（Source: Management Committee of Hangzhou West Lake Scenic Area）

On March 16, Ms. Li Hong, the programme specialist of WHITRAP Shanghai was invited by the Management Committee of Hangzhou West Lake Scenic Area to give a training session on "World Heritage Impact Assessment". Chen Lin, the deputy director of the committee, and more than 40 people in charge of various departments and grassroots units attended the training session.

The training session focused on two aspects of the World Heritage management mechanism and the World Heritage impact assessment. In order to protect World Heritage and maintain the credibility of the World Heritage List, the World Heritage Committee has strengthened the monitoring and management of World Heritage properties, introduced in detail the roles of the reactive monitoring and the periodic reporting, and compared the ten factors affecting World Heritage in China and around the world. She further illustrated the importance of World Heritage conservation and management by giving examples of three delisted World Heritage properties (Arabian Oryx Sanctuary, Dresden Elbe Valley, Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City), thus highlighting impact assessment as an important tool for heritage management. In the following session concerning the assessment of World Heritage, she focused on the 2022 " Guidance and Toolkit for Impact Assessments in a World Heritage Context", explaining in detail the 11 operational steps and implications of impact assessment, complementing the analysis of different impact assessment mechanisms in other countries and regions such as Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, Australia and Hong Kong, China. She also introduced its development in China from the impact assessment of cultural relics to the impact on culture.

In the afternoon, Ms. Li Hong talked with the staff from the Cultural Relics and Heritage Division and Hangzhou West Lake Monitoring Center. They exchanged opinions on the problems and difficulties encountered in the heritage impact assessment, and provided ideas for the improvement of future work.

Contributed by: LI Hong