T

he city administration and the Jakarta Old Town Revitalization Corporation (JOTRC), a consortium of private and state-owned enterprises, is gearing up to nominate the Kota Tua (Old Town) area in West and North Jakarta as a UNESCO world heritage site.

Jakarta Deputy Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama said that the city administration was currently preparing for a visit from UNESCO.

'€œWe will continue revitalizing Old Town and we will get a visit from UNESCO soon,'€ Ahok told reporters at City Hall in Central Jakarta recently.

Separately, JOTRC CEO Lin Che Wei confirmed that the UNESCO visit was to prepare the city administration and the consortium for nominating Old Town as a world heritage site.

To be included on the world heritage list, locations must first be included on a country'€™s tentative list.

According to whc.unesco.org, Indonesia has 26 sites on its tentative list, which was last revised in 2009.

The sites on the list include the Raja Ampat Islands in West Papua and the Tana Toraja traditional settlement in South Sulawesi, as well as Trowulan, which is the former capital of the Majapahit kingdom located in Mojokerto, East Java.

The latest Indonesian site to be recognized by UNESCO was the Cultural Landscape of Bali Province, or the subak system.

Previously, there were seven world heritage sites in the country '€” the Borobudur temple compound, Komodo National Park, the Prambanan temple compound, Ujung Kulon National Park, Sangiran Early Man Site, Lorentz National Park and the tropical rainforest of Sumatra.

Lin said that UNESCO had conducted a workshop for those involved in the revitalization and development of Old Town to prepare them for the nomination.

Lin added that there were three steps to nominate a place as a world heritage site.

First, he said, the site must be of outstanding universal value.

'€œSecond, the site must meet the criteria for becoming a UNESCO world heritage site,'€ Lin went on.

According to its website, UNESCO lists 10 criteria for world heritage sites, of which six are cultural and four are natural criteria.

The criteria, among other things, stipulate that a site must represent a masterpiece of human creative genius, and must also contain superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance.

Of the 10, a site must fulfill at least one criteria.

'€œThen we must form a committee and a management plan to maintain the site'€™s physical and cultural beauty, and protect the integrity and authenticity of the site,'€ Lin said.

He added that JOTRC and the city administration would work with conservationists on the nomination.

'€œIn fact, we have already had discussions with a number of conservationists in preparation,'€ Lin said.

Once the site is nominated, the committee will draft a nomination file, which will be submitted to UNESCO advisory bodies to review its authenticity and importance.

The advisory bodies would then send applications to the World Heritage Committee for a final review.

The judging by UNESCO to determine whether or not Old Town would receive the world heritage site status, Lin went on, would take place in 2016.