IT SOUNDS like the beginning of a bizarre guessing game. As of this month, the following unlikely mixture of people and agencies found themselves tarred with the same brush: Liverpool City Council, the developers and municipal authorities of Panama, the Islamist rebels of West Africa and the quarrelsome bishops of some ancient Christian churches in the Middle East. They all bear a share of responsibility for the fate of places that have recently been deemed by UNESCO to be “World Heritage Sites in danger”.

During its latest annual gathering, which ended on July 6th, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee (a rotating group of 21 member states) also added 26 new places to the list of locations it considers to have “outstanding universal value” to humanity. The total now comes to 962. It then named five places as “World Heritage Sites in danger”—a label that can either imply solidarity with a country, or a rebuke for poor conservation. This year’s additions to the danger list consisted of Liverpool’s old harbour area, which is said to be imperilled, at least aesthetically, by a giant construction project; two early European settlements in Panama which face a similar challenge; and the tombs and shrines of Mali which have been ruthlessly targeted by an army of zealots professing a puritanical form of Islam.

In an unusual, fast-track procedure, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was accepted as a world-heritage site and declared to be in danger—at the behest of the Palestinian authority which was, controversially, admitted to UNESCO as a full member last November. For the church, built over a cave which marks the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ, the biggest problem is water damage from unrepaired leaks—and the reluctance of the Greek, Armenian and Roman Catholic hierarchs to agree on any repair plan that might disrupt the Ottoman-era system for sharing access to the building.

Nobody, not even the bureaucrats at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris, suggests that this improbable rogues’ gallery is a representative sample of the forces that threaten the future of the world’s most sensitive locations. And whoever the real rogues are, they are unlikely to be thwarted by the few dozen people who work at the agency’s World-Heritage division. The success or failure of conservation efforts will depend more on the behaviour of millions of people—from local bureaucrats to land-hungry peasants—who live much closer to the edge, in every sense, of sensitive spots. Nor, of course, can UNESCO have anything except moral influence on armed groups, even though it is the guardian of a convention which mandates respect for cultural property during conflict. But there is still a big question over whether the UN’s cultural agency, whose listings command huge prestige in much of the world, is sending the right signals and finding the right partners.

UNESCO’s World-Heritage regime began life 40 years ago, when dozens of countries signed up to the idea that the world’s cultural and natural patrimony was under threat not only from “traditional causes of decay” but also because of “changing social and economic conditions”. Among those who endorsed the principle was the Republican administration of Richard Nixon, which gave remarkably high priority to conservation and the environment. (Since then, America has had a stormy relationship with UNESCO; it cut off payments to the agency last year, under a law which denies funding to any body that admits Palestine.)

In many poorer countries which host heritage sites, the biggest changes since 1972 have been exploding populations and a huge rise in global tourism, combined with a lack of the governance needed to cope with both phenomena. Angkor Wat, a temple complex in Cambodia, and the Inca fortress of Machu Picchu in Peru (pictured above) are often cited as places of world-historical importance where a vast influx of tourists may be causing serious damage. By recognising and thus publicising individual sites, UNESCO and other cultural watchdogs risk harming the cause of conservation, which would be better served if visitors to the country were spread around a broader range of places.

But there are no easy ways to maintain heritage sites in relatively poor countries; it requires delicate balancing acts, much local diplomacy and long-term engagement, according to organisations that work in that field. Even a well-functioning state, be it democratic or authoritarian, will fail to conserve monuments unless local people see an interest in maintaining their heritage and using it rationally, says Vincent Michael, new chairman of the Global Heritage Fund (GHF), based in California. The effort will collapse if cultural heritage is seen either as a pesky impediment to making money, or as something to be exploited for short-term gain. Nor should local economies ever be too reliant on tourism, which can fall as rapidly as it rises.

Among the places where the GHF has applied these ideas—by developing a strategy for conservation and local development—is the Neolithic site of Catalhoyuk in Turkey, which was one of the places added this year to UNESCO’s World-Heritage list. UNESCO also tells member states to provide “management plans” for each World-Heritage Site, but these are often couched in negative terms—laying out how threats can be avoided. In recent statements, UNESCO’s director-general, Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, has cited a more positive link between heritage and economic development: a welcome change in Mr Michael’s view.

But UNESCO, like most other UN agencies, suffers from a house culture which prefers to deal with governments, and lives happily with the fiction that governments genuinely care about citizens and their heritage. If that were true, then the problem of protecting patrimony could simply be solved by telling governments to pass good laws and enforce them. But in many places where sites are at risk, government either does not operate at all, or functions only in the interest of a kleptocratic elite. In some such places, so-called non-state players (from warlords to private firms to religious leaders) are about the only things that really function at all.

Independent conservation agencies are less squeamish about dealing with private firms. Even they cannot achieve much in a completely failed state, but they tend to flourish in places where there is some internal debate between different levels of government and private interests. In such countries, outsiders can be helpful arbitrators. Contrary to the common stereotype, such countries even includes China—where the World Monuments Fund (WMF), based in New York, for example, is working to help open more of Beijing’s Forbidden City to tourists.

One of the biggest global challenges to conservation, says the WMF’s president, Bonnie Burnham, is that national agencies which control precious places (culture ministries, for example) often have no say over what goes on—in terms of development, transport or sanitation—in the surrounding areas. That is one of the obstacles to conserving Inca sites in Peru. But an outsider with a real concern for preserving the past can help overcome that problem.

In certain cases, UNESCO has helped tilt the balance of internal debates in favour of the cause of conservation, merely by issuing rebukes; that, presumably, is the intention behind the danger listing for Liverpool, which was not contested by the British government, even though the controversial development is defended by the (Labour-controlled) city council. But to do that job effectively, UNESCO may need to overcome its own cultural aversion to parlaying with the private sector.

To some extent, that may be happening already. As part of her agency’s effort to stop the traffic in stolen art, Ms Bokova has started a dialogue—a constructive one, she says—with commercial auction houses. Perhaps she should also be talking more to tour operators, and even darker forces, from the conservationists’ viewpoint, like road-builders and mining companies.