Keep World Heritage standards high

Keep World Heritage standards high

Paris, France, 17 July 2011 (IUCN) – The UNESCO World Heritage Committee will open its annual meeting in Paris this Sunday. The Committee will announce the new remarkable natural and cultural areas that have made it to the list of World Heritage Sites. A total of 42 sites are considered for inscription this year.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the advisory body on natural sites, will present its expert recommendations to the Committee for the new iconic natural areas to be added to the prestigious list. 13 sites have been nominated for inscription for their natural values.

“The World Heritage Convention will be turning 40 next year,” says IUCN’s Director General Julia Marton-Lefèvre. “We see this as an opportunity to celebrate its success but also carry out some much needed reforms to strengthen its unique role in securing the conservation of these exceptional places and their contribution to sustainable development.”
“There have been concerns about growing politicization within the Convention,” says Tim Badman, Director of IUCN’s World Heritage Programme. “This meeting is important to both reinforce the Convention’s reputation for the highest technical standards, and to take decisions that will maximize conservations results on the ground.”

At the Committee meeting IUCN will also be reporting back on monitoring missions it conducted to 16 World Heritage Sites in 2010 and 2011 and will recommend those under the most severe threat to be inscribed on the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger. At the meeting IUCN will also issue its position on mining within World Heritage Sites.

“Natural World Heritage Sites represent a commitment to future generations that the international community needs to uphold,” says Mariam Kenza Ali, World Heritage Monitoring Officer at IUCN “In order to do this, mineral and oil and gas exploration should not be permitted within World Heritage Sites because of the serious and irreversible damage that could be caused to the Outstanding Universal Value of the world’s most important natural areas.”



Notes to Editors:
The proposed natural sites are: Ningaloo Coast (Australia); Pendjari National Park (Benin, an extension of W National Park of Niger); Wudalianchi National Park (China); Ancient Beech Forests of Germany (Germany, an extension of the Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians, Slovakia and Ukraine); Western Ghats (India); Harra Protected Area (Iran); Ogasawara Islands (Japan); Kenya Lake System in the Great Rift Valley; (Kenya); Trinational Sangha (Congo, Cameroon, Central African Republic) and the nomination under new criteria of the World Heritage property of Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park (Viet Nam).
Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park (Jamaica); Wadi Rum (Jordan); and Saloum Delta (Senegal) are proposed for both natural and cultural criteria as “mixed natural and cultural” sites.

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