Challenges for world natural heritage protection through coordinating a variety of values

Abstract

Designation of protected areas is an extremely effective means of "protecting" the natural environment and natural resources, and registration as a world natural heritage site is an extremely effective conservation policy for protecting its outstanding universal value. This paper introduces three cases such as Ha Long Bay, in Vietnam, Galapagos Islands and Shirakami-Sanchi in Japan which are the sites of world heritage. The paper presents the different values of stakeholders towards world natural heritage. In particular, the paper discusses how the universal values of world heritage and the values of stakeholders including local communities affect the protection of world heritage. Then, based on the recognition of the different values, future issues and perspectives regarding the coordination of interests among stakeholders are discussed. In today's world, where there are different values, sometimes conflicts among stakeholders happen with each other and it is of course needed to respect and mutually understand these different values. On the other hand, the international framework, the World Heritage Convention, is a global standard with outstanding universal value, although its characteristics are diverse. For registered sites, the global "external" endorsement should require local communities at the sites to comply with new global standards. At the same time, external global standards will force new changes on the ground in registered sites. It is important to think how to overcome conflicts between different values and to create new values through interaction between external and local values.