In 2025 and the years just beyond there will be strong efforts from powerful quarters in the federal government to roll back protection for heritage sites, curtail the celebration of intangible heritage values, and to halt the recent reevaluation of heritage values.
The World Heritage Convention is best known as the international treaty that established World Heritage Sites. That treaty, which was put into final form and ratified largely by the efforts of U.S. citizens through our National Park Service, was never meant to be concerned with only World Heritage Sites. It conveys instructions to all signatories, the 194 countries that have signed it, to establish means to protect the cultural and natural heritage of their respective countries.
The United States led the global effort to respect and preserve heritage values the world over. The United States established the first ICOMOS national committee 60 years ago. We would be remiss not to step forward to prevent the impairment of heritage conservation in our own country. How can we do that?
We must increase our visibility and reach to protect and advance the purposes for which the World Heritage Convention was established. We have thousands of universities in our country with faculties that include the kinds of professions, from archaeologists to architects, who can contribute their knowledge to the much-needed reinvention of heritage philosophy and practice. They and the many thousands more employed by non-profit and for-profit companies in heritage fields can raise their voices in support of heritage legislation and policies.
We need more members on an individual and institutional basis. We need more assistance in getting our messages out. We need to build upon the efforts that we have begun and to initiate new ones. We have an administrative staff in place now that requires our support and can be available to organize the efforts made by new members and institutions.
In terms of programs, projects, and activities, we have started down the right roads.
In 2024,
- We received a second grant from the Mellon Foundation to implement the Monuments Toolkit we have developed for addressing monuments associated with oppression. In doing this, we are partnering with the University of Texas in San Antonio, where we held our conference and symposium in 2023. Over the next three years we will develop more partnerships.
- Our webinar series over the past years has featured many presentations dealing with the recognition and inclusion of Indigenous Heritage Groups in U.S. World Heritage Site programs.
- Outputs of the Monuments Toolkit have included additional webinars, as well as podcasts, and these have reached an ever-expanding audience.
- We welcomed the International Exchange Program class of 2024 with participants from many counties around the world, who reported to us in person and virtually this fall.
- We were extremely active in encouraging the payment of our UNESCO dues, as was mandated by our Congress last year, and to renew dues that support the World Heritage program specifically.
- We decisively moved into the arena of addressing climate change, impacts and mitigation strategies at World Heritage Sites, with the focus on World Heritage Sites in the United States. This was the theme of our annual symposium and conference of 2024.
- At the ICOMOS General assembly held in Ouro Preto Brazil in November, we presented on the Monuments Toolkit and on plans to extend the International Underground Railroad network to freedom to other countries in the Americas. This was met with great enthusiasm by our Latin American colleagues.
- We welcomed the Moravian Church Settlement in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania as the most recent United States World Heritage Site. In doing so, we began talks with Moravian University to establish coursework, certifications, and degrees in World Heritage Studies.
- We held our annual Celebration of World Heritage at the Society of the Cincinnati in Washington, DC in early December, with a special presentation by Sara C. Bronin, Chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and another by the Mayor of Bethlehem, PA, J. William Reynolds.
- We are working hard with a planning committee from Mexico and the United States to develop nomination dossiers for bi-national, Mexico-USA World Heritage Sites.
As we move into a 2025 with uncertain support for World Heritage from our national government, we will need your support as members more than ever.
- Please do not forget to renew your membership, and to encourage others who are scholars or practitioners in heritage-related fields to become members.
- As members, we ask you to advocate for institutional membership for the organization to which you belong.
- As members, we encourage your ideas and participation in the programs, projects, and activities mentioned here. Please let us know if you are interested by reaching out to Arianna Startt Zakrzewski, at coo [at] worldheritageusa.org.
- We ask that you consider supporting our Annual Conference and Symposium to be held in mid-2025, and our Annual Celebration of World Heritage at the end of 2025, or that you ask the organization for which you work or to which you belong to provide support.
- There will come a time when we will ask our members to reach out to elected representatives at the federal state and local level. When the call comes, please take action!
Let us mark the 60th Anniversary of the United States National Committee of ICOMOS by using it to face and overcome the challenges of the year ahead together. I have no doubt that we will emerge as a stronger organization increasingly better able to support the ideas and goals set out in the World Heritage Convention.
President Douglas C. Comer, PhD