Our work

Advisor on nature to the World Heritage Committee

The IUCN World Heritage Team coordinates IUCN's work as the official advisor on nature to the World Heritage Committee, including: 

• evaluating new nominations
• assessing existing sites' conservation sites
• advising the World Heritage Committee
• training World Heritage practitioners
• developing World Heritage resources
• compiling key facts and figures on natural World Heritage 

IUCN Initiatives on World Heritage 

Alongside the work as advisor, the World Heritage Team leads on and supports a series of initiatives to make the World Heritage Convention more effective and relevant to global conservation, including:

• Supporting the Climate Action Toolkit for World Heritage
• Benefits of natural World Heritage
• Climate change and World Heritage
• Impact assessments
• Geodiversity, World Heritage and IUCN
• Areas with multiple international designations
• Connecting practice for the nature and culture sectors
• World Heritage analyses: a digital lab
• Heritage Heroes Awards 2016
• Other 

IUCN's broader work on World Heritage

IUCN has over 1,400 Member organizations (including both government and civil society organisations), convenes a network of some 16,000 experts, and has offices in more than 60 countries. Collectively, IUCN supports the protection and conservation of natural World Heritage in countless ways, from its official advisory role to the World Heritage Convention, to being directly responsible for managing a site, to collecting crucial data on species and climate, supporting rangers, providing funding for direct conservation action, or generating sustainable livelihoods for communities.

Some examples of IUCN's broader work on World Heritage can be found below. 

• SOS Lemurs: Conserving lemurs in the Rainforests of the Atsinanana (Madagascar)
• Galapagos Conservancy: Improve nesting habitat for the waved albatross in the Galapagos Islands (Ecuador)
• Blue Natural Capital: Support financial sustainability of the Belize Barrier Reef (Belize)
• WWF: #SaveOurHeritage campaign to protect natural World Heritage sites