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Scholarly discourses regarding heritage values for sustainable heritage management abound in heritage literature but appear elitist as they tend to exclude the perspectives of the people at the lower echelons of society. The study explored the values ascribed to a global heritage monument by the people living around a global heritage site in Ghana and the implications of their perceptual values for sustainable heritage management.

This study used the qualitative design. It was guided by Costin’s heritage values, community attachment theory and values-based approach to heritage management. Data was gathered from the local people living close to the heritage site, and the staff of Museums and Monuments Board at the heritage site. Data were gathered through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews and analysed using the thematic approach and most significant stories.

The results revealed that the local people were aware of the economic, aesthetic, historic, symbolic and informational values of the heritage monument but showed little attachment to the monument. The main reasons for the low attachment were the limited opportunity for them to participate in the management of the monument, and the limited opportunity for direct economic benefits from the heritage asset.

A comprehensive understanding of heritage monument management that reflects the perspectives and values of the local people is imperative.

United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation and Ghana Museums and Monuments Board could consider a more community-inclusive heritage management framework that takes cognizance of local values and perspectives to ensure sustainable heritage management and development.

The values and perspectives of the local community matter in heritage management. The heritage authorities need to engage more with the community people and educate them on the best practices regarding the sustainable management of World Heritage Sites.

This paper argues that the management of global heritage sites should not be elitist in orientation and character. It should respect the principle of community participation for inclusive development.

Sustainability encapsulated economic, environmental and societal parameters. Without exception, these parameters also conforms the efficiency and increasingly importance of sustainable maintenance management for built heritage. However, there is less attention to the appraisal approach for maintenance management of built heritage, twinned with inconsistent and impractical assessment upon their maintenance strategies. With the aim to support sustainability, the purpose of this paper is to give an insight to the question on how the maintenance management appraisal approach practically determines and ultimately substantiates the decision-making process that promotes sustainable built heritage, based on current scenarios and practices in Malaysia.

Maintenance management appraisal for sampling of built heritage enables assessment of efficiency of maintenance and repair during maintenance phase based on survey (questionnaires) and statistical analysis.

It recognises the importance of maintenance management appraisal in achieving efficiency and underpinning rationale decision making for maintenance strategies and service quality (SERVQUAL).

It must be emphasised that maintenance management appraisal is not confined to built heritage, and can be applied to any types and forms of property. The decision made as a result of its utilisation is practically support sustainable repair.

The implementation of this appraisal highlights the efficacy of maintenance strategies and SERVQUAL that may be adopted.

The paper is a rigorous appraisal of maintenance management of built heritage. This appraisal relays the “true” sustainable built heritage, contextualised within maintenance strategies and SERVQUAL that consequently allows rationale in achieving sustainable development.

This study aims to examine community participation in cultural heritage management with regard to sustainable heritage tourism management in Sukhothai Historical Park (SHP) in Sukhothai Province.

The qualitative and quantitative research approaches were applied; in-depth interviews were conducted with 27 key informants, and 104 questionnaires were distributed among stakeholders and local communities.

The results revealed that sustainable park management has made a positive impact upon local economy, social and cultural conservation of the world heritage site. The Park Authority has developed and conserved archaeological sites with local community assistance, particularly for physical management, but it has not yet used archaeological heritage in the park for more benefits of tourism development.

The results reveal that sustainable park management has made a positive impact on the local economy and social and cultural conservation of the World Heritage city. The Park Authority has developed and conserved archaeological sites with local community assistance, particularly for physical management, but it has not yet used archaeological heritage in the park for greater urban tourism development. Sustainable cultural heritage management in SHP is government-led, so community participation is based upon two-way communication in the form of “tokenism.”

Sukhothai is encouraged to find suitable mechanisms to facilitate multisectoral communication and development to jointly face the challenge of more visitors and urbanization.

Guidelines for enhancing community involvement in cultural heritage management of the park were proposed.

This study presents an example of sustainable cultural heritage tourism. The heritage tourism at the site of the ship USAT Liberty in the small fishing village of Tulamben on the northeast coast of Bali Island plays a significant role in the lives of the local people who live nearby, who actively participate in the site's management.

This study assessed the management of the site by the local community by means of formal interviews with major stakeholders, informal conversations, and observations in the field.

Although it lacks any direct historical connection with the local community, the reuse of the shipwreck as a tourist asset has motivated the community to participate in the conservation of the site and sustain its values. This article argues that the case of the USAT Liberty demonstrates that the management of heritage sites can be effectively sustained using bottom-up approaches.

The USAT Liberty case study provides insights and practical recommendations that could be valuable for other cultural heritage sites in implementing management with a bottom-up approach. This paper enriches the knowledge of community-based management and promotes it as a pathway to sustainable cultural heritage tourism.

Cultural landscapes are no more considered only as territories of cultural interest but also as integrated systems of cultural, social, and economic values. The adjustment of this consideration with the modern paradigms of collective governance and management necessitates investigations on challenges of management of cultural landscapes for valorizing their resources toward sustainable development. In this framework, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the state of participatory governance and management in cultural landscapes, focusing on the case of Takht-e Soleyman World Heritage Site (WHS) in Iran.

