Chapter 8: Sustainable Tourism Development and Thai Cultural Heritage

Abstract Sustainable development in support of cultural heritage has become one of the major issues on UNESCO’s agenda. As policy documents are issued, heritage environmental sustainability, local stakeholders’ development and participation and heritage in cases of interregional conflict are the situations they analyze. As such, policy documents will be employed as guidelines for past and future UNESCO World Heritage site registrations. They have been used for the present study of sustainable development within mostly Thai cultural heritage context, with a few cases relating to Cambodia due the lack of research on this topic in the region. Employing qualitative method analysis, most of the heritage sites studied here suffer from a lack of protection against encroachment, natural elements and, more rarely, overuse. Furthermore, the implementation of heritage management plans sees local stakeholders excluded from any participation in the heritage they live in, which may cause conflicts in Southeast Asia.