The files are numerous this year for the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, cumulating because of the Covid, those of 2020 and 2021, and some are delicate, such as the possible removal from the List of two sites: Liverpool, in the Kingdom United, and the Selous reserve in Tanzania.
Only two sites have already been the subject of such a withdrawal.
Liverpool and its emblematic character of the industrial era has already been on the list of endangered heritage since 2012, but development and town planning projects have continued, to the point of making it lose its authenticity, experts say.
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No less sensitive: the placement on the list of endangered sites, among others, of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia which has aroused strong reactions in this country.
In total, from July 18 according to a provisional program, the Committee meeting online under the chairmanship, from Fuzhou, of Tian Xuejun, Chinese vice-minister of education and chairman of the Chinese National Commission for Unesco, will examine the state of conservation of 255 sites already inscribed on the World Heritage List.
53 of them are already on the List of World Heritage in Danger.
Could join them there, besides the Great Barrier, Venice, affected, among other factors, by mass tourism, and Budapest, in particular the banks of the Danube and the district of the castle of Buda, for "untimely" demolitions and reconstructions. on a large scale in particular.
For its part, highlighting its achievements for
"the world's best managed reef"
, Australia has fought hard against its possible endangerment advocated by the advisory bodies.
The latter consider it affected by climate change -
"its most serious threat"
- water pollution, human activities.
The Great Barrier, inscribed on the World Heritage list for thirty years, has deteriorated considerably, the victim in particular of several episodes of massive bleaching of its corals.
"Strictly followed" procedures
Scientists and environmental NGOs welcomed this recommendation, but Canberra for its part received the support of a dozen ambassadors to Unesco, including that of Australia but also of France.
Among the criticisms made against Unesco in Australia, there is the lack of a recent mission to the site.
However, Unesco argues that the procedures were
"strictly followed"
.
The advisory bodies base their conclusions on scientific and technical studies, including expertise provided by the States themselves.
A process that Canberra knows well: while Australia was a member of the Heritage Committee, two sites had been placed on the endangered list without having hosted a mission for, respectively, eight and three years: the humid forests of the Atsinanana (Madagascar) in 2010 and the National Parks of Lake Turkana (Kenya) in 2018.
Moreover, endangerment does not mean sanction.
On the contrary, it can help in the mobilization of resources for the safeguard of the site, it is stressed at Unesco.
This also implies reinforced monitoring by Unesco, with annual reports on the evolution of the situation.
In addition, the measure is reversible as can be seen by Belize its coral reef, the second largest in the world after that of Australia, was removed in 2018 from the list of endangered heritage where it had appeared since 2009.
Read also: Nice, candidate for UNESCO World Heritage
Around July 24, the Heritage Committee (meeting until July 31) will begin to study new sites that could be included in the World Heritage List.
Some of these nominations (nearly 50) may not be successful if the Committee, made up of representatives of 21 States Parties, follows the recommendations of the advisory bodies.
This would be the case with
“Nice capital of riviera tourism”
proposed by France, for which the experts recommended a postponement.
However, if the recommendations were massively followed, discussions became more intense as the list grew - reaching 1,121 sites from 167 countries registered today - and the follow-up of recommendations less automatic.
