Climate change is fast becoming one of the most significant risks for World Heritage sites, according to a report released by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), the United Nations Environment Programme and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
“Globally, we need to better understand, monitor and address climate change threats to World Heritage sites,” Unesco World Heritage Centre director Mechtild Rössler said on Thursday.
He added that the ‘World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate’ report’s findings highlighted the importance of achieving the goal of limiting global temperature increases to below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, as agreed during the twenty-first Conference of the Parties, held in Paris last year.
The report listed 31 natural and cultural World Heritage sites in 29 countries that were vulnerable to increasing temperatures, melting glaciers, rising seas, intensifying weather events, worsening droughts and longer wildfire seasons. It documented climate impacts at iconic tourism sites, including Venice, Stonehenge and the Galapagos Islands.
Further, World Heritage sites such as South Africa’s Cape Floral Kingdom, the port city of Cartagena, in Colombia, and the Shiretoko National Park, in Japan, were also vulnerable to climate change.
Lead author of the report and UCS Climate and Energy Programme deputy director Adam Markham noted that some of the statues on Easter Island were at risk of being lost to the sea owing to coastal erosion.
“Many of the world’s most important coral reefs, including in the islands of New Caledonia in the western Pacific, have suffered unprecedented coral bleaching linked to climate change this year. Climate change could, eventually, even cause some World Heritage sites to lose their status,” he lamented.
Because World Heritage sites must have ‘Outstanding Universal Value’ the report recommended that the World Heritage Committee consider the risk of prospective sites becoming degraded by climate change before adding them to the list.
As the effects of climate change unfold, the tourism industry and economies of some countries home to World Heritage sites may be particularly hard hit, according to the report.
Tourism, one of the world’s largest and fastest growing economic sectors, generates 9% of the world’s gross domestic product and provides one in every 11 jobs globally.
Developing countries such as Nepal, home to the Sagarmatha National Park and Mount Everest, and Uganda, where the mountain gorillas’ habitat in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park may be at risk, were especially reliant on tourism revenue.
The report pointed out that tourism itself posed a threat to many World Heritage sites, especially in fragile places like the Galapagos Islands, and climate change was becoming a threat multiplier.