Contemporary developments in and around World Heritage Sites and their implications.

Abstract The first part of this chapter discusses contemporary developments within the concept of World Heritage sites (WHSs). These developments include the List of World Heritage in Danger, the notion of 'cultural landscape' and the concept of 'historic urban landscape'. The next part examines contemporary developments around the notion of WHSs, which can be further categorized into culture-focused and nature-focused concepts. The culture-focused ideas comprise 'intangible cultural heritage' and 'Memory of the World'. These two, and World Heritage, are three fundamental initiatives for international cultural heritage conservation of UNESCO. The nature-focused notions consist of 'UNESCO Global Geoparks' and 'biosphere reserves', which are the main schemes for global natural heritage conservation of UNESCO together with World Heritage.