News

World Heritage forests: Carbon sinks under pressure, a report by UNESCO, World Resources Institute (WRI) and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released today, provides the first global scientific assessment of greenhouse gas emissions and sequestration by forests in UNESCO World Heritage sites. It reveals that despite substantial carbon stored and absorbed by forests ...

From September to October 2021, five sub-regional meetings were organized with African site managers from Eastern, Central, Southern, Western and Northern Africa to elect the members of the Interim Committee of the African Site Managers Network. 15 members were elected (3 members per sub-region) to work as the Interim Committee to ensure the official establishment of the African Site Managers ...

On 15 October 2021, the UNESCO/China Youth Development Foundation Mercedes-Benz Star Fund “Conservation and Management of World Heritage Sites in China” meeting took place in Songtao Miao Autonomous County, Guizhou Province, China. It reviewed the achievements of Phase III of the project and launched a new Phase IV. Shahbaz Khan, Director of the UNESCO Office in Beijing, expressed his ...

UNESCO is launching a call for UNESCO designated sites including Biosphere Reserves, UNESCO Global Geoparks and World Heritage sites, as well as elements of the Intangible Cultural Heritage to benefit from the capacity building support of the UNESCO Earth Network. Earlier this month, a call for volunteer experts including young people was launched. The programme aims at matching volunteer ...

An ambitious project using cutting edge environmental DNA, known as eDNA, to understand the richness of biodiversity of UNESCO’s marine World Heritage sites launches today.  It will involve the collection by scientists and local residents of genetic material from waste, mucus or the cells of fish from across select marine World Heritage sites, with the aim of monitoring fish, including ...

Part 1 of the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP 15) gathered countries to negotiate towards the adoption of a new and transformative global deal to halt biodiversity loss by 2030 (post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework) due in 2022. The hybrid meeting held from 11 to 15 October 2021 was hosted by China from the city of ...

As part of the Sankofa Project, sponsored by the French Embassy in Kumasi, Ghana - the revision and 2021 edition of Asante Traditional Buildings has been published. The revised publication aims to regenerate interest in the traditional architecture found at the Asante Traditional Buildings (Ghana) UNESCO World Heritage site and motivate students and researchers towards sustainable ...

UNESCO World Heritage Centre met on Wednesday 6 October 2021 with His Excellency Mr Carlos-Edmilson Marques Vieira, following his nomination in July 2021 as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Guinea-Bissau to France, UNESCO and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF). This meeting provided an opportunity to update the Ambassador on current UNESCO’s initiatives ...

The Third Cycle of Periodic Reporting (2018 – 2024), a global World Heritage conservation monitoring exercise carried out in six-year cycles, carries on this September with reporting in the Latin America and the Caribbean region.  World Heritage site managers and national focal points of the 147 World Heritage properties (101 cultural, 38 natural and 8 mixed sites) in the Latin America and ...

UNESCO is launching launch a call to constitute a roster of volunteer experts, prioritizing local and regional experts in the field of biodiversity and land restoration, environmental management and environmental law, as well as knowledge holders. Volunteer experts will provide technical advice, generate data, build partnerships and provide training so that local actors, particularly ...

According to World Heritage in the face of COVID-19 (2021), World Heritage sites experienced a 66% drop in visitation and a 52% decline in ticket sales in 2020 as a result of COVID-19. In collaboration with the Advisory Bodies to the 1972 World Heritage Committee in the framework of the UNESCO Task Force on Culture, Tourism and COVID-19, UNESCO is now working on gathering more in-depth data ...

The International Advisory Committee (IAC) on World Heritage Sites in Uzbekistan was officially opened in Khiva and online on 15 September 2021, within the framework of the International Cultural Forum “Central Asia at the Crossroads of World Civilizations”. The initiative to establish this committee together with UNESCO was put forward by the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan H.E. Mr. ...

In the framework of the international assistance "Establishment of the Tentative List of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea", the World Heritage Centre, in collaboration with ICOMOS and IUCN, organized this Friday 10 September 2021 an online workshop for the elaboration of the Tentative List of Equatorial Guinea. This first session brought together a national team of cultural and natural ...

Recruitment of a Scientific Coordinator. The increasing impact of disasters in Africa and their growing complexity is a great concern for both heritage professionals and decision makers. It is expected that in the next decade, climate change will lead to more frequent extreme weather events, reaching to broader areas. Cultural heritage in all of its forms is also increasingly at risk due to ...

This year, July 8 marked not only the 13th anniversary of the inscription of France’s Lagoons of New Caledonia: Reef Diversity and Associated Ecosystems on the UNESCO World Heritage List, but also the Day of the Turtle in New Caledonia. In celebration, the local and traditional communities, government representatives, scientists and youth came together to agree on a sustainable path forward ...

Ms Darwina L Neal, left, with Dr Mechtild Rössler and others at Oakland Plantation during a US/ICOMOS symposium on landscapes held in Natchitoches, Louisiana, USA in March 2004 .© ICOMOS/IFLA Cultural Landscape Scientific Commiittee Landscape architect and conservationist Ms Darwina L. Neal, one of North America’s most renowned experts in cultural landscape conservation, passed away on 4 ...

The new commitment was announced by Eddie Rich, CEO of the International Hydropower Association (IHA) during a workshop on “No-Go in World Heritage and other protected areas: success stories in leveraging the private sector and remaining challenges” at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille, France. The commitment stipulates that no new hydropower projects should be developed in ...

TheIUCN World Conservation Congress, taking place in Marseille, France and online from 3 to 11 September 2021, will drive action on nature-based recovery, climate change and biodiversity through events, exhibits and forums.  The IUCN World Conservation Congress comes just months before CBD will be adopting the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, setting the international biodiversity ...

The new guidelines published by UNESCO and the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) put forward a standard methodology for evaluating the impact of protected areas on the local economy. The guidelines aim to help national stakeholders, protected area managers and researchers count visitation and measure economic impacts consistently through a standardized approach. Developed ...

Amid the rapidly unfolding events, and twenty years after the deliberate destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, a World Heritage site, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay “calls for the preservation of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage in its diversity, in full respect of international law, and for taking all necessary precautions to spare and protect cultural heritage from damage and ...