UNESCO Lists 48 New World Heritage Sites
12/9/99
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: ENVIRONMENT-CULTURE: UNESCO Lists 48 New World Heritage
Sites
Source: InterPress Service
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 9, 1999
Byline: Mithre J. Sandrasagra
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 9 (IPS) - The World Heritage Committee of the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) has inscribed 48 new "cultural" and "natural" sites on its
World Heritage List.
The list presently comprises 630 sites of "outstanding universal
value" in 118 countries.
The 48 new sites are located in 33 countries and, according to
UNESCO, sites in Nigeria, South Africa, Saint Kitts and Nevis and
Turkmenistan appear on the list for the first time.
Some of the notable new sites include Lorentz National Park
(Indonesia), Miguasha Park in Quebec, Canada, Valdes Peninsula in
Patagonia (Argentina), Wartburg Castle (Germany) and Robben Island,
where former South African president Nelson Mandela was once
imprisoned.
The World Heritage Committee, in choosing new sites, says that it
attempted to create a geograaphic balance as the number o African
sites on the list is marginal in comparison to the numbers from other
regions of the globe.
Twenty-eight countries, including Nigeria, share the 35 new
"cultural" sites.
The cultural landscape of Sukur, in the Adamawa State of Nigeria, is
home to a Palace on a hill, with terraced fields embodying sacred
symbols below, and extensive remains of a flourishing iron industry.
Sukur has survived unchanged for many centuries, and continues to do
so at a period when this form of traditional human settlement is
under threat in many parts of the world.
The "cultural landscape" is an intact physical expression of a
society and its spiritual and material culture. It represents a
critical stage in human settlement and its relationship with its
environment.
South Africa is home to the Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park, one of
the 11 new "natural" sites on the list.
"Geographically diverse, home to coastal dunes, coral reefs, long
sandy beaches, lake systems, swamps, and extensive reed and papyrus
wetlands the park contains outstanding scenic vistas along its 220-km
coast," says UNESCO.
Naturally occurring phenomena include "shifting salinity states
linked to wet and dry climatic cycles" and ecological linkages
between five ecosystems.
The site also accommodates "critical habitat for a range of species
from Africa's marine, wetland and savannah environments."
The criteria for inclusion on the list are revised regularly by the
World Heritage Committee to evolve in flux with the evolution of the
World Heritage concept itself.
According to the World Heritage Committee, "cultural" sites which fit
criteria for inclusion in the list will be monuments, groups of
buildings, or sites where "works of man or the combined works of
nature and of man" are of "outstanding universal value" from
historical, scientific, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological
points of view.
Sites of "natural" heritage possess "natural features consisting of
physical and biological formations or groups of such formations which
constitute the habitat of threatened species of animals", or
ecosystems, which are of "outstanding universal value" from the point
of view of science, aesthetics, conservation, or natural beauty.
One of these that made the latest list is a Canadian park at Miguasha
on the coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence which contains a rich
deposit of ancient amphibian-like fossil fish.
The Committee also added four new sites to its ''List of World
Heritage in Danger'': the Iguacu National Park (Brazil), the Rwenzori
Mountains (Uganda), the Salonga National Park (Democratic Republic of
the Congo) and the Groups of Monuments at Hampi (India).
The attention of the Committee can be called to World Heritage in
Danger by individuals, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), or
other groups.
According to the Committee, "if the alert is justified, and the
problem is serious enough, the site will be placed on the List of
World Heritage in Danger.
This list is designed to call the world's attention to natural or
human-made conditions which threaten the characteristics for which
the site was originally inscribed on the World Heritage List.
Endangered sites on this list are entitled to particular attention
and emergency action."
Though Africa is under-represented on the World Heritage List, this
year two of the four sites added to the List of World Heritage in
Danger are in Africa.
The Rwenzori Mountains site in Uganda has been placed on the list
because rebel activity in the area has prevented any conservation
activity in the area.
The World Heritage Committee stressed the need for a partnership
between the World Heritage Centre, the World Conservation Union
(IUCN), governmental and non-governmental conservation organizations,
and international organizations to "discuss ways of making all
parties involved in the conflict aware of the need to respect the
site's world heritage status and to develop projects to support site
management."
Until this year "due to poaching and housing construction", the
Salonga National Park was the only World Heritage Site in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo not included on the List of World
Heritage in Danger.
Due to its location in the central region of the country it had been
less affected by the armed conflict being waged there.
Inclusion on the list will allow the park to obtain assistance from a
UNESCO project, "funded largely by the United Nations Foundation,
that is providing 4.1 million dollars for personnel training and
equipment as well as bio-diversity conservation in the country."
With 630 cultural and natural sites already protected worldwide, the
World Heritage Centre is working to make sure that future generations
can inherit the treasures of the past.
At the opening ceremony of the World Heritage Committee meeting in
Marrakech last week, the new UNESCO Director-General Koichiro
Matsuura of Japan, a former President of the Committee, stressed
that, "conservation is not an end in itself.
The heritage we aim to protect must make sense for contemporary
society and give it sense. It is only on this condition that it can
be preserved for future generations." The preservation of our common
heritage concerns us all.
The Director-General reflected on the Committee's tasks to both raise
public awareness of World Heritage and support educational programmes
in the field of conservation.
"Without the understanding and support of the public at large,
without the respect and daily care by the local communities, which
are the true custodians of World Heritage sites, no amount of funds
or army of experts will suffice to protect these sites.
It also calls for citizenry, for the public at large and the
individuals comprising that public, to assume the responsibilities
and duties for heritage conservation by participating in the
emocratic process to protect and develop it for the benefit of all."
(END/IPS/99/mjs/td/mk/99)