Key documents

• Perform administrative and technical tasks for the needs of the Council for the

Management of the Protected Region of Kotor, in accordance with the provisions of the Law on Protection of the Natural and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor; • Adopt the Programme for the protection and preservation of the Kotor Region.13

The Kotor Region Management Council is formed to coordinate the protection, conservation and management activities, based on the 2013 Law on Protection of the Natural and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor. The competences of the Council are described in detail in the chapter on the management of the Kotor Region.

Key documents Study for the Protection of Cultural Properties

Studies for the protection of cultural heritage are the basis for the protection of the value of cultural heritage of a certain region, including its protection within the spatial planning documentation. The 1991 Law on the Protection of Cultural Monuments stipulated that “in order to preserve the urban or historical character or the ambient unit of old towns and settlements” municipalities are obliged to obtain the opinion of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments when adopting urban plans. The Law on the Protection of Cultural Properties from 2010 introduced, as a segment of integral protection, the obligation to prepare a Study for the Protection of Cultural Properties, which precedes the preparation of the planning document. The Law states that “The planning document must be harmonized with the Study for the Protection of Cultural Properties and the Management Plan” (Articles 89 and 90).

Studies for the protection of cultural heritage in the Natural and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor have been developed since the 1980s. Immediately after the catastrophic earthquake, a Study for the Protection of Cultural Monuments in Dobrota was prepared during 1979/1980 by experts from Poland. In 1981, within the Municipal Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, a methodology was adopted which envisaged the preparation of a Study for the Protection of the Architectural Heritage of the Old Town. Based on the study, the Urban Development Plan of the Old Town of Kotor was made. The author of the study was architect Svetislav Vučenović, who later worked on many other studies. In the period after that, the Municipal, i.e. later the Regional Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments Kotor, developed studies of architectural heritage for many settlements within the Kotor Region: Prčanj (1990), Stoliv (1990), Risan (1982), Orahovac and Dražin Vrt (1992), Perast (2002, 2006), Morinj (2008) as well as the study “Treatment of immovable cultural properties in the Spatial Plan and the GUP” (2009). In addition, the Faculty of Architecture in Podgorica developed a Study for the Protection of the Architectural Heritage of Kostanjica (2008).14

After all these individual studies, the Study for the Protection of Cultural Properties in the 13  https://www.kotor.me/me/sekretarijat-za-za%C5%A1titu-prirodne-i-kulturne-ba%C5%A1tine--nadle%C5%BEnosti/ 14  Study for the Protection of Cultural Properties in the Municipality of Kotor, 2015-2018

Municipality of Kotor was developed, as the most comprehensive and significant study for the protection of the Kotor Region as a World Heritage site. This study, developed for the purpose of drafting the Spatial Urban Plan (SUP) of Kotor, was prepared by the Directorate for the Protection of Cultural Properties – Kotor Regional Unit in 2015, and was adopted and implemented in 2018. This study comprehensively addressed the situation, threats and risks, but also provided guidelines and measures for the protection of the Natural and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor. The graphic annexes to the Study are particularly important, as part of which the map with spatially marked attributes of outstanding universal value of the Kotor Region was made for the first time, as well as maps on which protection measures were spatially defined on the basis of these values.

Heritage Impact Assessment – HIA

Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA) is a process conducted for properties on the UNESCO World Heritage List to assess the possible negative impact of potential interventions, development projects or plans on the outstanding universal value of the property. Heritage Impact Assessment is carried out in accordance with the Guidance developed by ICOMOS in 2009.

The development of the HIA was introduced into domestic legislation by the Law on the Protection of the Natural and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor, 2018. “Planning documents must be harmonized with the Heritage Impact Assessment, for the entire Kotor Region, as well as for its individual parts. The Impact Assessment is made by the Government of Montenegro for a period of five years” (Article 18).

Also, a separate act of the Directorate for the Protection of Cultural Properties may determine the areas and localities in the Kotor Region and its buffer zone, for which the procedure of developing an Individual Heritage Impact Assessment should be initiated. “The Draft Individual Assessment prepared by the expert team within the Kotor Region, as a rule, is submitted by the Directorate to the Montenegrin National Commission for UNESCO, in order to obtain an opinion from UNESCO.” (Article 18a of the Law on Protection of the Natural and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor).

Within the Kotor Region, several individual Heritage Impact Assessments were developed, initiated by investors of various planned complexes. A comprehensive Heritage Impact Assessment for the Kotor Region was first prepared for the SUP of Kotor in 2017 – HIA

Boka Kotorska, Impact Assessment of Past and Future Interventions within the Natural

and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor. It was developed in accordance with the ICOMOS Guidance, and in relation to the requirements defined by the World Heritage Committee. This document is very important because it introduced the professional public in Montenegro with the practice of assessing the impact on (world) heritage. However, its effect was somewhat limited, as many compromises were made which produced erroneous results in assessing the impact of some interventions. The pressure to assess the impact of certain investment projects as much milder than it would turn out to be in reality, diminished the meaning of the development of HIA. A similar thing happens with some individual heritage assessments that serve more to confirm the intention of construction than to assess its potential impact, so the obligation to produce HIA itself can become counterproductive.