Sacred ruins and Siberian waters: Unesco flags heritage at risk from war and global warming

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - A view of Lake Baikal from Olkhon Island, Russia. — Unsplash pic/Ekaterina Sazonova

PARIS, July 18 — The United Nations looks set to list a Biblical site, Lebanese castles, an antelope migration path and the world’s deepest lake as world treasures under threat, including from war or climate change.

The 196 members states of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) are to cast votes from Friday next week on new additions to its World Heritage and World Heritage in Danger lists when they meet in Busan, South Korea.

“We may not have the means to deploy peacekeepers... but we can send a message to the entire world,” the director of Unesco’s World Heritage Centre, Lazare Eloundou Assomo told AFP.

“These sites are important, and everything must be done to prevent their destruction.”

Safeguarding “heritage allows communities that have been traumatised, victims of conflicts, to begin to come back and rebuild,” he added.

Some 1,200 sites around the globe are listed as part of Unesco World Heritage.

Making the heritage list often sparks a lucrative tourism drive, and can unlock funding for the preservation of sites that can face threats including pollution, war and negligence.

A site being qualified as heritage in danger, Assomo said, was not a reprimand but a measure meant to help states “find funding, partners and attention” to better preserve it.

Fast-tracked to ‘in danger’

Three sites, so far unlisted, are expected to be fast-tracked and voted straight onto the list of endangered places.

These could include the archaeological site of Sebastia, identified as being Biblical Samaria, in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank.

The site itself is in an area of the West Bank under Israeli control.

But Palestinians in the adjacent village, which is under dual Israeli-Palestinian control, have long depended on tourist visits to the ruins for their income and fear Israel could completely cut off access.

Israel left Unesco in 2017, but remains a member of the World Heritage Committee, which has the final say on which sites are inscribed on each list.

Also to be given priority are five castles in south Lebanon, an area under fire from Israel, one of which — the Crusader fortress of Qalaat al-Chakif or Beaufort Castle — Israeli troops captured in May.

Unesco members are also to vote on directly listing the Boma-Badingilo grassland and woodland savannahs in South Sudan the as under threat from both war and climate change.

One million animals — including antelopes and gazelles — migrate through the vast wilderness located between the White Nile and the Ethiopian border every year, leaving scars on the grasslands that are visible from the sky.

Beyond these priority cases, some sites already listed as heritage spots could now further be labelled as endangered.

These include the remains of Roman baths and a second-century triumphal arch and hippodrome in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, which has come under heavy Israeli bombardment in recent months.

Also a potential candidate is the ancient Greek settlement of Tauric Chersonese in the Crimea peninsula that Russia unilaterally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Ukraine argues it is under threat from unauthorised excavations, large-scale construction projects, and the relocation of artifacts after Russia’s invasion of Crimea.

‘Ecological degradation’

In Russia, the world’s deepest lake — Lake Baikal — could also be labelled in danger as authorities struggle to contain damage from pollution, mass tourism, large-scale logging and lower water levels due to a dam upstream in Mongolia.

The vast Siberian lake contains 20 percent of the world’s total unfrozen freshwater reserve, according to Russia. Known as the “Galapagos of Russia”, it is home to a huge variety of flora and fauna.

But in a 2023 report, the UN agency warned that if the “unfolding ecological degradation of Lake Baikal” was not urgently stopped and reversed, it would be classified as in danger.

“Some actions are being implemented to address this,” it added, but “the mission considers that they are not sufficient”.

Other sites are also vying for a simple listing.

In France, the Normandy beaches on which the Allies landed on June 6, 1944 during World War II could finally receive Unesco recognition.

Two theatres built in the Amazon forest in Brazil and the Tunisian village of Sidi Bou Said might also be listed. — AFP