This paper will discuss how art and aesthetics can bring new perspectives to the meaning of “outstanding universal value” in relation to the natural world heritage of the High Coast (The Baltic Sea region, Sweden), with the intention to contribute to research concerning the relation between aesthetics, art, environment and natural world heritages. 

 The date for the inscription of the High Coast as a natural world heritage was 2000 (the Kvarken Archipelago, Finland was added in 2006). The World Heritage Convention attributes the universal value of the High Coast/Kvarken Archipelago, as a natural world heritage, to the isostatic uplift and the on-going geological process. The universal aspect of value as it is problematized by Labadi (2015) will here be further explored in terms of “relationality” (Saito, 2022). In this context, the idea of relationality supports the argument that world heritage sites must be seen in relation to the environment (landscape) and materiality (including economy, tourism and so forth). The requirements for protection and management does not mention any threats apart from those that can have a negative effect on the geological process, however. Changes in the landscape caused by deforestation are thus not mentioned as a threat to the preservation of the High Coast. This paper argues that these changes should be taken into consideration in a discussion about value, and that aesthetics and artistic practices can bring attention to these changes in the landscape. This paper will explore how affect and attention (Nielsen, 2023) can be used in a discussion about the art that relates to this region today, and I will argue that art can respond to the changes of the landscape through an “attitude of care regarding the world.” (Saito, 2022: 8).