DEFENDING THE HERITAGE

Community:
Each community possesses a collective heritage which it wants to preserve: buildings, parks, traditions, archives, farms, landscapes, collections of objects gathered by citizens, skilled people, persons with a long memory of the community etc. This constitutes a local community's heritage. At this level it is usually the community's responsibility to raise the level of awareness of its citizens for this local heritage.
Region, province, country:
In the same way, each region, province, and country possess a common natural, built, human and non<196>physical heritage which collectively it has to learn to recognize, appreciate, preserve and share. Again, at each level, it is up to the region, province and country to define what it considers as its heritage and to care for it.
World:
As human beings living on this planet, there are things, persons and traditions which we consider to be our common heritage. One only has to mention places such as the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, the Acropolis of Athens or Mount Everest to realize that these places do not belong to Egypt, Greece or Nepal. They are part of humanity's heritage and these countries are simply the custodians of these incredible treasures. This is why the World Heritage Convention was created: to help the whole of humanity define what it wants to preserve and pass on to the next generations.