The World Heritage Committee’s justification for Öland’s World Heritage inscription:
- The landscape of Southern Öland takes its contemporary form from its long cultural history, adapting to the physical constraints of the geology and topography.
- Southern Öland is an outstanding example of human settlement, making the optimum use of diverse landscape types on a single island.
Many of the delegates, as well as IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), emphasised that this site was a unique example of a landscape that has continually encouraged and preserved biological diversity.
The World Heritage inscription took place on 2 December 2000 in Cairns, Australia.
The Agricultural Landscape of Southern Öland became the world’s 968th World Heritage site in order and the tenth in Sweden at the time.
The World Heritage Council was formed in 2004 as a joint consultation group on issues concerning the Agricultural Landscape of Southern Öland. Today, the Council is made up of the Municipality of Mörbylånga, the Kalmar County Administrative Board, the Federation of Swedish Farmers and the Regional Council.