitations of existing United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and World Heritage Convention processes effecting Indigenous peoples, cultures, and territories and how these shortcomings can be addressed. By tracking the evolution of the UNDRIP and the World Heritage Convention from their drafting and adoption to their implementation, it examines how the realization of Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination concerning cultural heritage is challenging international law to become more internally consistent in its interpretation and application and international organizations to operate in accordance with their constitutive instruments.

The rock art and the associated natural scenery at 38 sites located in the Zuojiang River valley, in the southwest of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, southern China, were inscribed recently on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. The painted panel at the site of Mt. Huashan is probably the largest known rock art panel in the world, consisting of approximately 1900 identifiable figures and occupying an area of approximately 8000 m2. To determine a precise age on the rock art at Mt. Huashan, 56 secondary carbonate layers above and below the paintings were studied for their mineralogy, oxygen, and carbon isotopic compositions and dated by the 230Th/U method. The 230Th/U dating results demonstrate that ages of the rock paintings can be bracketed between 1856±16 and 1728±41yr BP corresponding to the middle to the end of the Eastern Han dynasty (AD 25 to 220). The results imply that the rock painting practices at Mt. Huashan probably lasted more than a century, and the Zuojiang rock art is younger than that at Baiyunwan and Cangyuan in Yunnan Province by 1 to 10 centuries.

This article addresses questions relating to the ‘Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site’ and seeks to introduce into this initiative some concepts derived from recent writings on contemporary mobilities and bordering, exploring the possibility of creating greater engagement between the two academic fields of ‘border studies’ and ‘Roman Frontier Studies’. By examining the relationship between the Roman Frontiers initiative and the European Union's stated aims of integration and the dissolution of borders, it argues in favour of crossing intellectual borders between the study of the present and the past to promote the value of the Roman frontiers as a means of reflecting on contemporary problems facing Europe. This article considers the potential roles of Roman Frontier Studies in this debate by emphasizing frontiers as places of encounter and transformation.

Since 2008 the IAU has worked with UNESCO and its advisory bodies to help recognise, promote and protect all types of astronomical heritage and to encourage nominations for World Heritage Sites relating to astronomy. I review the main challenges and achievements so far, and indicate how the Astronomy and World Heritage Initiative is likely to develop in the future.

This joint session between FM21 and FM2 (“Astronomical Heritage: Progressing the UNESCO–IAU Initiative”) focused upon the need to preserve the dark skies necessary for the continued functioning of the world's leading optical observatories and whether, if some of the sites concerned could be inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List, this could help achieve this objective. Among the main issues addressed were: is a WHL inscription feasible in the first place? how could the strongest case for inscription be made? what progress has been made towards doing this? and what other effects might a WHL inscription have and would they all be desirable to astronomers? Addressing such issues involves not only scientific but also heritage and political considerations.

My presentation is divided into two parts: the first part retraces chronologically all the main achievements accomplished within the framework of this Thematic Initiative; the second provides key information regarding the nomination process.

Marking seven years of formal cooperation between the IAU and the UNESCO World Heritage Centre to implement UNESCO's “Astronomy and World Heritage” Thematic Initiative, this Focus Meeting reviewed achievements, challenges, and progress on particular World Heritage List nomination projects.

Following the Starlight meeting held in La Palma in November 2009, members of the IAU Working Group on Astronomy and World Heritage and the Starlight Initative are working together, with the approval of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, to produce a new integrated web site for the UNESCO–IAU Astronomy and World Heritage Initiative that will act as a Portal to the Heritage of Astronomy. As such, the portal will be the bridge between the Initiative, the scientific community, National Commissions and experts, and the general public.

Properties with a relationship to science are amongst the least represented on the UNESCO World Heritage List and the values of these properties, located in all the regions of the world, are not sufficiently recognised. The UNESCO and IAU encourage the States Parties to the World Heritage Convention to actively participate in the development and implementation of the Thematic Initiative “Astronomy and World Heritage” aiming to provide an opportunity to identify the properties connected with astronomy and for keeping their memory alive and preserving them from progressive deterioration, through the inscription of the most representative properties on the World Heritage List.

The Starlight Initiative brings a new view of the night sky and of its value enhancement, claiming the access to starlight as a scientific, environmental, and cultural right of humankind. Night sky quality has been seriously damaged in the last years because of light and atmospheric pollution, and an international action in favour of intelligent outdoor lighting is urgently needed. After the promulgation of the Starlight Declaration, we are jointly working with UNESCO, the World Heritage Centre, the MaB Programme, and other international institutions in the development of Starlight Reserves as exemplary areas that would act as models for the recovery of the heritage associated to star observation. The possibility arises to design and launch new tourist products and destinations based on astronomy and starry sceneries.