Cultural Landscape in World Heritage Conservation and Cultural Landscape Conservation Challenges in Asia*

UNESCO was the first United Nations agency to deal with landscapes at a global scale, notably through the World Heritage Convention. In 1992, ‘Cultural Landscapes’ became a new category on the World Heritage List combining works of nature and of humankind: cultural landscapes often illustrate a specific relation between people and nature and can reflect techniques of sustainable land use, fostering strong links between culture and sustainable development. Initiatives such as the UNESCO-Greece Melina Mercouri International Prize highlight outstanding examples of safeguarding activities at the world’s major cultural landscapes and offer opportunities to share good practices and create synergies. Cultural landscapes face numerous threats across the world, and especially in Asia, with its growing infrastructure development and urbanisation. This article shares some of the knowledge and experience garnered by UNESCO through its conservation and management activities at cultural landscapes in Asia (Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan, Bhutan, Silk Roads heritage corridors) and highlights the urgent need for a cultural-historical-natural territory approach to address the pressing challenges for the conservation of Cultural Landscapes in Asia. Finally, the article advocates for a strong focus on the peoples and communities that inhabit these territories and their involvement at all stages.

UNESCO was the first United Nations agency to deal with landscapes globally, through normative instruments such as the 1962 Recommendation concerning the safeguarding of the Beauty and Character of Landscapes and Sites, and the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (hereafter World Heritage Convention). The latter is a unique international legal instrument, which brings together the concepts of nature conservation and the preservation of cultural properties. It recognises the way in which people interact with nature and integrates perspectives for sustainable development in its implementation. While the term 'sustainable development' did not exist when the Convention was developed at the time of the first UN Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm 1972) it is enshrined in the Conventions concept of the transmission of the world's outstanding heritage to future generations.
Cultural landscapes, defined as the 'combined works of nature and man' 1 , bear witness to a long and intimate relationship between people and their natural environment. Whether found in urban or rural settings, they are the results of diverse human-nature interactions and thus serve as a living testimony to the evolution of human societies. In 1992, the World Heritage Committee, at its 16 th session, included 'cultural landscapes' as a category for inclusion on the World Heritage List. Referring to Article 1 of the World Heritage Convention, it acknowledged that some landscapes are designed and created intentionally by people while others evolve organically over time. In some cases, the evolutionary process is 'fossilised' in material form (such as those found in prehistoric sites and landscapes left by the people who created them), while others continue to evolve and play an active role in contemporary society (such as cultivated terraces). Some cultural landscapes are considered sacred, especially in places where people possess powerful cultural, religious and often ancestral associations with their natural surroundings. Three main categories of cultural landscapes are defined in Annex 3 of the Operational Guidelines for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention (UNESCO 2017): landscapes designed and created intentionally by people (garden and parkland landscapes constructed for aesthetic reasons, often associated with religious or other monuments); organically evolved landscapes (resulting from an initial imperative and having developed into their present form by association with and in response to the natural environment); associative cultural landscapes (demonstrating powerful religious, artistic or cultural associations of the natural element, rather than material cultural evidence).
Organically evolved landscapes fall into two subcategories: relict (or fossil) landscapes, when an evolutionary process came to an end at some time in the past, leaving behind significant distinguishing features that are still visible in material form; continuing landscapes, which retain an active social role in contemporary society, closely associated with traditional ways of life, and in which the evolutionary process is still in progress while still exhibiting significant material evidence of its evolution over time (Table 1).
Cultural landscapes often reflect specific techniques of sustainable land use, taking into consideration the characteristics of the natural environment, and illustrate a specific spiritual relation between people and nature. The protection of cultural landscapes can also contribute to modern techniques of sustainable land use and help maintain or enhance the landscape's cultural and natural values. The continued existence of traditional forms of land use supports biological diversity in many regions of the world, and the protection of these traditional cultural landscapes is therefore helpful in maintaining biological and cultural diversity, which in turn has enhanced the quality of life and wellbeing of people. To date, 106 out of the 1,092 World Heritage properties are cultural landscapes, representing about 9.7% of the World Heritage List (and including four transboundary properties and one delisted property).

Cultural Landscape Conservation Enhancing Culture and Development
The link between culture and development has become part of an international debate, well beyond World Heritage. The future we want, and what type of development we want to advocate, was the main focus of the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in September 2015. This represented a major change, as culture had not been part of the discussion on development in previous decades. Today, the importance of culture is acknowledged and is at last considered a driver and enabler of sustainable human development.
Linking culture and development leads to an overall different approach to development, more focused on a territorial approach rather than a purely sectorial approach. This means that the specificity of an area, a territory or a landscape will be taken into consideration. Furthermore, by focusing on the territory or the landscape, one is bound to focus on people, communities and their wellbeing.
Cultural landscapes are illustrative of the diversity of interactions between humankind and its natural environment over time, under the influence of the physical constraints and/or opportunities. Living and/or relict cultural landscapes (iii) exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilisation (iv) type of building or architectural or technological ensemble or landscape (v) traditional human settlement, land-use, or sea-use; (vi) associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works Associative cultural landscapes Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and are a focus of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Furthermore, on 19 November 2015, the 20 th General Assembly of the States Parties to the World Heritage Convention adopted a policy on the integration of a sustainable development perspective into the processes of the World Heritage Convention. The overall goal of the policy is to assist States Parties, practitioners, institutions, communities and networks, through appropriate guidance, to harness the potential of World Heritage properties and heritage in general, to contribute to sustainable development and therefore increase the effectiveness and relevance of the Convention whilst respecting its primary purpose and mandate of protecting the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of World Heritage properties. Its adoption represents a significant shift in the implementation of the Convention and an important step in its history. Furthermore, the General Assembly of States Parties already adopted in 2007 a Climate Change Policy as climate change has been a recurring conservation issue affecting the World Heritage properties around the world. This policy is currently being updated.

Importance of Conservation and Management for Cultural Landscapes
Today, many cultural landscapes are under threat. In some places, they are degrading due to unplanned infrastructure development and urbanisation, modernisation of land use techniques, pollution, civil unrest or unsustainable tourism. In other places, especially in rural areas, they are abandoned or lack people to manage them, due to depopulation, ageing populations, and changes in traditional ways of life and knowledge systems. In addition to human-induced factors, increasing disaster risks and the impacts of climate change are posing new and intensifying threats to cultural landscapes around the globe.
In order to safeguard the world's cultural landscapes facing such threats, it is important to raise awareness of their values, while enhancing people's capacity to sustainably manage them in a site-specific manner, bearing in mind that each landscape faces different challenges. Furthermore, mechanisms should be developed in order to support local communities, who are custodians of the landscapes and their values. The work must be shared by all stakeholders who are the direct or indirect beneficiaries of cultural landscapes, in order to ensure that cultural landscapes remain socially, economically and environmentally viable for local communities.

