The World Heritage sites and the Biosphere Reserve Areas are cultural and natural heritage sites/areas pointed out by SBP and UNESCO as having outstanding, universal value and as role models for sustainability. The project partners and associated partners represent WH sites and Biosphere Reserve Areas in the South Baltic region. Tourism in the region is to a large extent unsustainable in terms of unbalanced seasonal patterns. As parts of larger destinations the UNESCO sites can function as catalysts for a sustainable development where local businesses and local communities can gain from the diversification opportunity. In the project the partners aim to jointly develop and establish relevant cross-border strategies and accompanying action plans for the sites, and to test and implement a variety of already existing tools as well as trying to develop new tools that are currently lacking. The project will result in established strategies, action plans made, and the testing and implementation of a jointly developed concept on three focus areas: 1) stakeholder dialogue 2) product and service development and 3) governance. During the project time the focus will be on UNESCO sites, but all the results and outputs will be applicable on other sites as well. Part of the project will be connecting to other sites or alike that can cluster with the UNESCO sites under the umbrella concept/brand “World Heritage and Friends”. The challenges that the UNESCO sites meet are similar to the challenges of any cultural or natural heritage site: tourism is not local or regional but global. The impact of tourism is not isolated to one specific site but affecting the whole region, and the negative as well as the positive effects of tourism will have regional and global effects. Therefore the challenges cannot be addressed or solved exclusively on a local or site-specific level, the unbalanced tourism patterns must be handled on a cross-border level.
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