On 10 August 2016, the Cultural Heritage Law Committee of the International Law Association (ILA) approved its Final Report on the Law Pertaining to Cultural Landscapes Significant to Indigenous Peoples. In a plenary session the next day, the ILA adopted the recommendations in the committee’s final report, which is available on the ILA’s website.

Landscapes and, by extension, seascapes are becoming an important topic of cultural heritage law. Related issues are apparent in decision-making and dispute resolution processes. Unfortunately, neither those processes nor the academic literature have adequately addressed the contours, limitations, and future development of the pertinent transnational law. In 2013, the ILA’s Committee on Cultural Heritage Law therefore decided during an intersessional meeting in Herlufsholm, near Naestved, Denmark, to focus its work on the international legal dimensions of landscapes as cultural heritage. In 2014, during the ILA’s seventy-sixth conference in Washington, DC, the committee decided more specifically to prepare an exploratory report on the international legal framework for protecting cultural landscapes of significance to indigenous peoples. A preliminary agenda provided for submission of the report for approval during the ILA’s seventy-seventh conference in 2016 (a summary of the committee’s discussion at the Washington, DC conference may be found in ILA, Report of the Seventy-Sixth Conference (2014), 776–79).

Immediately after the Washington, DC conference, Margaret Beukes, of the South African Branch of the ILA, and Elina Moustaira, of the Hellenic Branch, agreed to assist as co-rapporteurs for the project. Members of the committee were then invited to submit commentaries on the chosen theme and examples of cultural landscapes, without any agreed-upon definition, in their respective countries. In June 2015 the committee, at the invitation of Talia Einhorn, of the Israeli Branch, met in Jerusalem to discuss the project, taking account of the commentary prepared by the chair and special rapporteurs.

The final report is not intended to be definitive. It is set forth simply as a framework for further development of the pertinent transnational regime, as described in the report, to assist governments, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, business interests, and other stakeholders in efforts to protect cultural landscapes, with all of their diverse manifestations, that are of significance to indigenous peoples. In particular, assistance to the governing authority and other institutions of these indigenous peoples is essential. A special effort was made to render the report accessible and understandable to the general public as well.