UNESCO designates cultural or natural sites as World Heritage Sites, which are deemed irreplaceable and threatened. These sites face threats from modernization, globalization, and warfare. UNESCO provides funding and expertise to help countries protect and maintain these sites. World Heritage Sites are divided into cultural and natural heritage categories, and funding for UNESCO programs comes from member countries, publications, and donations. The organization maintains a list of World Heritage Sites in Danger, which includes hundreds of sites.
A World Heritage Site is a cultural or natural site, monument, city or geographical habitat deemed irreplaceable and threatened, and therefore worthy of protection and conservation by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and culture (UNESCO). UNESCO believes that many cultural and natural sites offer immeasurable benefits to humanity and should be protected and maintained at all costs. These precious features, man-made or natural, face the threats of aging, modernization, globalization or the ravages of man, through industrialization or warfare.
Many countries are unable to protect or maintain a World Heritage Site for many reasons. Either there is no public or governmental impetus to make conservation a priority, or adequate financial resources may not be available. Wars can irreparably damage these areas, as can expansion or cultural change.
World heritage sites may be in danger because a country lacks the technical or scientific expertise to save a historic building or protect a particular habitat that is home to endangered species. UNESCO will classify a place this way to help provide funding, increase public awareness worldwide, and the expertise needed to preserve the site. In 1972, UNESCO held the Convention for the Protection of the World’s Cultural and Natural Heritage, which established the criteria related to the naming of the World Heritage site, as well as its objectives to help countries maintain these places.
UNESCO divides what it considers a World Heritage Site into two categories: cultural heritage and natural heritage. The cultural heritage includes monuments, which includes architectural sites, cave dwellings and other archaeological structures. In addition to monuments, cultural heritage includes groups of buildings or entire cities. They must have historical value, and be aesthetically unique and/or beautiful. Natural heritage includes unique and/or scientifically important natural features as well as geographical features that are either habitats hosting species that may be threatened or natural sites not found elsewhere.
Funding for UNESCO programs comes mainly from dues requested by member countries as well as the sale of publications and donations. Their programs teach nations how to identify, appreciate and set up programs to foster conservation and conservation. It also maintains a list of World Heritage Sites in Danger which includes all sites by country.
The list includes Australia’s Great Barrier Reef; the Historic Center of Salzburg, Angkor, Cambodia; Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada; The Great Wall of China; the Old City of Dubrovnik, Croatia and the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador. There are hundreds of other sites that have been named World Heritage Sites on the list, and additions continue to be made each year.
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