European Green Belt

Feasibility study on the designation of the European Greenbelt as World Heritage Site

The “Iron Curtain” divided Eastern and Western Europe for about 40 years by cutting off many links between both sides. On either side of the border, States developed their own economic systems and military alliances. Physically, the Iron Curtain was highly militarized and was marked by a series of border defences. The highly militarized borderline led to unintended consequences for nature conservation. Today, several habitats are articulated into what has been described as the European backbone or as a living monument of European history. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, old and emerging ideologies, symbols and landscapes have been under continued reinvention and reinterpretation along the European Green Belt (EGB). Its cultural and natural heritage have been considered repeatedly as having outstanding universal value (OUV) as in the case of UNESCO World Heritage designated sites. The question on the feasibility of designating the EGB by its OUV under the UNESCO World Heritage Site label remains open, and is addressed by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) under a R&D project. The objective of this R&D project is to develop a series of scenarios that ground on the UNESCO World Heritage nomination criteria, integrity and authenticity, and that depending on the sites' combination, shed some light into the possible conservation and management aspects of a tentative designation. Contractor of this R&D project is the Institute for Landscape Management at the University of Freiburg and developed jointly with the agrathaer GmbH for strategic land-use at the ZALF.

June 2012 - June 2014

German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN)

Prof. Dr. Werner Konold

Dr. Karl-Heinz Gaudry, Manuel Oelke

agrathaer GmbH für strategische Landnutzung