The paper presents the results of a study based on a theoretical analysis, accompanied by in-depth interviews with the key actors in the cultural heritage governance and management sectors, and large-scale surveys of the local population through the circulation of questionnaires.

This paper debates the reasons behind and the way forward to make governance and management approaches consistent with international theories and national policies. The analysis focuses on rural cultural landscapes and accordingly the Takht-e Soleyman WHS is deeply investigated.

The policies for participatory governance and management of rural cultural landscapes have been raised in the literature. However, more attention has to be paid to the strategies and mechanisms based on local features for their implementation. The study detailed in this paper makes a contribution to the debate on the design and implementation of participatory governance and management systems in this field by examining the actual extent of successful implementation of theoretical values and national policies in the case of Takht-e Soleyman WHS.

This paper is an editorial to JCHMSD's Volume 4, Issue 1 and its selection of papers. The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the first three years of editorship, reporting a critical self-assessment on the progress achieved today in relation to JCHMSD's initial aims and objectives, embedded in the state-of-the-art.

The paper builds upon editorship observations exchanged among the editorial team over the last three years and a literature review on the 42 papers published in JCHMSD. The literature review focuses primarily on: purposes and design/methodology/approaches. The ways forward sets a research agenda, challenging those contributing to the unexplored questions with their research and/or practices, to join the JCHMSD community and enable a broader audience to, at least, learn from them.

JCHMSD's three aims have been achieved. The journal is publishing innovative research and practices, relating cultural heritage management and sustainable development, developing both skills and knowledge, with contributions from authors worldwide. A global aim being targeted by a rich variety of disciplines and approaches, from factual economy to critical anthropology. Approaches so far have been primarily qualitative, exploring pilot projects or case studies. Unfortunately, some conclusions of the papers lacked self-reflection, contextualizing findings to the explored case study, methods and sources.

More than providing answers or secret recipes, this paper aims to raise questions and draft a research agenda of relevance for JCHMSD's readership, reflecting on the state-of-the-art and selected papers in relation to their purposes and design/methodology/approaches. It also positions 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape in this challenging discussion.

The sixth of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has access to improved sanitation as one of its targets. Sanitation is important not only for environmental quality and public health but also for the outstanding universal value (OUV) of heritage monument sites and tourism promotion. The study examined the causes of open defecation (OD) in the neighbourhood of a World Heritage (WH) site in Ghana and the implications of the practice for sustainable tourism and heritage management.

The study used the qualitative approach. Data were gathered from purposively targeted respondents (an Environmental Health Officer, Heritage Managers, a Tourism Expert, Hoteliers, Zoomlion Staff, Open Defecators, Community Opinion Leaders and Ordinary Community Residents) and analysed using the thematic approach.

It became evident that the causes of OD were: the lack of toilet facilities in many houses in the community, filthy and foul-smelling public latrines, poor attitude and heritage culture, mental and income poverty, inadequate sensitisation and a poor law enforcement regime. OD threatened the sustainability of heritage tourism and its associated livelihoods, as well as public health. In addition, it impaired the authenticity and integrity of the heritage monument, culminating in a detraction from the OUV of the heritage property.

In collaboration with the local, national and international stakeholders, the managers of the heritage monument should design and implement a comprehensive environmentally friendly plan. The plan should consider demarcating the boundaries of the heritage asset, monitoring the protected area, enforcing sanitation laws and mounting intensive sanitation education campaigns. It should also consider providing a decent toilet in the vicinity of the monument for the transit population, facilitate the provision of a toilet in every house through the community-led total sanitation approach, installing digital cameras at vantage points in the buffer zone of the castle to capture open defecators and punishing offenders severely to deter others from engaging in the ignoble practice of OD.

The authors argue that sanitation at heritage sites in developing countries merits further discussion within the WH network to promote sustainable heritage conservation management and tourism.

The aim of this research is to discuss the effect of corruption on conventional management of cultural heritage (CH) resources in Nigeria. It identifies the means by which the effect can be curtailed to bring about proper management system in the CH sector and pave the way for economic/sustainable development through cultural tourism in the country.

The research draws from both exploratory and comparative approaches. It took a study of selected locations and museums in the six geopolitical zones of the country, with a review of literatures on cultural heritage management (CHM). It also gives summarized information on the present overall effect of corruption in the CH sector of Nigeria.

The research reveals that there are some levels of mismanagement and destruction of CH resources in the country. This is manifested in acts of museum theft, illicit trafficking, unlawful possession and general mishandling of CH, as well as the deterioration of facilities in the sector. The research gathered that the problem came as a result of wrongful appointment of none heritage experts as heads of heritage-related institutions and agencies. It also results from lack of required attention by the government and other relevant stakeholders (such as community leaders/members, academics and law enforcement agencies, inter alia) toward CH preservation, protection, management and promotion for sustainable development. The research recommends that the government and other CH stakeholders (mentioned above) should make efforts to address the issues discussed, so as to improve the management of CH in the country for sustainable development.