Conservation Challenges for Cultural Landscapes
Some particularly important issues stand out in the management of cultural landscapes and require specific policies to help retain heritage values. The following can be expected to occur in the management of many World Heritage landscapes, although they may vary depending on the category of cultural landscape and its social and economic environment: Although each landscape faces different challenges, some principles to safeguard the world's cultural landscapes against threats have been identified, based on extensive study and experience: • Principle 1: People associated with the cultural landscape are the primary stakeholders for stewardship; • Principle 2: Successful management is inclusive and transparent, and governance is shaped through dialogue and agreement among key stakeholders; • Principle 3: The value of the cultural landscape is based on the interaction between people and their environment, and the focus of management is on this relationship; • Principle 4: The focus of management is on guiding change to retain the values of the cultural landscape; • Principle 5: Management of cultural landscapes is integrated into a larger landscape and territory context; • Principle 6: Successful management contributes to a sustainable society. The joint recognition of cultural and natural values is key for the conservation and management of cultural landscapes, as it highlights the complex interaction between people and the environment. For sites with cultural and spiritual values, it is important to also protect ecological and biodiversity values; in agro-forest systems, food, medicinal plants, building and production materials must be adequately protected; and at land/territory sites, the long-term sustainable system must be adapted to living conditions. In 2011, at its 35 th session, the World Heritage Committee approved the World Heritage Capacity Building Strategy; one of its main strategic objectives is to bring together cultural and natural heritage practitioners to encourage exchanges and raise awareness of the work carried out in these two sectors of conservation practice. Since then, the World Heritage Capacity-Building Programme was developed by ICCROM and IUCN, in consultation with the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and ICOMOS. As a result, several new training courses have been established around the world, with partners in every region, including universities, category 2 centres under the auspices of UNESCO and UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs.
Since 2002, UNESCO has been collaborating with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) in the framework of the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) programme, 'remarkable land use systems and landscapes which are rich in globally significant biological diversity evolving from the co-adaptation of a community with its environment and its needs and aspirations for sustainable development' 2 . Although it is not directly involved, UNESCO is supporting the Satoyama Initiative (or Socio-Ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes -SEPLS), a global effort to realise societies in harmony with nature by promoting the sustainable management of SEPLS for the benefit of biodiversity and human well-being.
Additionally, the Nature/Culture Journey, a joint initiative by IUCN and ICOMOS supported by the World Heritage Centre, promotes effective conservation by integrating nature and culture-which is also one of the key characteristics of the World Heritage Conventionand encourages heritage practitioners to rethink how natural and cultural heritage are interrelated, and how to build synergies across different fields and sectors 3 . UNESCO strives to promote this integrated approach, as it is only through concerted, joint cooperation with all stakeholders, and especially the professional community involved in shaping our physical landscape, that we can we hope to meet our common objective of promoting sustainable development for future generations. This is why UNESCO highly encourages national authorities and relevant stakeholders to continue 'ensuring the identification, protection, conservation, presentation and transmission to future generations' of inscribed properties, as stated in Article 4 of the World Heritage Convention, and to 'adopt a general policy which aims to give the cultural and natural heritage a function in the life of the community and to integrate the protection of that heritage into comprehensive planning programmes' , as stated in Article 5.a 4 .
On this basis, the emphasis must be on a better recognition of natural values in cultural landscapes and cultural values in natural World Heritage sites and on the use of local, national and international expertise in landscape management. It is also important to encourage integrated approaches and interdisciplinarity (including tangible/intangible heritage) and to further develop concepts surrounding human/nature interaction. Case studies and good practice cases, demonstrating excellence in conservation, using cultural diversity, supporting agro-diversity will also help yield further results. To further sustainable development, UNESCO encourages research on specific cultural landscapes and mixed sites, along with case studies on the implementation of the 2015 Policy for the Integration of a Sustainable Development Perspective into the Processes of the World Heritage Convention. With regard to the Sustainable Development Goals, it is important to review the sustainable use of cultural landscapes, including traditional practices of sustainable land-use. Additionally, it is important to share experiences between heritage practitioners, World Heritage-related category 2 centres, and the UNITWIN network of heritage-related UNESCO Chairs.

UNESCO-Greece Melina Mercouri International Prize for the Safeguarding and Management of Cultural Landscapes
In order to shed light on the importance of cultural landscapes, the UNESCO-Greece Melina Mercouri International Prize for the Safeguarding and Management of Cultural Landscapes was created in 1995 to reward outstanding examples of action to safeguard and enhance the world's major cultural landscapes. The Prize, supported by the Greek Government, bears the name of Melina Mercouri, a former Minister of Culture of Greece and a strong advocate of integrated conservation 5 .
The Prize is awarded to those who have made a significant contribution to the safeguarding, management and enhancement of cultural landscapes, including individuals, institutions, other entities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Ten cultural landscapes were awarded the Prize between 1995 and 2011, with three honourable mentions and three special mentions (Table 2). These cultural landscapes represent various types in urban and rural contexts, ranging from designed to agricultural landscapes, open-air museums to battlefields. They exhibit both tangible and intangible values, including memories attached to these landscapes. All of them are evolving over time and still play active roles in society, while people maintain harmonious relationships with their surrounding environment. The Prize has contributed to raising awareness of the importance of integrated conservation and of the safeguarding of landscapes as a whole, and some of these landscapes were also subsequently successfully inscribed on the World Heritage List.
Managing cultural landscapes is not an easy task, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Maintaining harmonious relationships between people and nature requires a holistic approach and consolidated efforts by many stakeholders, including local communities. The UNESCO-Greece Melina Mercouri International Prize for the Safeguarding and Management of Cultural Landscapes can provide a unique opportunity to promote the importance of integrated conservation at the landscape level, as advocated by Melina Mercouri, which continues to increase its relevance and importance today. The Prize can also provide a platform to collect and share good practices and create synergies. In turn, this will further support activities to safeguard and conserve cultural landscapes, which can contribute significantly to sustainable development and thus to the achievements of the goals set out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Figure 1).
Supporting cultural landscape conservation initiatives to promote the importance of integrated conservation and sustainable management of cultural landscapes can contribute significantly to sustainable development, and thus to the goals set out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Such projects contribute particularly to attain SDG 11, and in particular Target 11.4: 'strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world's cultural and natural heritage' (Table 3).

Cultural Landscape Conservation Challenges in Asia
To date, 25 World Heritage properties in Asia and the Pacific are cultural landscapes, representing about 9.6% of the region's 259 properties. The past decades tell a fascinating story of how the interpretation and implementation of the World Heritage Convention have evolved, along with the very concept of heritage: our approach to heritage has become more holistic, taking social, economic, environmental, and technological factors into consideration. The recognition of cultural landscapes has been another major result of this evolution (Luengo and Rössler 2012, 7). The 25 World Heritage cultural landscapes in Asia span a spectrum from cultivated terraces on lofty mountains to gardens and sacred places. Each of these is unique and testifies to the creative genius of people, social development and the imaginative and spiritual vitality of humanity, proving that cultural landscapes form a core part of the collective identity in Asia.
