CHA Korea

CHA Korea supports the World Heritage Leadership Programme, recognizing importance of people, nature, culture interlinkages for heritage management

As a long-standing supporter and partner of ICCROM activities, the Korean Cultural Heritage Administration has agreed to support the World Heritage Leadership Programme for the next four years.

Under the second phase of the CHA Korea-ICCROM Framework Arrangement signed in December 2017, the CollAsia Programme activities for movable heritage have continued to be implemented answering the needs of the Asian region, while new activities were sought for the protection of immovable heritage (https://www.iccrom.org/news/signing-cha-korea-iccrom-framework-arrangem…). For the first phase of support, CHA supported the CollAsia programme together with an Annual Thematic Forum on selected topics of common interest on a global scale, with professionals from around the world working to understand key conservation concepts in an Asian context. The Annual Thematic Forum explored the following themes: Asian Buddhist Heritage: Conserving the Sacred (2013), Authenticity in Asian Context (2014), Applicability and Adaptability of Traditional Knowledge Systems in Conservation and Management of Heritage (2015), and National Conservation Policies (2016) (https://www.iccrom.org/section/iccrom-fora/iccrom-cha-international-for…).

With the conclusions drawn out from the annual forum, CHA has now pledged its support to the World Heritage Leadership Programme, namely to support the course activity of People Centred Approaches to the Conservation of Nature and Culture course (PNC). The lessons drawn from the Fora on protecting living religious heritage, traditional knowledge, and understanding authenticity of heritage are embedded within the curriculum of the PNC course, and the course will serve as a stepping stone to disseminate the findings of the forum to the larger audience of heritage practitioners. The People Nature Culture course is the core capacity building activity within the World Heritage Leadership Programme serving heritage practitioners. It seeks to improve conservation practices of World Heritage sites by highlighting the importance of interlinkages between nature and culture, and for heritage to be able contribute to the sustainable development of society (https://www.iccrom.org/section/world-heritage-leadership).

With the support of CHA, the PNC course will be implemented in the Asian region, with an Asian Regional Site Managers Forum to be convened at the end of the four years to promote networking of the participants and to review the long-term impact of the courses.