More than 50 world sites hope for inclusion on the UN’s coveted heritage list at a meeting opening in Riyadh Sunday, while some incumbents, including Venice and Kyiv, face the risk of a downgrade.
More than 50 world sites hope for inclusion on the UN’s coveted heritage list at a meeting opening in Riyadh Sunday, while some incumbents, including Venice and Kyiv, face the risk of a downgrade.
UNESCO, the United Nation’s educational, scientific and cultural organization, keeps the world heritage list, which it says is a reflection of the planet’s cultural and natural diversity.
The agency meets once a year to update the list, the inclusion on which is seen by many countries as crucial for tourism and the ability to source funding for the preservation of sites.
Conversely, countries are eager to avoid being dropped from the list, including Australia which has recently made major efforts to avoid the exclusion of the Great Barrier Reef because of the government’s shortcomings in protecting the natural site from the impact of climate change and tourism.
At the meeting in Saudi Arabia some well established sites, including Venice and Kyiv, will be in the spotlight for a possible “at risk” qualification, the first stop towards exclusion from the list that features 1,157 sites, of which 900 are cultural, 218 natural and 39 mixed.
