Analysis and Evaluation of the Challenges of Conservation Management of Iran's World Heritage Sites

Iran has a significant number of cultural heritage properties, built in different periods, which have given the country a cultural and social identity and a privileged historical character. Some of these properties are unparalleled in their values so that they have been inscribed in the World Heritage List. With 26 cultural and natural WHs, Iran is among the top ten countries with the most inscribed World Heritage Sites. However, due to the conflict and multiplicity of management methods and the lack of conservation management principles based on the indigenous context, many issues and problems have arisen concerning the sustainable protection of the mentioned sites. Therefore, identifying and evaluating the Iran's world heritage challenges in the first step is one of the main priorities for the process of their conservation management. This research has tried to analyze and evaluate the challenges of Iran's world heritage preservation management using a descriptive-analytical method, and it includes library-documentary and field data. Different methods and tools of content analysis, fieldwork and statistical analysis have been applied to analyze the findings. The results from identifying and evaluating the challenges of conservation management through the distribution of questionnaires among the World Heritage Site Managers and statistical analysis indicated that out of the 54 identified main challenges, 18 challenges related to the physical, technical and executive context, 6 challenges related to the economic and financial context, 7 challenges related to the socio-cultural context, 7 challenges related to the political context, 6 challenges related to the legal context and finally 10 challenges are related to the environmental context of sites management. So that more than 50% of the country's World Heritage Sites face all challenges and more than 70% also meet many of these challenges.