Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Episode Date: November 19, 2020

I’m sure everyone has heard of such famous places as the Great Pyramids, the Colosseum, the Great Wall of China, and the Taj Mahal. Besides all being famous landmarks, they have something else in common. They are all UNESCO World Heritage Sites. What is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and how does a site become one? Learn more about the UNESCO World Heritage Site program on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm sure everyone has heard of such famous places as the Great Pyramids, the Coliseum, the Great Wall of China, and the Taj Mahal. Besides being famous landmarks, they all have something else in common. They are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. What is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and how does a site become one? Learn more about the UNESCO World Heritage Site program on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Fear is the virus is trending on TikTok. Vaccines are poison.

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They have shows on many world heritage sites, such as Rome, the Great Pyramids, Stonehenge, Versailles, Angor, the Great Barrier Reef, the Grand Canyon, and many others. Prices start as low as $2.99 per month or $1999 per year, one of the cheapest streaming services available. If you love to learn, then start your subscription by visiting Everything- Everywhere.com slash CuriosityStream, or by clicking on the link in the show notes. The story of the World Heritage Program begins back in the 1950s.

Gamal Abdel Nasser, then president of Egypt, announced plans for the Anshwan High Dam. The ambitious project would dam the Nile River, one of the world's largest, and provide over two gigawatts of power for the growing country of Egypt. It would also end the seasonal flooding of the Nile, which was the reason why Egypt was such a fertile region for agriculture. While the dam would provide a great many social improvements to Egypt, it did come in a great cost. The lake which would be created upriver from the dam, Lake Nasser, would submerge all of the archaeological treasures which were on the banks of the river. There was an urgent race which ensued amongst archaeologists to preserve and collect as much as possible before the area was inundated by the lake.

In particular, there were two well-preserved sites, Abusimbel, and the Filae Temple, which needed to be totally disassembled, moved, and reconstructed somewhere. above the new waterline. The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, spearheaded the international effort to save the Nubian monuments along the Nile. The project was completed in 1968, and it still considered one of the greatest international world heritage preservation efforts in history. Over 50 countries contributed over $40 million to the operation. The international cooperation behind saving Ebu Simbel led to further interest in creating a more general regime for the protection.

of the world's cultural and natural heritage. In 1965, the United States, under the Linden Johnson administration, held a conference proposing the idea of a World Heritage Trust, whose mission was to protect, quote, the world's superb, natural, and scenic areas and historic sites for the present and the future of the entire world's citizenry, unquote. Around the same time in 1968, the International Union for Conservation of Nature also had a similar conference, where they discussed the ideas of the protection of natural sites. At the 1970 UNESCO General Conference, a draft was proposed for a Convention of the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, a treaty that would provide protection for some of the most important cultural and natural

sites on Earth. In 1972, the text of the World Heritage Convention was approved, and on November 7, 1973, the United States became the first signatory of the treaty. Currently, there are 193 countries that are signatories to the convention, which coincidentally is the exact same as the number of countries in the United Nations, but the two lists are not the same. There are four UN member states which have not signed the convention, Liechtenstein, Nauru, Somalia, and Tuvalu. Three of the four are just too small to have any sites to protect. Somalia has a lot of other things going on. Likewise, there are four non-U.N. member states which have signed, the Cook Islands, Newy, the Holy See, and Palestine.

The Convention took effect in 1975. Once the Convention was in effect, there was a legal standing for the protection of a list of heritage sites deserving protection. What they didn't have was an actual list of sites. Creating such a list was the next order of business. In 1977, the first session of the World Heritage Committee was held in Paris. Here they set about the business of implementing the ratified convention and the first order of business was selecting the first World Heritage Committee. The World Heritage Committee is basically the working group which determines which sites get put onto the World Heritage list.

There are currently 21 countries that serve on the committee, with each country serving a four-year term. With the first World Heritage Committee said, the second session of the committee held in 1978 in Washington, D.C., was when the first World Heritage sites were selected and inscribed to the list. There were 12 sites in the first class of 1978. They are, the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador, the city of Quito in Ecuador, Simeon National Park of Ethiopia, the Rakhine Churches of Lolli Bella, Ethiopia, La Anksa Meadow National Historic Park of Canada, Nahani National Park of Canada, the Akken Cathedral in Germany, the Wieliska and Bochina salt mines in Poland,

the historic center of Krakow in Poland, the island of Gori in Senegal, Mesa Verity National Park in the United States, and Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Some of those places you've certainly heard of, and others you might not have. I've personally been to 11 of the 12 sites of that first class, and I can personally vouch that they're all well-deserving of World Heritage status. Since the inscription of the first 12 sites in 1978, the World Heritage Committee has met annually and has listed sites every year, except for 2020, which was canceled due to the pandemic.

