World Heritage Beech Forests Conference held in Vienna

The World Heritage Beech Forests Conference was held in Vienna, Austria on 23 July 2018. Eighty-four participants from 15 States Parties came to discuss the challenges and future of the UNESCO World Heritage “Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe”.

The conference supported the upstream process and enabled direct communication with UNESCO and IUCN as well as among States Parties, and was therefore a unique possibility to communicate needs, existing tools and new options directly among all parties concerned. In three sessions Mechtild Rössler, Director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, along with Mizuki Murai (IUCN), Pierre Ibisch (Eberswalde University of Sustainable Development), Alfredo Di Filippo (Università della Tuscia), Marian Gic (SOPSR) and Patrick Huvenne (Agency for Nature and Forests) together with Kris Vandekerkhove (Research Institute for Nature and Forests), presented the complexity of this serial UNESCO World Heritage site, with its 78 component parts in more than 40 protected areas across 12 European countries.