Politicisation and Crisis

As a pioneering conservation initiative, World Heritage remains at the apex of international efforts to protect humanity’s most cherished places. Yet all is not well, with claims that World Heritage has become increasingly politicised as experts’ advice is disregarded as states strive for World Heritage sites. Indeed, some claim World Heritage is in crisis. This chapter introduces the scope of the book, and reconsiders the relationship of expertise, politics and conservation in the World Heritage regime. It asks how we might otherwise read the role of experts in the emergence of World Heritage as an object of both global conservation and geopolitical contestation. It aims therefore to contribute a more nuanced understanding of experts and expertise, drawing attention to experts’ role in both protection and prestige. It reveals how World Heritage emerged as a Faustian pact between protection and prestige, and a productive tension between these elements remains at its core, embodied by the heritage expert. World Heritage politicisation is thus revealed as both more complex and having deeper roots than usually acknowledged.