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World Heritage Marine Programme

Brochure du programme marin du patrimoine mondial
Categories: Marine & coastal

The World Heritage Marine Programme mission is to safeguard the world's marine cultural and natural heritage by assisting States Parties with the nomination of marine properties and with the effective management of these sites. This will ensure that these precious marine areas will be maintained and thrive for generations to come.

All marine areas of "outstanding universal value" will be inscribed as World Heritage thus leading to a better protection of marine biodiversity. All marine World Heritage sites will be exemplary models of effective and results-based management benefiting coastal communities around the world. 

Background

The marine environment is under increasing threat from a variety of sources including over-fishing, inappropriate fishing practices, coastal development and pollution. Relatively intact marine ecosystems are becoming scarcer, and with less than 0.5% of marine areas worldwide under any form of protection, urgent actions are needed to establish a globally comprehensive network of representative and ecologically important marine protected areas.

The World Heritage Convention is uniquely positioned to make an important contribution for the protection of marine protected areas. Its international profile, legal status, site-based orientation and its comprehensive natural heritage criteria provide a practical approach to strategically enhance marine conservation worldwide.

Out of total of over 800 sites there are currently 31 World Heritage sites which include marine areas. In addition, there are 30 sites that limit to coastline. In order to advance the application of the World Heritage Convention for marine sites, the World Heritage Committee officially approved the World Heritage Marine Programme in July 2005.

Objective

  1. Use the World Heritage Convention innovatively to promote large-scale marine conservation, for example through encouraging transboundary and serial nominations. Networks of marine protected areas, national or regional, can be nominated as one World Heritage site. The Marine Programme aims to facilitate collaboration between governments and stakeholders for the conservation of networks of marine protected areas, using the prestige of the World Heritage Convention to leverage support.
  2. Develop strategic partnerships in support of marine World Heritage. Partnerships are critical in order to support nominations in areas with less political capacity or a smaller information base, as well as to manage sites effectively.
  3. Build a Marine World Heritage Managers Network to strengthen conservation capacity and effective management. Building a network of coastal-marine-island World Heritage site managers and managers preparing nominations will enhance marine conservation effectiveness. It will enable these sites to become models of best practices and to share experiences with sites preparing nominations as well as with sites already inscribed on the List.

Programme Features

  • On-going technical support to marine nomination preparation, including serial and transboundary nominations.
  • Training workshops about nomination, preparation and applying World Heritage Convention for the marine environment and about identification of potential marine sites (see the World Heritage Marine Biodiversity workshop, Hanoi, Vietnam, 2002).
  • Fund-raising, designing and implementing projects targeting existing and potential marine sites. Currently a portfolio of US$ 3.5 million.
  • Business Plan developed in 2005.
  • On-going collaboration and coordination with other UN organisations and NGOs dealing with marine protected areas.

  

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The World Heritage Marine Programme has received technical and/or financial support from the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas - Marine, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, the UN Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Governments of France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Finland.

For further information about the World Heritage Marine Programme, please refers to Annex 1 contained in WHC-05/29.COM/5.

Partners

Contacts

  • Carlos Garcia-saez (c.garciasaez@unesco.org)
  • Marjaana Kokkonen (m.kokkonen@unesco.org)

Documents

Events