World Heritage Convention

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>National Park Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>36 CFR Part 73</CFR> <DEPDOC>[NPS-WASO-OIA-DTS-36537; PPWODIREI0-PIN00IO15.XI0000-234P104215]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1024-AE82</RIN> <SUBJECT>World Heritage Convention</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Park Service, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This proposed rule would revise regulations governing the National Park Service's coordination of U.S. participation in the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The proposed changes would reflect updates to the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention that have been made by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage since the regulations were first promulgated in 1982. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on the proposed rule must be received by 11:59 p.m. ET on February 3, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by Regulation Identifier Number (RIN) 1024-AE82, by either of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Mail or hand deliver to:</E> Office of International Affairs, National Park Service, 1849 C Street NW, Room 2415, Washington, DC 20240. Comments delivered on external electronic storage devices (flash drives, compact discs, etc.) will not be accepted. • <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Comments will not be accepted by fax, email, or in any way other than those specified above. All submissions received must include the words “National Park Service” or “NPS” and must include the docket number or RIN (1024-AE82) for this rulemaking. Comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. • <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and search for “1024-AE82.” <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jonathan Putnam, Office of International Affairs, National Park Service, (202) 354-1809, <E T="03">jonathan_putnam@nps.gov</E> and <E T="03">international_affairs@nps.gov.</E> Individuals in the United States who are deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability may dial 711 (TTY, TDD, or TeleBraille) to access telecommunications relay services. Individuals outside the United States should use the relay services offered within their country to make international calls to the point-of-contact in the United States. In compliance with the Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act of 2023, the plain language summary of the proposal is available on <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> in the docket for this rulemaking. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (the Convention) was ratified by the U.S. Senate on October 26, 1973. The purpose of the Convention is to enhance worldwide understanding and appreciation of heritage conservation, and to recognize and preserve natural and cultural properties throughout the world that have outstanding universal value. The World Heritage List is an international list of cultural and natural properties judged to possess outstanding universal value. Properties are nominated by the signatories to the Convention. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (the Committee) is the governing body of the Convention. The Committee is composed of elected representatives of 21 nations and is responsible for implementing the Convention at the international level. Countries represented on the Committee are elected by participating nations. The Committee establishes criteria which properties must satisfy for inclusion on the World Heritage List. At its annual meeting, the Committee decides which properties to accept on the World Heritage List. Currently, there are 1,199 properties on the World Heritage List that are located in 168 of the 195 signatory countries. Twenty-five sites on the World Heritage List are located in the United States, including several units of the National Park System ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Mesa Verde National Park, Carlsbad Caverns National Park). Another property located in the United States has been nominated and is pending consideration by the Committee. Title IV of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) Amendments of 1980 (54 U.S.C. 307101) instructs the Department of the Interior (the Department) to direct and coordinate participation by the United States in the Convention. Regulations at 36 CFR part 73 implement the Convention pursuant to the 1980 NHPA Amendments. The Department, through the National Park Service (NPS), promulgated these regulations in 1982 (47 FR 23397) and made minor updates in 2001 (66 FR 57878). The regulations address (1) the U.S. World Heritage nomination process; (2) the criteria for inclusion on the World Heritage List and their application to nominated properties; (3) the role of the Federal Interagency Panel for World Heritage; (4) the protection of U.S. World Heritage properties; (5) International World Heritage activities; and (6) public information and education activities. The regulations also define key terms and explain the purpose and authority for the regulations and the role of the Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks. Since the NPS promulgated the regulations in 1982, the Committee has amended the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention (the Operational Guidelines) on numerous occasions, most recently in September 2023. The Operational Guidelines establish detailed procedures for (1) the inclusion of properties on the World Heritage List at the international level; (2) the protection and conservation of World Heritage properties; (3) the implementation of the World Heritage Fund; and (4) mobilization of support for the Convention. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Executive Summary</HD> In this rulemaking, the NPS proposes to bring the regulations in part 73 in line with the Operational Guidelines and the current practice of program implementation by the NPS on behalf of the United States. The changes also would streamline certain procedural steps and provide clarity that would benefit the Department and the public. The proposed changes to each section of the existing regulations are explained below. In addition to the changes described below, the NPS would make non-substantive, editorial changes to the regulations to improve their readability. The NPS welcomes public comments on these changes and hopes to receive meaningful input as it considers a final rule. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 73.1 Purpose</HD> Section 73.1 explains the purpose of the regulations. The NPS proposes to revise this section to remove references to the statutory authority for promulgating the regulations. The authority for promulgating the regulations is stated in section 73.5 (Authority). <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 73.3 Definitions</HD> Section 73.3 defines terms used in part 73. The NPS proposes to reorganize the defined terms in alphabetical order and add definitions for the following terms: “Advisory Bodies,” “NPS,” “Operational Guidelines,” “Preliminary Assessment,” “Secretary,” “Tentative List,” and “State Party.” The NPS proposes to shorten the definition of “Committee” to remove explanatory information that does not need to be in the definition and an outdated reference to six-year terms. Governments that have signed or become a party to the Convention now voluntarily limit their terms to four years. The NPS proposes to revise the definition of “Owner” to remove unnecessary language about nominations and refer to property interests rather than ownership to avoid a circular definition. The NPS proposes to further revise the definition to clarify that an owner means an individual, entity, government, or Indian Tribe that has a fee simple interest in all or part of a property, or in the case of an Indian Tribe a restricted fee interest, or a less than fee simple interest that is integral to the entire property's outstanding universal value. The revised definition would specifically refer to property interests held by an Indian Tribe or held in trust by the United States for the benefit of an Indian Tribe. Although there has never been a prohibition on nominating Tribal properties, and Tribal properties have been nominated in the past, these changes would clarify that Tribal properties may be nominated and that Indian Tribes will be considered the owners of those lands for purposes of the regulations regardless as to whether the properties are held in trust by the United States. This means that when a Tribal property is held in trust by the United States, the United States is not an owner of the property for purposes of these regulations and, as a result, the concurrence of the United States is not required for nominations. The NPS proposes to remove the definition of “Owner concurrence” and instead explain in the regulatory text that all property owners must concur in writing to nominations. The NPS proposes to remove the definitions of “Cultural Heritage” and “Natural Heritage” because they would be used only once in the revised regulations. Instead, the NPS would refer to the Articles of the Convention where they are defined. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 73.5 Autho ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 58k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━