ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to contribute to the reflections on the role of cultural heritage in the promotion of sustainable development by focusing on the historical separation between city and countryside as places of production and the transmission of culture and cultural heritage. Cities, as places of socio-cultural organization and economic interaction among people, have always had a dominant role in the production of international law and, more specifically, in the elaboration of special norms on the protection of cultural heritage. Major monuments, historic centres, art collections and important religious buildings are mainly a part of the urban cultural heritage and to a much lesser extent of the rural cultural patrimony. This chapter argues that with the dynamic evolution of the concept and scope of cultural heritage, now including intangible cultural heritage and the value of cultural diversity, international law is also ready to recognize the importance of the cultural heritage of that considerable part of humanity that still lives and works in contact with nature in rural areas of the world. Their cultural heritage, made up of traditions, knowledge, rites and myths, today seems to have been relegated to the past, to a past unconsciously buried under the thick layer of technological progress and of an ephemeral industrial well-being. To rediscover and value this cultural heritage is a task, today, also for international law in its commitment to the promotion of sustainable development and human rights. Encouraging signs in this direction are the two United Nations Declarations on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), and on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (2018).
