The General Assembly of States Parties to the World Heritage Convention adopted a policy and strategy on climate change in 2007. Many of its actions remain to be delivered. Climate change has highlighted the limits of a system under stress to respond to an immense challenge. The General Assembly is again considering the issue, and a second World Heritage climate change policy is being developed to provide high-level guidance on response measures. The draft second policy emphasises the role of individual States Parties in addressing climate impacts on their World Heritage sites but says less about the responsibilities of the World Heritage Committee, World Heritage Centre or Advisory Bodies to the Convention in meeting the goals of climate action and achieving an equitable, international and shared response. Nor does it tackle issues related to Outstanding Universal Value, the core of any response to climate change. We develop a conceptual framework for substantive reform and propose actions to enable the World Heritage system to effectively respond to climate change and support the resolution of longstanding, systemic issues. Meaningful response to climate change needs to involve strategic as well as operational elements in a staged response with measurable outcomes and outputs.

The World Heritage Convention has been considering how best to respond to the impacts of climate change. This poses a number of challenges, aside from the complexities of climate change itself. The Convention is not accustomed to addressing broad, interdisciplinary matters beyond World Heritage; it has not historically had strong links with other conventions outside UNESCO; it has relatively few resources; and climate change will result in escalating change, whereas the World Heritage Convention is based upon a presumption of relative stability and manageable change. Responding to climate change in the longer term will require a clear definition of the role of the World Heritage Convention in this area, and new types of expertise within the Convention process. This article reviews these and other issues to chart a forward path.

Concerns about government communication have prompted the introduction of guidelines to cover certain media and information activities of government. The Australian government has had guidelines since the early 1980s, and in 1993 Queensland had draft guidelines published. Internationally, Britain has had ''conventions'' since 1985, and New Zealand adopted guidelines four years ago. The first part of this paper provides an overview of these existing guidelines.The paper then considers three core concerns shared by these guidelines: that government communication be efficient: that it observe relevant proprieties; and that it be removed from political influence. This article argues that. despite their evident popularity, existing guidelines are often ill-suited to these ends. They may in fact be counterproductive. Several of these guidelines adopt an unrealistic model of government, and misunderstand the nature of communication.The article supports the intentions underlying guidelines. However, the achievement of these objectives will require much more fundamental reforms to the system of government communication than can be achieved through guidelines.