Natural heritage

World Heritage properties are internationally recognized as places of Outstanding Universal Value that should benefit from the highest level of management effectiveness. The Toolkit 2.0 offers a self-assessment methodology to evaluate management effectiveness in a World Heritage property or other heritage place. It contains 12 tools that can be used separately or collectively to understand in detail what is working well and what can be done better.

Protected areas are the basic corner stone for protecting and managing the world's biodiversity, given their major and effective role in reducing the degradation of many ecosystems and habitats as a result of unsustainable human practices.

This Resource Manual has a specific purpose: helping to manage natural values within World Heritage properties. As such it is aimed at natural and mixed World Heritage properties as well as cultural landscapes (inscribed under cultural criteria). The intention is to help managers understand and incorporate World Heritage concepts and processes into natural site management. It is hoped that all natural World Heritage managers and staff will find useful guidance here and will be inspired to explore the many resources highlighted.

Настоящее Информационное руководство разработано с конкретной целью: способствовать управлению природными ценностями объектов всемирного наследия. Таким образом, оно касается объектов всемирного природного и смешанного культурно-природного наследия, а также культурных ландшафтов (последние включены в Список всемирного наследия в соответствии с критериями для объектов культурного наследия).

The topic of intangible natural heritage is new, recently emerging as an important subject of inquiry. It describes the untouchable elements of the environment that combine to create natural objects, and help define our relationship to them. These elements can be sensory, like auditory landscapes, or processes like natural selection. As a concept, intangible natural heritage is growing in prominence, as museums are increasingly charged safeguarding and interpreting the milieux from which their objects originate.