In both Asia and Europe, painting has strongly influenced not only the perception of the landscape but also  In addition, a special mention was awarded to Wadi Hanifah (Saudi Arabia)   Rössler and Tricaud 2009, 17). While this article does not focus on the semantics, etymology, or terminological discourses surrounding cultural landscapes 6 , it must be emphasised that, within the Asian context, the understanding of landscapes has evolved from using the landscape-be it natural or man-made-to seeing the landscape-not limited to the pictorial aspect of a territory, nor understood to mean only a portion of land or territory which the eye can comprehend in a single viewto the interpretation and representation of the landscape, and finally to our growing focus on conservation, management and monitoring of the landscape. In spite of international philosophy, action and conservation efforts on cultural landscapes, there was some confusion in the Southeast and East Asian context concerning the term 'cultural landscape' until it became 'increasingly accepted, not least with the inscription of various Southeast and East Asian cultural landscapes on the World Heritage list' (Taylor 2009). Although, in China, evidence of the oldest protected landscape is the Nine Bend River, Mount Wuyi (Wuyishan) where, in 748 AD, the Tang Emperor, Xuan Zong, issued a decree forbidding fishing and the felling of trees on this very beautiful stretch of the river and limiting construction to religious buildings. This prohibition has survived continuously to the present day (Michell, Rössler and Tricaud 2009, 17). In this regard, Chinese scholars have contributed positively to the international discourse on cultural landscape (Shan 2009;Han 2010;Wu 2011). They contend that the concept of cultural landscape has synergy with the Chinese traditional value of harmony between culture and nature and provides a useful tooltheoretically and practically-to bridge the culture-nature binary (Han 2010). Local Chinese practices of managing heritage landscapes have not been irretrievably submerged under what Winter refers to as 'a blanket of a technocratic, scientifically oriented language of global heritage' (Winter 2014, 134). Based on concepts that shape the meaning of cultural landscapes and Zhang's doctoral research (Zhang 2017), it is important to explore to what extent, if any, the understanding of cultural landscapes varies between Chinese tourists, heritage experts, government officials and international heritage agencies (such as UNESCO or ICOMOS). In their recent paper, Zhang and Taylor argue that the meaning of cultural landscapes is multi-layered in the Chinese context, for example with Chinese tourists exercising agency and engaging in a sophisticated way with meanings they perceive in the cultural landscape (Zhang and Taylor 2018). These Asian discourses complement the classic definition of a 'cultural landscape' by the geographer Carl O. Sauer: 'The cultural landscape is fashioned from a natural landscape by a cultural group. Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape is the result' (Sauer 1925) (Table 4).

No. Name of the Property States Parties Category* OUV Criteria
Year of Inscription 1 Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the  If we analyse the Statements of OUV of World Heritage cultural landscapes in Asia, we find that they are in line with the World Heritage Committee's Decision to include 'cultural landscapes' as an option for heritage listing properties that were neither purely natural nor purely cultural in form (i.e. 'mixed' heritage) 7 . An analysis of keywords in these important texts for the 25 World Heritage cultural landscapes in Asia and the Pacific reveals that words such as 'cultural' , 'historical' , 'indigenous knowledge systems' , 'production' , 'religious' , 'ritual' , 'sustainable development' , 'territory' and 'tourism' occur frequently. For decades now, specific reflexion meetings and activities have aimed to address the unique nature and needs of sites bearing witness to indigenous knowledge systems and/or showing religious or ritual aspects, while sustainable development and tourism are the objects of specific programmes at UNESCO and beyond. For example, as early as 1995, a regional thematic study meeting on ' Asian Rice Culture and its Terraced Landscape' was held in Manila, Philippines, and the Asia-Pacific regional workshop on associative cultural landscapes was held in New South Wales, Australia. A UNESCO thematic expert meeting on Asia-Pacific sacred mountains was held in September 2001 in Wakayama City, Japan, while a meeting on Integrated Approaches for Safeguarding Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage was held in October 2004 in Nara and Yamato, Japan 8 . More recently, the Workshop on Governance in Protected Areas in Asia was organised in Akita, Japan, in 2011, and the participants agreed that Asian perspectives and traditional Asian values should be effectively incorporated into the management of protected areas in Asia to strengthen the relationship between conservation and human development. A study was conducted by IUCN experts to review the traditional concepts of protected areas in Asia, especially the relationship between humans and the natural environment from the perspective of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Taoism, Shintoism and Animistic beliefs, along with existing laws, policies and the governance of protected areas in Asia. The report, ' Asian Philosophy of Protected Areas' (IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas 2013) was prepared for the Asian Parks Congress held in Sendai, Japan, in November 2013, and highlights the role and contribution of Asia's traditional ecological knowledge and of Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs), including sacred natural sites. In this process, the UNESCO Chair on Nature-Culture Linkages in Heritage Conservation was created at the University of Tsukuba, with the objective of becoming a platform for exchange between heritage practitioners dedicated to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage, notably by developing capacity-building workshops and initiatives for the Asia and the Pacific region 9 .
Particular emphasis must be placed on the need to reinforce a cultural-historical-natural territory approach to address the conservation challenges of cultural landscapes in Asia. As mentioned, this article does not focus on terminology but rather aims to encourage the use effective, value-based conservation and management for the benefit of indigenous peoples and local populations who, as custodians of cultural landscapes, should be involved in the process of researching how the landscape is seen and its history, cultural and natural and territorial values are perceived and have evolved over time. This is in line with the six guiding principles for the management of cultural landscape listed above, and especially principles 3, 4, 5 and 6: that the value of a cultural landscape is based on the interaction between people and their environment and the focus of management should be on this relationship; that management should focus on guiding change to retain the values of the cultural landscape; that the management of cultural landscapes should be integrated into a larger landscape and territory context; and that successful management contributes to a sustainable society.
Each cultural landscape could be characterised by certain interactions with the economic, social and environmental dimensions, which echoes the discourse about the three pillars of Sustainable Development. These interactions must be identified and analysed so that every opportunity to maximise sustainable development benefits can be seized while conserving the heritage values of a World Heritage property. This can be done through trade-offs between various interested parties, with the direct involvement and participation of the populations concerned. Cultural landscapes face numerous threats across the world, and especially in Asia, where growing infrastructure development and urbanisation represent significant challenges to their conservation. The last periodic reporting cycle under the World Heritage Convention identified the following four key conservation and management challenges for cultural landscapes in Asia (UNESCO World Heritage Centre 2013): • Values: lack of comprehensive scientific documentation; lack of understanding and interpretation of archaeological, historical and cultural values; difficulties upholding values; • Mechanism: lack of legal systems to effectively preserve, conserve and manage/monitor properties; issues with the management of threats and change; lack of legal instruments against which the sustainability of development proposals are judged; • Coordination: lack of inter-ministerial/departmental/ service coordination; lack of strong international cooperation; • Resources: lack of human and financial resources.
