International Course on Linking Nature and Culture in World Heritage Site Management

ICOMOS is pleased to inform that the International Course on Linking Nature and Culture in World Heritage Site Management will be held in Røros Mining Town and the Circumference, Norway from 6-16 June 2017. The course announcement is available on the ICCROM website by clicking here.

 

 

 

The course is organised by ICCROM, IUCN and the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Office of Culture and with the support of its partners, including ICOMOS.

The overall goal of the course is that participants will have the added knowledge, skills and awareness to address nature and culture inter-linkages in which people are an integral part and improve management and governance approaches of a diverse set of World Heritage Sites, through shared experiences from both sectors.

ICCROM is interested in inviting applications from heritage practitioners from the cultural and natural heritage sectors, with a particular emphasis on practitioners linked to World Heritage Sites. Participants should be able to demonstrate their involvement in on-going management activities of a cultural heritage site with natural values, or vice versa.

Applications should reach ICCROM by 31 March 2017 to ensure inclusion in our selection process.

 

The World Heritage Leadership Programme

This ground-breaking course is a key component of the new World Heritage Leadership programme developed by ICCROM and IUCN and Norwegian Ministry of Environment. The World Heritage Leadership programme aims to take a new approach to implementing the long standing partnership of IUCN and ICCROM in capacity development to support the World Heritage Convention. This new programme emerged as a response to the growing concerns over the divide between nature and culture within many aspects of the World Heritage process despite one of the defining characteristics of the World Heritage Convention being that the protection and management of both natural and cultural values of Outstanding Universal Value falls under one international instrument. There is now a growing recognition and interest in bridging the divides and differences between nature and culture and addressing commonalities and possible shared opportunities in managing heritage sites. The World Heritage Leadership Programme (WHLP) is delivered by IUCN and ICCROM in collaboration with ICOMOS and WHC and other organisations and is being developed with the support of the Norwegian Ministry of Environment and other partners. This programme will focus on:
• Setting and testing the leading standards for conserving sites, and ensuring their contribution to communities and sustainable development, through engaging in World Heritage;
• Providing high profile, widely translated documented advice on conservation policies and practices, notably by integrating the ICCROM-led Managing Cultural World Heritage manual and the IUCN-led Managing Natural World Heritage manual, into a single new publication;
• Establishing a network of internationally recognized leadership sites, which will include the World Heritage Sites demonstrating leading practice, and which can provide platforms for learning, and for capacity building;
• Building international networks between nature and culture practitioners and institutions that link on-ground practice with leadership at international, regional, national and local levels.
• Providing diverse training events, exchanges, and other capacity-building activities to support the work of both site managers and stakeholders, and national heritage services in diverse States Parties.

Course Background

This course on Linking Nature and Culture in World Heritage Site Management, to be held at Røros, is the first major activity of the World Heritage Leadership Programme, and the start of a process to set a new standard to link nature and culture practice in World Heritage Sites. The course curriculum has been developed through a series of activities. Among them was the curriculum developed to organise an international training course by ICCROM and IUCN to ‘Address nature –culture interlinkages in managing World Heritage Sites’ in 2014. Course modules were subsequently tested at training activities of ICCROM over the last two years. This also includes the course on People Centred Approaches to Conservation of Nature and Culture (http://www.iccrom.org/wp-content/uploads/PCA_Annexe-2.pdf) already designed and implemented. Tsukuba University (Japan) ran a course (https://goo.gl/1mxvDn) related to the theme using the curriculum as the basis. The course at Røros will bring together all these experiences and also address the relationship between people (including local communities and indigenous peoples), and the cultural and natural values of sites and how sites and their surrounding land/seascapes are managed. A crucial feature of the course is that it will bring together practitioners and resource persons from both cultural and natural heritage sectors.

Overall goal

The overall goal of the course is that participants will have the added knowledge, skills and awareness to address nature and culture inter-linkages in which people are an integral part and improve management and governance approaches of a diverse set of World Heritage Sites, through shared experiences from both sectors.

Specific objectives

1. To rethink natural and cultural heritage conservation as an interrelated and interdependent concept, rather than as separate domains and to rethink current approaches, where nature and culture management remain separate.
2. To provide support to practitioners to carry out quality management at World Heritage properties through understanding the existing linkages and separations of nature and culture in the World Heritage system which poses policy and institutional challenges as well as complexities in their daily work?
3. To build synergies across sectors and engage far more proactively with policy makers, communities and networks in addition to practitioners.
4. To explore and test in the field methodologies/ approaches and improve abilities/ skills of practitioners to bridge gaps in linking culture and nature.
5. To convince the practitioners to consider people as a core component of heritage management and to address the well-being of both and ensure natural and cultural heritage has a dynamic and mutually beneficial role in society today and long into the future.
6. To create and strengthen communities of practice.

 

Participants

The course is designed for a maximum of 20 participants and is open to heritage practitioners from the cultural and natural heritage sectors, with a particular emphasis on practitioners linked to World Heritage Sites. Participants should be able to demonstrate their involvement in on-going management activities of a cultural heritage site with natural values, or vice versa. The resource persons invited to contribute to the course will be drawn from both cultural and natural heritage sectors.

The working language of the course will be English.

 

Travel, Accommodation and Living Expenses

Participants will be responsible for their round trip travel costs to and from Norway and their living costs (accommodation will be provided). Candidates are strongly encouraged to seek financial support from sources such as governmental institutions, employers and funding agencies. In cases of proven financial need, and depending on the availability of funding at the time of the course, a number of partial scholarships may be granted to cover travel and living expenses.

 

Applications

Please fill the ICCROM application form (obtainable from ICCROM web site) and send it together with the documents listed below to the following e-mail: LNC17@iccrom.org
• A full professional curriculum vitae (in English)
• A description of the site you are currently involved in indicating the natural/cultural values of the site and expressing your views on the need to address interlinkages (WH Site preferred).

 

Application deadline

Applications should reach ICCROM by 31 March 2017.

 

Image: Røros Mining Town and the Circumference, Norway © Flickr, Bart