Landscapes for the World: Conserving a Global Heritage

The best of the world's cultural landscapes - the results of humanity's interaction with the environment over millennia - are a legacy of enormous importance, comparable with great archaeological monuments and works of art. Since 1992 the international community has begun to define, identify, designate and protect these special places, through UNESCO's World Heritage Programme, which now inscribes World Heritage landscapes as well as World Heritage sites. This book provides an accessible introduction to these globally significant landscapes.

Peter Fowler asks why these places matter to all of us. In this book he explores the ideas, iconography and values which have inspired the UNESCO programme; visits all of the 38 landscapes designated in the period 1992-2003: places such as the Tongariro volcano in New Zealand, the Portuguese port wine region of Alto Douro and the rice-growing Cordilleras in the Philippines; explores the complex politics involved in designation; places Britain's landscape heritage in its global context. Two World Heritage landscapes have been designated so far in Britain - Blaenavon and Kew Gardens. St Kilda and the Lake District are under consideration; and provides, with its discussion of landscape management issues, an essential text for heritage and nature conservation practitioners and students.

This is a book which emphasises the universality of cultural landscapes. They reflect the myriad lifeways of humanity across the globe and through time, and the best of them are all equally worthy of conservation.

Peter Fowler is now a consultant, writer and painter, based in London and Languedoc. He was formerly Secretary to the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), and Professor of Archaeology at Newcastle University. He has been closely involved with the selection of landscapes appropriate for World Heritage inscription.