Cultural Landscape Workshop to be held in Paro and Thimphu, Bhutan

The Workshop for Cultural Landscape and Sustaining its Significance – Bhutan 2016 will be held in Paro and Thimphu, Bhutan, from 12 July to 3 August 2016. The workshop is aiming to assist the development of management frameworks for two selected cultural landscape sites in Paro, Bhutan.

The workshop, co-organized by the Department of Culture, Ministry of Home and Cultural Affairs, Bhutan, and the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, will engage both national stakeholders and international experts in the discussion and deliberation of implementable management schemes for one Cultural Site within the Paro valley as well as the broader Special Area – Cultural Landscape of the Paro valley.

The activities of the working exercises will include the identification of elements/aspects underpinning cultural heritage value, deliberation on the key areas that need to be surveyed, examined, and planned, and finally preparation of proposals on implementable management schemes of the two cultural landscape sites aforementioned. The outcomes of the working exercises will be reviewed and advised by several invited international experts before being submitted to their respective panels for final deliberation. The Department of Culture, Bhutan, may implement the proposed schemes on a trial basis after necessary modification and improvement.

The organization of this workshop has benefited from the continuous collaboration between the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and UNESCO Office in New Delhi, and has been supported financially by the UNESCO/Japanese Funds-in-Trust Project “South Asian Cultural Landscape Initiatives”, the NGO Oriental Cultural Heritage Sites Protection Alliance (Paris, France), and Kyushu University (Japan).

The workshop will culminate in the launching of the recently approved UNESCO/Japanese Funds-in-Trust Project “South Asian Cultural Landscape Initiatives” in Thimphu, Bhutan, 3 August 2016, by the Director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Mechtild Rössler, together with the relevant Bhutanese authorities and leading experts from Japan. This UNESCO/Japanese FiT project will further support Bhutan in the understanding, conserving and awareness-raising of cultural landscapes in Bhutan.