World Heritage In The High Seas

High Seas Governance: Gaps and Challenges discusses and presents solutions to identified gaps in the legal regime governing the high seas, including the protection of sensitive marine areas, marine pollution, conservation of marine living resources, and activities by non-state actors.

'A vital, fascinating, deeply researched exploration of Earth's last wilderness... Shocking and starkly illuminating - a must-read.' Gaia Vince The ocean covers seventy per cent of the surface of our planet, and two thirds of this lie beyond national borders. Owned by all nations and no nation simultaneously, these waters are home to some of the richest and most biodiverse environments on the planet. But they are also home to exploitation on a scale that few of us can imagine. Here, industry and economic progress rule and lax enforcement and apathy are the status quo. Out of sight and often out of mind, a battle rages to control, profit from, protect, or obliterate the world's largest, wildest commons. Heffernan sets sail on a journey to uncover the truth behind deeply exploitative fishing practices, investigate the potentially devastating impact of deep-sea mining, and hold to task the Silicon-valley interventionists whose solutions to climate change are often wildly optimistic, radically irresponsible or both. The result is a forceful and deeply researched manifesto calling for the protection and preservation of this final frontier - the last vestiges of wilderness on Earth.

Almost fifty years have passed since the adoption of the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (the UNESCO World Heritage Convention). With its 194 States Parties, it is the most widely ratified convention within the family of UNESCO treaties on the protection of cultural heritage. The success of this Convention and its almost universal acceptance by the international community of states is due to the great appeal that recognising certain properties as "world heritage" has for national governments. Since the publication of the first Commentary, new problems have arisen in the management of world heritage sites. It has become increasingly difficult to properly monitor the conservation of the ever-growing mass of sites inscribed in the World Heritage List, and to resolve disputes over the formal designation of contested world heritage properties - a problem that has led to the withdrawal of the United States and Israel from UNESCO. New frontiers are now being explored for the expansion of the world heritage idea over marine areas beyond national jurisdiction, and the monopoly of the State in the identification, delineation, and presentation of world heritage properties is being increasingly challenged in the name of indigenous peoples' rights and by local communities claiming ownership over contested cultural sites. At the same time, the regime of world heritage protection has infiltrated other areas of international law, especially international economic law, investment arbitration, and the area of international criminal law. This second edition critically examines the World Heritage Convention against this dynamic evolution of international heritage law to help academics, lawyers, diplomats, and officials interpret and apply the norms of the Convention after half a century of uninterrupted implementing practice by State Parties and Treaty Bodies.

This Handbook provides a cutting edge study of the fast developing field of international law on the protection of cultural heritage by taking stock of the recent developments and of the core concepts and current challenges. The legal protection of cultural heritage has come under renewed focus from the international community and states since the 1990s. This is evidenced by the adoption of a range of international instruments. Countries are also enacting cultural heritage legislation or overhauling existing laws within their own national territory. Contributions address the protection of immovable and movable, tangible and intangible cultural heritage in peacetime and in the event of armed conflict as well as the interaction between specific regimes of cultural heritage protection with other fields of international law, including international criminal law, human rights and humanitarian law, environmental law, international trade, investments, and intellectual property. The last part of the Handbook covers diverse regional systems of heritage protection.