As of the time of this recording, there are 1,121 sites inscribed on the World Heritage list. A site can either be listed as a cultural site, a natural site, or a mixed site. The current breakdown is 869 cultural sites, 213 natural sites, and 39 mixed sites. There are 10 criteria that the committee uses to determine if a site should be on the list. There are six cultural criteria and four natural criteria. To be listed, a site only has to meet one of the 10 criteria, although many sites will meet more than one. Becoming a World Heritage Site isn't as easy as you might think. The entire process can easily take over a decade, and it can cost the country which is proposing the site anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.

The first step is the creation of a tentative list for each member state. This is done by each country, and there's really no limit to what they can or can't put on the tentative list. Some countries only have a few sites, while others have a very long list. Once it's on the list, each country then has to prioritize their submissions. How the submissions are done will vary from country to country. Some countries do it centrally, and in others, each site or locality is responsible for doing most of the work. I've been able to personally meet with several people who've headed up the efforts at getting World Heritage sites listed, and it's a really lengthy process. They had to commission multiple studies, get land surveys done, and commission detailed histories of the site.

One of the people who headed up a site inscription showed me all of their work, and it was the equivalent of a set of encyclopedias. When sufficient work has been done, the nominating country will submit the site for debate and approval at a future session of the committee. There are several independent organizations that advise the committee on the inclusion of sites. They are the International Center for the Study and Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and the International Council on Monuments and Sites, or Icomos. One of the biggest criticisms of the World Heritage Committee as of late is that the process has become extremely politicized. The closest thing I can compare it to might be the process of an awarding an Olympics or a World Cup, except they give out over 20 of them every year.

The committee will often vote more based on political pressures and awarding country sites based on a tit-for-tat than on the merits of the site itself. In fact, in recent years, many sites that were not recommended for inscription by Icomost were voted in and inscribed anyhow. Most of the real obvious sites, which people are aware of, like the Great Pyramids or Petra, were inscribed decades ago. Most of the sites which are listed now tend to be very obscure ones that most people haven't heard of. There's enormous pressure to have sites listed.

Not only isn't an issue of national prestige, but it's also an issue of economics. Once a site can use the World Heritage name and logo, it can see a dramatic increase in tourism. There's starting to be some pushback against the politicization of the World Heritage Program. A new organization of professionals in heritage conservation was just launched called Our World Heritage, which is trying to hold UNESCO accountable. Their concern is that the desire to get more and more sites listed for reasons of prestige and money has taken over the original mission of the program, which was the preservation of cultural and natural assets.

From the standpoint of the World Heritage Convention, the protection which they can provide sites on the list is mostly persuasion and public pressure. Sites that are threatened by development or the lack of upkeep can be placed on a specialist of threatened sites. In extreme cases, a site can be delisted. However, this has only happened twice in the 42 years that the list has been in operation. The Dresden Elba Valley in Germany was removed, as was an Oric Sanctuary in Oman. To be fair, I've been to the Elba Valley outside of Dresden, and I found its removal to be absolutely ridiculous.

With over 1,100 sites currently listed, you're bound to find an enormous amount of variety. The largest world heritage site by area is the Phoenix Island protected area in Kiribas, which has an area of over 408,000 square kilometers, which is bigger than Paraguay. The smallest is the Holy Trinity column in Olamotch, Czech Republic. It literally took me less than one minute to walk around it, and I was not walking at a quick pace. The southernmost site is Macrary Island in Australia, off the coast of Antarctica at 54 degrees south, and the northernmost site is the natural system of Wrangel Island Reserve in Russia at 77 degrees north. There is also an enormous amount of variation between countries and how many sites they have listed.

China and Italy shared the lead for having the most sites with 55 each. Spain, Germany, and France also have over 40, with India, Mexico, and the UK, each having over 30. I have a personal interest in the UNESCO World Heritage Program. Since 2007, I have visited over 400 UNESCO World Heritage sites in over 100 countries. Some of my best travel experiences have been visiting lesser-known sites like East Rennel and the Solomon Islands, the Volkingen Ironworks in Germany, and Shark Bay in Western Australia. It has been an enjoyable part of my travels, and I'd say that nine times out of ten, visiting a site I didn't know much about, has been a positive experience.

So the next time you're on a trip, even if you're traveling close to home, you might want to check out the list of over 1,100 UNESCO World Heritage sites and see some of the best of what the world has to offer. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James Mackala. please remember to support the show over at patreon.com where you can get exclusive merchandise and to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Leave a five-star review to have your review read online.