The UNESCO Culture Conventions and a series of international recommendations 10 relevant to cultural landscapes could be used as guiding documents, tools and mechanisms for the conservation and management of cultural landscapes. In Europe, for instance, a regional legal mechanism, the European Landscape Convention, was adopted by the Council of Europe (Florence 2000) 11 . It recognises that the landscape is an essential feature, that it contributes to the formation of local cultures, and that it is a basic component of the European natural and cultural heritage, thereby also contributing to human well-being and to the consolidation of the European identity. In Asia, the lack of any regional or national legal instrument relevant to cultural landscapes is one of the key conservation challenges today, and the need to develop a Landscape Conservation Law (or a Landscape Act) in Asia at the regional and national levels must be further emphasised. Such an instrument would be an excellent tool to address the challenges listed above, and the good experience of Japan with its 2008 National Law on the Maintenance and Improvement of Historical Landscape in a Community is an encouraging precedent 12 .
By using a cultural-natural territory approach taking the evolution over time into account, it is possible to clearly identify the values, attributes and authenticity and integrity of a cultural landscape, whether it is inscribed on the World Heritage List or not. This approach also helps define the tangible and intangible aspects of the properties: the physical footprint of the property, its uses and spiritual, ritual or practical associations. With these elements, it becomes easier to define clear boundaries for the cultural landscape, taking socioeconomic systems into account. Finding the balance between contemporary norms and traditional practices is essential to keep active cultural landscapes relevant in the future, which ties in with efforts to ensure that sustainable development practices are in place, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals, when it comes to management and governance, in particular, the effective integration of cultural aspects into decision-making processes, notably for development projects. Finally, an essential aspect of the management of cultural landscapes is to ensure the greatest possible involvement of indigenous peoples, local populations and other local stakeholders at all stages of the decision-making processes.

Three UNESCO Projects and Activities in Asia to Support the Cultural-Historical-Natural-Territory Approach to Cultural Landscape Conservation and Management
As mentioned before, this article emphasises the effective value-based conservation and management of cultural landscapes in the Asian context 13 , from using the landscape to seeing, interpreting, representing and increasingly conserving, managing and monitoring it. The key values of a landscape territory could, therefore, be assessed through research and documented through the evidence of associative connections. This geographical approach broadened the notion of landscape and made it able to integrate people/nature interactions that were not described so far in terms of landscape. When the World Heritage Committee decided, in 1992, to allow for a new interpretation of the 'combined works of nature and of man' , it paved the way not only for a series of new inscriptions, but for a new understanding of a category of heritage (Michell, Rössler and Tricaud 2009, 17). In close collaboration with Asian colleagues who apply cultural-historical-natural territory approaches to address the conservation challenges of cultural landscapes, the UNESCO World Heritage Centre contributes to a number of projects, including 'Supporting the South Asian Cultural Landscape Initiatives: The Experience of Bhutan' and 'Preservation of the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley' . Realised in collaboration with the Department of Culture of the Royal Government of Bhutan for the former, and with the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Government of Afghanistan for the latter, these efforts to preserve landscapes in Asia also focus on the wellbeing of people, as cultural landscapes often represent resilient systems, notably when it comes to climate change or agricultural diversity. The following three case studies illustrate how a cultural-historical-natural territory approach can be useful to talk about the cultural landscape conservation challenges in Asia.

Supporting South Asian Cultural Landscape Initiatives: The Experience of Bhutan
Bhutan is a mountainous, landlocked, independent nation between China and India. It has a long history and is rich in historic and cultural places, and its living cultural and ritual traditions remain largely intact. The Government of Bhutan has worked closely with UNESCO to put forward their first UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List, comprising eight sites (four cultural sites, three natural sites and one mixed site) 14 . In her paper, Pollock-Ellwand describes Bhutan as an inspiration for all heritage conservationists due to the innovative perspective emerging from the Kingdom of Bhutan (Pollock-Ellwand 2018). There are at least three major heritage contributions this mountainous nation can provide to the rest of the world: first, the belief that cultural landscapes constitute precious and vulnerable assets, which is evident in the Bhutanese dedication to protecting these assets by implementing measured steps, clear processes and effective policies and plans before a resource has been impacted. Second, the fact valued places are ubiquitous and not revealed to us in pockets of significance. Consequently, a whole country can be considered a cultural landscape uniting both natural and cultural dimensions of heritage. Finally, the belief that heritage is the basis of our wellbeing, and that it is wrong to consider that a society's quality of life should be measured, as it is commonly done, by a market-based Gross National Product. Bhutan declares that cultural heritage and the consummate value of human identity in one's place should be the primary concern (Figure 2). We can also observe many different types of cultural landscapes in Bhutan, such as historical settlements, agricultural fields, sacred mountains, places of worship, spectacular natural terrain valued as sacred places and their environs. Traditionally Bhutan has been regarded as a most mysterious and remote country, hidden in the Himalayas. A complex cultural landscape has evolved in the small nation of Bhutan for millennia. However, recently, Bhutan is considered to be one of the most rapidly urbanising societies in Asia, and people in Bhutan have expressed worry about these changes. Over the past few years, a great deal of work has been expended to protect this national cultural landscape and there are on-going efforts to protect the heritage now under threat from, or already irreversibly damaged by, ill-considered development wrought by rapid urbanisation and infrastructural projects. In the face of these threats, Bhutan as a nation is rising to the challenge. New thinking about heritage has arisen and represents a fresh perspective that could bring insightful innovations to the field of heritage conservation: promisingly, heritage protection is being connected to societal duties, leading to proactive conservation action and to the comprehensive holistic approach that cultural landscapes demand.
Acknowledging that Bhutan is a rare case where almost the entire land has retained a magnificent landscape displaying a harmonious co-existence of culture and nature, the UNESCO World Heritage Centre is providing technical assistance to the Department of Culture of the Government of Bhutan to make cultural landscapes a focus of heritage protection in the country's administrative framework. Since 2014, a series of the UNESCO-Bhutan Support Cultural Landscape Initiatives workshops, including panel sessions and forums, set up a platform to introduce 'cultural landscape' as a new conservation concept, along with conserving and raising awareness of its cultural landscapes to gain attention of multiple stakeholders, such as of town planning, agricultural development and tourism 15 . The cultural-historical-natural territory approach for cultural landscape conservation and management has been presented in order to develop a common vision to sustain the values of cultural landscape, which would be an important indicator of the success of the Bhutanese Gross National Happiness (GNH) 16 . Through this approach, the concept of cultural landscape conservation and management has  been positively received by different sectors within Bhutan. The cultural landscape would be able to remain sustainable with the same requisites which have been recognised as four pillars to support GNH-sustainable and equitable socioeconomic development, good governance, preservation and promotion of culture and environmental conservation, which all the Bhutanese government agencies endeavour to contribute towards ( Figure 3).
Through this approach, the commitment of Bhutanese stakeholders to enhance the conservation and management of their valuable cultural landscapes has been undeniable and is best demonstrated by two effective, valueoriented actions: the draft Cultural Heritage Bill of Bhutan and the proposed Cultural Landscape Impact Assessment.
