Opportunities for Heritage: Fostering Innovation, Conservation and Sustainability on February 24-27, 2024 in Muscat, Oman

Heritage can play a major role in the path to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. This international conference aims to bring together stakeholders from the field of heritage, culture, tourism, urban and rural planning from the national, regional and international backgrounds be it academia, governments, international organisations, tourism developers amongst others; to explore the opportunities heritage has for sustainable development and engage in the dialogue on how to resolve the ongoing pressures between heritage conservation and urban and rural development.

Heritage sites are usually embedded in communities. However, some approaches to heritage conservation have at times restricted the communities’ rights to be involved in the protection, promotion and management of these sites, and limited their opportunities to modernise their surroundings.

This conference aims to bridge the gap between heritage and innovation and to encourage younger generations to bring ideas from the fourth industrial revolution into the heritage scene. The overall aim is to find a way in which heritage and development not only co-exist in harmony but for heritage to eventually lead to sustainable development and ensure the well-being of the societies living around it. The conference is organized by the UNESCO Chair for World Heritage and Sustainable Tourism Management at the German University of Technology in Oman and the Arab Regional Centre for World Heritage (ARC-WH) in Bahrain and will be implemented in close cooperation with a number of international and regional organizations.