Intergovernmental organizations

The UNESCO World Heritage Convention is one of the most widely ratified international treaties, and a place on the World Heritage List is a widely coveted mark of distinction. Building on ethnographic fieldwork at Committee sessions, interviews and documentary study, the book links the change in operations of the World Heritage Committee with structural nation-centeredness, vulnerable procedures for evaluation, monitoring and decision-making, and loose heritage conceptions that have been inconsistently applied.

This volume has been compiled to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, which for half a century has been the UN organization responsible for fostering intergovernmental cooperation on global ocean science. It draws on the experience of 30 international experts to look at how governments use science to establish ocean policies, with chapters ranging from the history of ocean management to current advances in marine science, observation and management applications, and the international agencies that coordinate this work.