Prior to this research, there has been no publication addressing the effect of corruption on CHM in this context and location. The article makes recommendations that call for action and also set grounds for future discourse.

The paper is to propose a tool for holistic impact assessment of commercially reused immovable cultural heritage resources on local, sustainable development along with the possibility to ensure the cultural sustainability of these assets themselves. The paper contains a case study using the proposed tool. The case study concerns a historic object in the form of a Polish manor house located in rural areas in Poland adapted for commercial purposes – restaurant, painting gallery and renovation of antique furniture.

The author proposes a holistic approach based on aspects, to impact assessment of given heritage resources on the economic, social, cultural and environmental pillars of sustainable development and the sustainable use of heritage assets themselves. Above that, the approach proposes to use the assumptions of EMAS or ISO 14001 systems for assessment of environmental aspects in case of reused cultural heritage assets.

The test study showed that the proposed tool allows determining whether, how and to what extent the contemporary commercial function of a given element of immovable cultural heritage contributes to local sustainable development and whether and to what extent the cultural sustainability of a given cultural heritage is ensured.

In the proposed approach, very detailed quantitative data cannot be included because of the need to simplify the research.

The proposed tool can be used by owners of reused historic buildings, local authorities, services responsible for the protection of cultural heritage and financing institutions to determine whether a given contemporary commercial function of cultural heritage resources contributes to local sustainable development in holistic approach and whether this function ensures the preservation of its cultural sustainability.

The use of the proposed tool will give the opportunity to take appropriate actions to increase the impact of historic objects on local sustainable development including social aspects. Moreover, it will be possible to increase the cultural sustainability of these objects.

There are not many studies and tools that provide a possibility to assess a holistic impact of reused cultural heritage on local sustainable development. Research usually concerns one or two pillars: social and economic. Above that, the study of the cultural appreciation in two different groups: direct users and the local community is a novelty in the perception of contribution to cultural development. It may contribute to the different way of measurement of appreciation of cultural heritage and its contribution to social and cultural development. In addition, to study the environmental pillar, the author proposes an approach used in environmental management (ISO 1400 and EMAS), i.e. the application of activities related to eliminating the potentially harmful impact of a new function of the historic resource on the natural environment.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss the application of buffer zones as an urban landscape heritage management tool, using Rio de Janeiro as the main case study, in order to inform urban regulation around the sites inscribed as World Heritage Cultural Landscape and disclose its relevance to link urban planning, cultural heritage management and sustainable development.

The methodological approach encompasses: conceptual framework – contextualization of heritage protection theory, focusing on landscape protection and buffer zones; discussion: cross-national comparative overview of buffer zones conceptual framework on the international heritage protection policy; historical background and spatial analysis, through GIS mapping, of local heritage protection policy, tracing its evolution through time; examination of prospects and challenges of this management tool, including strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, based on previous international, local experiences on natural and cultural heritage protection; and gathering of strategies for the implementation of buffer zones in local landscape management.

Core heritage sites and their buffer zones are integrated elements and act together to protect landscape significance and dynamic integrity (DI). In Rio de Janeiro, beyond the function of a caution zone, other important functions of landscape heritage buffer zones are to guarantee spatial and social connections of the protected sites, as well as the visual relationship between them and other significant urban landscape features. Strategies for the implementation of buffer zones in local landscape management should address the articulation of landscape protection governance; the conservation of visual, functional and structural identity quality and legibility and the monitoring of DI.

The methodology approach adopted in this study may also benefit from and foster further investigations, which could include the elaboration of a landscape management plan and an impact assessment inventory, refining the scale of study to the level of local watersheds, and a deeper examination of the popular cultural imprints within the World Heritage property buffer zone.

Strategies to the implementation of the Carioca Landscapes buffer zone include a gradation of protection and control of impacts according to the distance of the core sites (in the form of rings or layers). The buffer zone should help to preserve the character, significance, and DI of the protected sites and guarantee their spatial and social connections, as well as the visual and functional relationship between them and between other significant landscape features of the city. All those management strategies should be founded on the elaboration of a broad urban landscape management plan with the local society involvement.

In Rio de Janeiro’s specific case, bridging the vision of culture and nature as opposite poles and, transcending the social segregation through community involvement should certainly be among the main guiding principles to the application of buffer zones for supporting landscape sustainability. Therefore, the establishment of regulation criteria and parameters within the limits of the buffer zone must acknowledge that the (urban) landscape should carefully articulate the different social agent visions and local urban contexts.

The main contribution of this paper is to gather different visions of the role of buffer zones and disclose possibilities of conciliation between theory and practice concerning landscape protection, arguing for gathering natural and cultural heritage policies into the urban planning processes. Harnessed together, the suggested buffer zone implementation strategies may provide a proactive approach to Rio’s urban landscape protection and contribute to foster landscape sustainability and resilience. Although based on a specific case study, the adopted methodological approach may be transferable, with some adjustments, to other World Heritage properties, especially those located in urban areas under development pressures.