In the draft Cultural Heritage Bill of Bhutan announced in 2016, the entire country is defined as a cultural landscape from the Preamble onwards: 'Bhutan's uniqueness lies in its cultural landscape where tangible and intangible cultural heritage and nature coexist harmoniously' . The text goes on to declare that 'Bhutan as a whole is recognised for its unique cultural landscape' . This is in line with the developmental philosophy of Gross National Happiness in Bhutan, as the cultural landscape concept seeks to understand and incorporate the socio-cultural values of the people, environmental sustainability, cultural

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preservation and good governance in the planning for future developments. Articles in the bill's chapter regarding the protection of cultural elements in a cultural landscape and Cultural Landscape Impact Assessments provide powerful protections through 'cultural landscape clearances' for new development applications, which represents a straightforward statement about the significance of the Bhutanese landscape and puts forward a holistic way of looking at the environment 17 . This draft legislation also identifies 'cultural landscapes' as a measurable entity with an integrity that must take precedence over competing land uses. Bhutan has taken into consideration the strong interdependence between environment and spiritual practices, even in the legal and administrative frameworks. While this stipulation does not mean that all cultural landscapes throughout the country are to be protected under the draft Cultural Heritage Bill as a certain category of cultural heritage defined by the Bill, the Bill encourages all parties concerned to acknowledge and safeguard Bhutanese cultural landscape in their own way.
The draft Cultural Heritage Bill of 2016 in Bhutan does not define cultural landscapes in detail, nor does it provide concrete conservation measures, but it requests the related Bhutanese authorities to develop rules and a regulatory plan to sustain cultural landscapes (Section 32), in addition to the Cultural Landscape Impact Assessments (Section 37). It is obvious that the Bhutanese cultural landscape is an organically evolved, living landscape with its society, but it is not easy to cope with these different types of evolved landscapes. Therefore, Cultural Landscape Impact Assessments proposed by the 2016 Bill may even work on the possible change of the local income generation mechanism together with the physical changes caused by large-scale developments. Such assessments should be carried out by people with an in-depth understanding of the spiritual life of local communities, of communal beliefs regarding things beyond daily life, and of a place's traditional ways of everyday living-in short, in-depth insights on every aspect of Bhutanese culture. The challenge of pairing conservation and development is crucial for the future of Bhutan, not only in terms of cultural and environmental preservation but also in socioeconomic terms (Pommaret 2016). Cultural landscapes have great touristic value: they can be the base of cottage industries and homestays, but awareness must be raised about this concept amongst the population who should not feel disadvantaged in terms of development opportunities or trapped in a time capsule.
Despite the successful process and the good results obtained at the four annual workshops/forums, the following main challenges for the cultural landscape conservation and management in Bhutan could be listed as below: • Policy: The large scope of this cultural site/cultural landscape and its challenging management will require that the institutional framework is further defined; that the stakeholders, their roles and responsibilities are identified more clearly; and that the cooperation between national authorities, ministries, services, local authorities and communities is improved. This will require greater stakeholder consultations and more surveying, documentation and coordination efforts. • Governance: The stakeholders requested further clear recommendations from the Management Plan/Framework, including short-, medium-and long-term priorities and a timeframe, along with an Action Plan and adequate resources. They also expressed that further operational guidelines and a plan for the allocation of resources for the future monitoring of the conservation and sustainability of the cultural landscape and cultural sites must be formulated. • Research: Currently, a large buffer zone is proposed to better control visual impacts on the site and to maintain the values and attributes of the cultural site/cultural landscape. The local stakeholders consider the proposed Cultural Sites buffer zone too large. • Resources: Community leaders showed strong concerns about incentives for the villages and inhabitants, notably regarding (a) income generation recommendations/guidelines, including Communitybased tourism; (b) land use issues, self-efficiency of the community/village; (c) the balance between the use of the natural/cultural resources and the preservation of these resources; and (d) the balance of cultural preservation and sustainable development.
It is interesting to note here that these four challenges are generally similar to those faced in the management of other cultural landscapes and in the conservation of cultural sites and efforts to guarantee their sustainable development.

Safeguarding the Cultural Landscape of the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan: Conservation Challenges
The Bamiyan Valley is most famous for two gigantic statues of the Buddha, carved into the eastern and western ends of a high cliff facing a river. The deliberate destruction of these Buddha statues and a large number of pre-Islamic objects throughout Afghanistan, in March 2001, shook the whole world. The inscription of the property on the World Heritage List as the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley, at the 27 th session of the World Heritage Committee in July 2003, brought recognition not only to the remains of the two Buddha statues, but also to the wider cultural landscape and its position at a crossroad of civilisations. Inscribed under criteria (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and (vi) 18 , the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley represents the artistic and religious developments which, from the 1 st to the 13 th centuries, characterised ancient Bactria, integrating various cultural influences into the Gandharan School of Buddhist Art. The area is known to have comprised numerous Buddhist monastic ensembles and sanctuaries within the fantastic natural setting of the mountain valleys, and the territory also includes historic sites that document its Islamic period. Placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger simultaneously with its inscription on the World Heritage List in 2003, the property has benefited from many conservation efforts, both for archaeological remains and for the cultural landscape as a whole. This case study will focus mainly on the conservation challenges of the Bamiyan Valley Cultural Landscape while eluding the well-debated questions surrounding the archaeological remains as well as the conservation, rehabilitation and possible reconstruction of the two giant Buddha statues and their niches 19 . This case study was analysed notably by Dr. Roland Lin of UNESCO 20 , who has assisted the Afghan authorities and stakeholders in the identification of long-term solutions for the conservation and presentation of the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley World Heritage property and has provided advice of the priority measures to be taken. He was part of the 2010 Advisory Mission to Kabul and Bamiyan of November 2010, together with the experts from ICCROM (Andrea Bruno) and ICOMOS (Jukka Jokilehto) (Lin, Bruno and Jokilehto 2011). UNESCO's initiatives for the safeguarding of the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley seek not only to preserve tangible heritage and train local conservation specialists, but also to promote intercommunity mediation, develop intercultural understanding, particularly among young people, and stimulate sustainable economic development for local communities (Figure 4). Similarly to UNESCO's activities in Bhutan, the cultural-historical-natural territory approach for cultural landscape conservation and management has been presented in the Bamiyan Valley, with a view to developing a common vision that would sustain the values of the cultural landscape, which would be an important indicator of the success for holistic culture for development.
In terms of planning and management, there are essentially three master plans in existence for the entire Bamiyan Valley. These include the 1981 Regional Master Plan, which has been revived in 2006; the draft Comprehensive Management Plan, prepared in coordination with Japan and published in 2004, which provides a preliminary zoning proposal and regulations for zoning control; and the Cultural Master Plan, elaborated in 2005 by the Documentation and Conservation Centre of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Universität (RWTH) Aachen and approved by the Afghan Government in 2006. The latter provides a more detailed analysis and documentation of the heritage resources, based on updated satellite mapping. The 2005 Cultural Master Plan is now taken as a guideline for decision-making processes at the regional level, and while the 2004 Comprehensive Management Plan already provided guidelines for the general management of the area, a new, updated Management Plan was prepared in 2010 by the RWTH Aachen (Lin, Bruno and Jokilehto 2011) 21 .
