On the occasion of the Salzburg Global Seminar session on Connecting to the World's Collections: Making the Case for the Conservation and Preservation of our Cultural Heritage, 60 cultural heritage leaders from the preservation sector representing 30-two nations around the world shared experiences to address the sustainability of cultural heritage.

The progress of countries is measured by their success in keeping hold of their culture and heritage, and I think Egypt is one of the very few countries in the world maintaining her cultural patrimony. We have been able, through a great effort led by Farouk Hosni, the Minister of Culture, to preserve and offer this heritage to the world as evidence of the magnificence of this great country, on whose land the most important civilization in existence was born. This civilization is in the heart of every human being on earth. The French newspaper, Le Figaro, published an article some time ago commending the quality of restoration and maintenance of Egyptian monuments, as well as new discoveries made by an Egyptian team.

To authorize the restitution by France of Maori heads to New Zealand and concerning management of collections.

New Zealand claims for the return of preserved tattooed Maori heads held by foreign institutions have revisited complex legal, ethical, and cultural questions surrounding human remains in museum and other institutional collections worldwide. Recent legislation in France that facilitates the return of Maori heads in French museums represents a further stage in this ongoing story.

Sixty cultural heritage leaders from 32 countries, including representatives from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America, Australia, Europe, and North America, gathered in October 2009 in Salzburg, Austria, to develop a series of practical recommendations to ensure optimal collections conservation worldwide. Convened at Schloss Leopoldskron, the gathering was conducted in partnership by the Salzburg Global Seminar (SGS) and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The participants were conservation specialists from libraries and museums, as well as leaders of major conservation centers and cultural heritage programs from around the world. As cochair Vinod Daniel noted, no previous meeting of conservation professionals has been “as diverse as this, with people from as many parts of the world, as cross-disciplinary as this.” The group addressed central issues in the care and preservation of the world's cultural heritage, including moveable objects (library materials, books, archives, paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, photographic collections, art on paper, and archaeological and ethnographic objects) and immoveable heritage (buildings and archaeological sites).

The inaugural event for the newly established University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst Center for Heritage & Society, entitled “Heritage in Conflict and Consensus: New Approaches to the Social, Political, and Religious Impact of Public Heritage in the 21st Century,” was held in November 2009 at three locations in the northeastern United States. Workshop attendees participated in several organized sessions, day trips, informal discussions, and five plenary sessions with accompanying working sessions focused on four themes in international heritage practice: community; faith; diaspora; and burial, ancestors, and human Remains. The event was co-organized by two members of the UMass Amherst Center for Heritage & Society, Director Elizabeth Chilton and Coordinator of Projects and Policy Initiatives Neil Silberman, whose main goal was to establish a permanent working group of international representatives engaging with issues of heritage in conflict charged with setting research and policy agendas for the field.

Heritage 2010 was a state-of-the-art event regarding the relationship between forms of heritage and the conceptual framework for sustainable development. The four dimensions of sustainable development—environment, economics, society, and culture—were brought together in order to define a particular approach on how to deal with and go beyond the traditional aspects of heritage preservation and safeguarding. As heritage is no longer just a memory or a cultural reference, or even a place or an object, some deeper conceptualization is needed in order to place heritage in its present context. The concept of heritage is moving toward broader and wider scenarios, where it often becomes the driving force for commerce, business, leisure, and educational politics. Heritage is currently seen, or referred to, only through its cultural definition. However, sustainable development brings heritage concepts to another dimension, as it establishes profound relationships with economics, environment, and social aspects. Consequently, heritage preservation and safeguarding is facing new and complex problems. Degradation of heritage sites is not any more just a result of materials ageing or environmental actions. Factors such as global and local pollution, climate change, poverty, religion, tourism, commerce, ideologies, and war are now on the cutting edge for the emerging of new approaches, concerns, and visions on heritage. Thus, the “Heritage 2010: Heritage and Sustainable Development” conference was conceived to embrace a global view on how heritage is being contextualized with the four dimensions of sustainable development. Furthermore, heritage, governance, and education were brought into discussion as the key factors for enlightenment of future global strategies for heritage preservation and safeguarding.

Twenty-two members of the International Law Association's Committee on Cultural Heritage Law attended a working session in The Hague. The committee first reviewed the status of its past projects, focusing this time on the UNESCO Convention for the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, which resulted from the Committee's Buenos Aires Draft Convention on that subject. Now that the treaty is in force, the committee considered the actual and potential status of accession by maritime powers.