Although the Bamiyan Valley has been recognised as a World Heritage cultural landscape, the property consists of eight protected components, including the Bamiyan Cliff which contained inter alia the gigantic Buddha statues. Although mentioned in the property's name, the Cultural Landscape of the Bamiyan Valley is not included in the nominated areas, which only consist of the archaeological remains; the eight inscribed component sites only cover a small part of the cultural landscape. The heritage values of the Bamiyan Valley should be recognised as the combined characteristics that form the cultural landscape as a whole, rather than through its individual features; it should be understood and recognised as a symbolic representation of the larger cultural-natural territory. As clearly described in the conclusions of the meeting on 'The Future of the Bamiyan Buddha Statues: Technical Considerations and Potential Effects on Authenticity and Outstanding Uni versal Value' (Tokyo, 27-29 September 2017), the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley World Heritage property represents the combined works of people and nature. The Bamiyan landscape is a continually evolving environment, bound together by complex social practices, traditions and natural systems that have formed a distinctive character and influenced the relationship between the local communities and their environment. Therefore, the OUV of the site is more than its physical attributes; the Bamiyan World Heritage property should be considered a place of collective identity and memory, particularly for the local communities; the archaeological remains cannot be separated from their natural and cultural landscape nor from local perspectives.
Through its projects and activities in Bamiyan, based on the Cultural Master Plan and the Management Plan for the Bamiyan Valley, UNESCO has worked closely with the Afghan authorities and institutions, and has emphasised the urgent need to formally define the cultural landscape area as an extended Buffer Zone for the World Heritage property, showcasing the Bamiyan Valley as a continuous, living cultural landscape. Capacity building for local authorities involved in the conservation and management of the cultural landscape and the historical and archaeological remains of Bamiyan should continue, in accordance with the comprehensive policy and strategy.
The cultural-historical-natural territory approach highlights the importance of traditional water management systems and traditional agricultural areas. Not only are the cliffs important in this valley, but the entire historical-cultural-natural territory must be considered when discussing the management, the conservation and development of the Bamiyan Valley cultural landscape. Adopting the vision of an archaeological park, characterised by an effective, valueoriented conservation and management system, appears to be the only holistic way forward for the cultural landscape and cultural territory of the Bamiyan Valley. Jukka Jokilehto sharply analysed the Cultural Master Plan and the Territorial Master Plan for the development of the Valley, which is currently being developed by an Italian team (Jokilehto 2019 [under finalisation]). These two plans should ideally be integrated into a balanced and efficient planning instrument, considering the entire territory as 'a coherent whole whose balance and specific nature depend[s] on the fusion of the parts of which it is composed, and which include human activities as much as the buildings, the spatial organisation and the surroundings' 22 (UNESCO 1976). The implementation of this planning instrument should be the responsibility of a Management Commission, based on a periodically updated Management Plan. In 2017, the World Heritage Committee expressed concerns that the different plans had not been implemented, noting that while the local community is now conscious of its heritage, it also requires planning and updated services and infrastructure. As a priority, the current initiatives for the development of a comprehensive urban master plan, based on knowledge of heritage resources and the potential of the territory, must be integrated into a balanced territorial conservation master plan. The present Management Plan should, therefore, be revised, on the basis of this general master plan, and not be limited to archaeological areas alone. It is also essential to integrate these plans with the recognition and safeguarding of the natural environment and existing ecosystems, which are part of the integrity and authenticity of the territory. The remains visible today are the most compelling memorial of the 2001 destruction, and they are the most authentic and prestigious monument for the history of the Bamiyan Valley and its community. Additionally, it is also necessary to care for the remains of the traditional building stock, which still exists in various parts of the territory. These buildings should be surveyed and eventually rehabilitated in an appropriate type of social or cultural use.
One of the key issues for the Bamiyan Valley is the development of infrastructures required by the local population, such as road network, electricity, and water management. In this context, it is highly desirable to have the cultural-historical-natural territory approaches for cultural landscape conservation and management, including appropriate protection and development control mechanisms. Through its projects and activities in Bamiyan, UNESCO aims to assist Afghan experts to identify and document the cultural landscape's qualities and characteristics, based on systematic research and analysis of the historic territory, its ecosystems and natural features, as well as its human functions and relations over time. The sustainable conservation of this World Heritage Cultural Landscape is not only about safeguarding something from the past: it is also necessary to care for the needs of the community today and plan for the culturally and environmentally sustainable development of this historic territory for the future.

Conservation Challenges of Silk Roads Cultural Landscape
As the largest cultural heritage routes network in the history of humankind, the Silk Roads present significant potential for inscription on the World Heritage List. Over the past four decades, UNESCO has launched a number of ambitious initiatives aimed at reinforcing dialogue and research along the Silk Roads. The Integral Study of the Silk Roads: Roads of Dialogue (UNESCO 1988(UNESCO -1997 further reinforced the idea of a 'common heritage and pluralistic identity' . The six volumes of the History of Civilizations of Central Asia (1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005) 23 and the recent proclamation of the 'International Decade for the Rapprochement of Cultures' (2013-2022 emphasise the importance of the Silk Roads, not only as facilitators for the trade in silk and other precious commodities, but also as routes of integration, exchange and dialogue between East and West. The Silk Roads have contributed greatly to the common prosperity of human civilisations, and thus to technological exchange and the spreading of ideas, values, cultures, knowledge. Today, they reflect how the continuous traffic along the Silk Roads shaped the landscape over more than two millennia. The Silk Roads' heritage is much more than grand monuments displaying wealth: it also reflects the lives of ordinary people and day-to-day realities, such as the systems of patronage or defence machinery. Since 2003, the UNESCO World Heritage Centre has played a key role in the coordination of the serial transnational World Heritage nomination of the Silk Roads, initiated by five Central Asian countries and China. The Silk Roads, which stretch across the length of the Asian continent, possess some of the region's most outstanding and valuable heritage, and the disappearance of this heritage would be an irreversible loss for humanity. The Silk Roads World Heritage Nomination Project has proven crucial to enhance the efforts for international exchange and cooperation towards the effective and sustainable conservation and management of this shared heritage. Within the framework of the Global Strategy for a Representative and Balanced World Heritage List, adopted by the World Heritage Committee in 1994, State Parties such as China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have been working with the UNESCO World Heritage Centre on the serial and transnational nomination of the Silk Roads. In this framework, UNESCO has organised a number of regional and sub-regional workshops and four meetings of the Coordinating Committee of the Serial World Heritage Nomination of the Silk Roads 24 . The Coordinating Committee now includes 14 member countries (Afghanistan, China, India, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Pakistan, the Republic of Korea, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) and Bhutan as an observer. The UNESCO World Heritage Centre, in close collaboration with the participating countries and with the support of ICOMOS, has explored the methodological and strategic approaches for the preparation of a serial and transnational World Heritage nomination of cultural heritage sites along the Silk Roads. During the 2011 Ashgabat meeting, an ICOMOS Silk Roads thematic study was presented, proposing independent serial transnational nominations in several specific regions of the Eurasian continent, as opposed to one nomination for all of the Silk Roads. This strategy offered a different, more manageable approach for the nomination of complex serial transnational properties, but also led to a number of new management concerns. The participating countries provided comments and inputs before adopting and setting out the 'Heritage Corridor' nomination approach that has been followed by State Parties ever since. The study was subsequently updated and published in 2014 (Williams 2014).
Within the framework of the UNESCO/Japan Fundsin-Trust Project 'Support for Documentation Standards and Procedures of the Silk Roads World Heritage Serial and Transnational Nomination in Central Asia ' (2011-2015), ICOMOS, the International Institute for Central Asian Studies (IICAS -a category 2 centre under the auspices of UNESCO based in Samarkand, Uzbekistan), and the ICOMOS International Conservation Centre in Xi'an (IICC-X) have supported the nominations of two serial transnational nominations for Silk Roads heritage corridors. Consisting of 33 serial components, 'Silk Roads: The Routes Network of Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor' was jointly prepared by China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and inscribed on the World Heritage List at the 38 th session of the World Heritage Committee (Doha, 2014) on the basis of criteria (ii), (iii), (v), and (vi) 25 . The second nomination dossier, which concerned the Penjikent-Samarkand-Poykent Corridor, was jointly submitted by Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and referred back to the States Parties in order for them to strengthen and improve the nomination dossier.
The use of sustained sub-regional cooperation and ongoing international cooperation is currently being replicated in the South Asian Silk Roads (China, India, Nepal and Bhutan) and again in Central Asia 'Silk Roads: Fergana-Syrdarya Corridor' (Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan). This system has the potential to become a model for capacity building and the preparation of serial transnational nominations worldwide. The following activities related to the Silk Roads World Heritage nomination(s) are currently ongoing: Although good progress was achieved during the nomination process for Silk Roads serial transnational sites, notably with regard to the identification, documentation, preservation, conservation, management and monitoring of heritage routes and sites, cultural landscapes along the Silk Roads are facing pressing conservation challenges, especially due to the increasing development pressure and proposed infrastructure projects. Through its activities, UNESCO aims to collaborate with various stakeholders to preserve and conserve not only the exceptional monuments and historic urban centres, but all the diverse types of heritage along the Silk Roads: cities and towns; settlements; inns and caravanserai; mining and metalworking centres; irrigation and water management systems; natural features (e.g. mountain passes); shrines and religious sites; forts and other defensive buildings; petroglyphs; tombs and cemeteries; manifestations of creativity; places that reflect intangible associations and other immovable artefacts which all together form the important cultural-natural-historical territory attributes of the Silk Roads. For the conservation and preservation of the Silk Roads heritage corridors, particularly in the rural villages and the remote areas, the complex topographic, environmental and cultural landscapes face environmental and hydrographic exploitation, which result in major impacts on routes and settlement. It is doubtlessly a challenge to have a comprehensive approach to support all Silk Roads stakeholders in identifying, documenting, preserving, conserving, managing and monitoring the 35,000 km of major heritage routes and the 25,000 km of 'substantial routes' , covering an total area of 18,000,000 km 2 (Williams, Lin and Jorayev 2016) This extensive area is composed of mostly rural villages and cultural landscapes in which people interact with nature, and has strong potential for sustainable development. The issue of boundaries and buffer zones was discussed with stakeholders and the use of GIS modelling facilities was suggested as a means of facilitating work on the national and sub-regional inventories along the Silk Roads. The national and sub-regional inventory systems are important to provide a platform to select sites and recognise the combination of the characteristics, rather than individual features, that form the cultural landscape as a whole ( Figure  5).
For example, Bhutan currently has limited documentation on pre-17 th -century sites, and the identification of specific sites and landscapes would likely take some time. Indeed, there are numerous challenges with regard to developing a Silk Roads historic documentation for Bhutan, the most fundamental being the lack of current research on pre-17 th -century archaeology, which makes the identification of heritage routes, sites, monuments or landscapes for inclusion difficult at this stage. Nevertheless, the potential is clearly high: modern-day Bhutan occupied a crucial strategic position on the routes both from Tibetan Sichuan and Yunnan (e.g. Tea Horse Routes) and from Tibetan region down the 'southern valley' systems (e.g. Salt Routes) to India and Bangladesh. The foundation of early monastic settlements attests to the development of settlement pattern in the fertile valleys of Bhutan that significantly pre-dates the current monuments 26 . The Dzongs constructed as part of the unification of Bhutan after 1616 by Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyel were evidently securing existing polities in the important valley systems of western and central Bhutan. There are some fundamental research issues with pre-17 th -century elements of the National Inventory in Bhutan, not least due to the limited amount of archaeological work and the concomitant problems of understanding early material culture. There is notably a lack of research into ceramics and dating evidence, despite the apparent continuity of material traditions in cooking vessels. The use of metalwork and wood for high-prestige goods and the use of leather sacks for storage, all of which badly survive the test of time, lead to issues with the archaeological records. However, significant quantities of ceramics were recovered during the recent Swiss-Bhutanese project, which suggests that it may well be possible to develop a regional ceramic sequence. In the addition, the recently published research on Ogyen Choling demonstrates the complexity of landscapes and heritage routes, and the ability of local studies to begin to understand the development of earlier settlement landscapes (Lin 2016).
The only Silk Roads property on the World Heritage List so far (Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor, 2014) was inscribed as a cultural property, as defined in Article I of the World Heritage Convention. According to Annex 3 of the Operational Guidelines, it is also a 'heritage route' , but is not regarded as cultural landscape (UNESCO 2017) 27 . Additionally, the absence of management plans for the sites along the Silk Roads heritage corridor and their landscape settings needs to be addressed urgently. Unclear assessments of values, imprecise boundaries and undefined attributes, the absence of a comprehensive protective legal framework, inappropriate development and infrastructure projects have put the sites along Silk Roads heritage corridor under potential threat, which is especially dangerous at times when development pressures are high in the region. For example, of the eight component sites in Kazakhstan, seven are facing conservation challenges due to recent developments and infrastructure projects 28 .
To address these issues, the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, in cooperation with various stakeholders along Silk Roads in Central and South Asia, implements activities around two core priorities: (a) technical assistance for the national and sub-regional inventory of potential sites and capacity building for the relevant stakeholders; (b) advice on how the legislation regarding the conservation of heritage routes, corridors and cultural landscapes could be reflected and/or incorporated into the existing national heritage preservation and conservation legislation. UNESCO also encourages extensive field visits and expeditions in order to ensure that accurate information is collected by mapping identified heritage sites (cities; settlements and traditional water management systems) and that inventories are systematically compiled and recorded for further detailed research. All of this will help create a knowledge-based context for the conservation, promotion, and management of cultural heritage and will help document its condition, state of conservation, management planning, and any notable changes to overcome the conservation challenges along the Silk Roads. It is desirable to work further with the UNESCO's cultural landscapes initiatives and reinforce linkages with the Man and Biosphere (MAB) programme through a landscape and/ or eco-system approach, to protect the diverse types of monuments and sites ( Figure 6).
To cope with the cultural landscape conservation challenges in Asia, the cultural-historical-natural territory approach might be helpful to provide stakeholders and site managers with assistance when dealing with value-based conservation, policy, governance, research, resources and coordination mechanisms, in keeping with the principles to safeguard the world's cultural landscapes against threats listed above (and especially Principles 3, 4, 5 and 6) (Michell, Rössler and Tricaud 2009) 29 . The three cases studies on site-based (e.g. the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley), country-based (e.g the project 'Supporting the South Asian Cultural Landscape Initiatives: The Experience of Bhutan') and the serial and transnational-level Cultural Landscapes (e.g. Silk Roads heritage corridors) showcase the diversity of interactions between humankind and its natural environment over time, often representing resilient systems in the face of climate change and securing agricultural diversity. There is, however, an urgent need for a comprehensive use of historical materials (photos, maps and research) when identifying cultural landscape values and attributes, and stakeholders are strongly encouraged to highlight cultural values in natural settings, natural values in cultural settings. We must work hand in hand with local and national authorities, along with sub-regional platforms, to advocate in favour of cultural landscape conservation and ensure that management takes into full consideration the larger scale of the landscape and territory and ensures its protection, so that the World's cultural landscapes can be passed on unharmed to future generations.

Conclusion
Cultural landscapes often reflect specific techniques of sustainable land use, taking into consideration the characteristics of their natural environment, and illustrate a specific spiritual relation between people and nature. The protection of cultural landscapes can contribute to modern techniques of sustainable land use and help maintain or enhance the landscape's natural values. The continued existence of traditional forms of land use supports biological diversity in many regions of the world, and the protection of these traditional cultural landscapes is therefore helpful in maintaining biological and cultural diversity. Cultural landscapes must demonstrate a close interaction between culture and nature, but they also foster strong links between culture and development, which has become central for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Cultural landscape conservation is a direct reflection of the kind of future we want, and what type of development we wish to see. As site level, country level and sub-regional transnational level, the cases studies have shown different ways of seeing, interpreting, conserving and managing landscapes in which people interact with nature, and how one can integrate sustainable development perspectives in the management of a cultural landscape. The cultural-historical-natural-territory approach has been shown to be an effective tool to address conservation challenges for cultural landscapes in the region of Asia, especially in view of recent developments, proposed infrastructure projects and changing circumstances over the past decade, particularly along the Silk Roads heritage corridors. There is no doubt that the challenge of sustainably conserving and managing Asian cultural landscapes needs to be addressed urgently. Unclear assessments of values, imprecise boundaries and undefined attributes, along with the absence of comprehensive legal protection, inappropriate development and infrastructure projects have put Asian cultural landscapes and their OUV under potential threat in these challenging times.
It would be useful for both culture and nature to be considered as drivers and enablers of sustainable human development. By linking culture and nature, culture and development, we encourage a different overall approach to development, more centred on territories than on a purely sectorial approach. This implies that the character of an area, a territory or a landscape must be taken into consideration, which in turn entails a strong focus on the peoples and communities that inhabit these territories. They include the small Buddha and the great Buddha, dating back to 507 AD and 551 AD respectively, and the mural paintings dating back to the 5 th and early 9 th century AD. Thanks to generous grants from the UNESCO/Japan Funds-in-Trust for the Preservation of the World Cultural Heritage, together with other international donors, UNESCO has undertaken major projects and activities for the Preservation of the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley. Substantial progress has been made, leading to a considerable improvement of the state of preservation of the Bamiyan site, the long-term consolidation of the site, the increase in national capacities for the conservation of cultural heritage, and the creation of a basis for the inception of cultural tourism in Bamiyan. Aware of the potential for post-conflict situations to foster dialogue, reconciliation, social stability and reconstruction, UNESCO carries out peace-building actions in Afghanistan, and notably in Bamiyan, with a view to contributing to the construction of a common future for communities that have suffered from civil strife. 20. Roland Lin was the Project Officer in charge of managing the UNESCO/Japan Funds-in-Trust project for the preservation of the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, from late 2007 to May 2015. 21. While these plans exist, more capacity-building work is required to empower the institutions, implement the legal framework, provide training and raise awareness. The UNESCO Office in Kabul, in coordination with the Ministry of Information and Culture and the Regional authorities of Bamiyan, has made significant contributions to these efforts. Nevertheless, the implementation of the Master Plans at the local and regional authority levels, and particularly the land use and planning control mechanisms, is currently an important challenge. It will be necessary to guarantee that all building permits are issued based on the Master Plan, and that their implementation is properly monitored by municipal inspectors and/or polices offers (Lin, Bruno and Jokilehto 2011 Figure 5 above. The 33 components include capital cities and palace complexes of various empires and Khan kingdoms, trading settlements, Buddhist cave temples, ancient paths, posthouses, passes, beacon towers, sections of the Great Wall, fortifications, tombs and religious buildings. The Tianshan corridor encompassed a complex network of trade routes extending to some 8,700 km that developed to link Chang'an in central China with the heartland of Central Asia between the 2 nd century BC and 1 st century AD, when longdistance trade in high-value goods, particularly silk, started to expand between the Chinese and Roman Empires. It flourished between the 6 th and 14 th century AD and remained in use as a major trade route until the 16 th century. The extremes of geography along the routes graphically illustrate the challenges of this long-distance trade. Falling to 154 m below sea level and rising to 7,400 m above sea level, the routes touch great rivers, alpine lakes, crusty salt flats, vast deserts, snow-capped mountains and 'fecund' prairies. The climate varies from extreme drought to semi-humid, while vegetation covers temperate forests, temperate deserts, temperate steppes, alpine steppes and oases. More information at: https://whc.unesco.org/en/ list/1442. 26. Documentary evidence suggests that the foundation of the mediation centre at Taktsang Palphug Monastery dates back to the 8 th century AD, while the foundation of Choedrak Monastery has been dated to the 12 th century and that of Phajoding monastery to the 13 th century. 27. See the Advisory Body Evaluation of the nomination carried out by ICOMOS, available at: https://whc. unesco.org/en/list/1442/documents. 28. The construction of the proposed Birlik-Almalyk-Kazstroy-Ryskulov-Ak-Bulak road and the associated bridge has inflicted serious damage on the historic structures and archaeological layers of the Talgar site and its overall morphology. The site has also suffered from reconstruction work and illegal, uncontrolled residential developments near its boundaries. All of this implies that the state of conservation of the site has deteriorated sharply since its inscription in 2014, despite the existing national legal protection for both the component site and its buffer zone. The similar roads construction have already been carried out at Aktobe and Kulan, causing significant damage to the sites, and that Kayalyk, Akyrtas and Kostobe are threatened by planned or ongoing road construction. There is also deep concern that in all component sites in Kazakhstan except Karamergen, threats arising from urban development (e.g. administrative and sporting centres, industrial utilities and waste landfill sites) impact adversely on the perception of the sites in relation to the Silk Roads and the beauty of their settings. See 2017 State of Conservation Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an-Tianshan