UNESCO members to consider new endangered heritage listings

UNESCO member states are due to vote in Busan, South Korea, on new additions to the World Heritage list and the World Heritage in Danger list, with several sites facing threats linked to conflict, climate change, pollution or other pressures.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has 196 member states. Its World Heritage list includes about 1,200 sites worldwide. Listing can support tourism and may help unlock funding for preservation. Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of UNESCO's World Heritage Centre, said an endangered designation is not intended as a reprimand, but as a way to help states find funding, partners and attention to protect sites.

Three currently unlisted sites are expected to be considered for fast-track placement directly on the endangered list. They include the archaeological site of Sebastia, identified as Biblical Samaria, in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank. The site is in an area under Israeli control. Palestinians in a nearby village under dual Israeli-Palestinian control have long relied on visitors to the ruins for income and fear Israel could fully cut off access. Israel left UNESCO in 2017 but remains a member of the World Heritage Committee, which decides which sites are inscribed.

Five castles in south Lebanon are also being given priority. The area has been under fire from Israel, and one of the castles, the Crusader fortress of Qalaat al-Chakif, also known as Beaufort Castle, was captured by Israeli troops in May.

UNESCO members are also expected to vote on listing the Boma-Badingilo grassland and woodland savannahs in South Sudan as endangered because of threats from war and climate change. About one million animals, including antelopes and gazelles, migrate each year through the area between the White Nile and the Ethiopian border.

Some sites already on the World Heritage list may be newly labelled as in danger. They include heritage remains in Tyre, in southern Lebanon, including Roman baths, a second-century triumphal arch and a hippodrome. Tyre has come under heavy Israeli bombardment in recent months. Another possible candidate is the ancient Greek settlement of Tauric Chersonese in Crimea, which Russia unilaterally annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine says the site is threatened by unauthorised excavations, large construction projects and the relocation of artefacts following Russia's invasion of Crimea.

Lake Baikal in Russia could also be classified as in danger. The source report says authorities are dealing with damage from pollution, mass tourism, large-scale logging and lower water levels linked to a dam upstream in Mongolia. Russia says the Siberian lake holds 20 percent of the world's unfrozen freshwater reserve. A 2023 UNESCO report warned that Lake Baikal could be classified as endangered unless ecological degradation there was urgently stopped and reversed, and said measures then being taken were not sufficient.

Other places are seeking ordinary World Heritage listing, including the Normandy beaches in France where Allied forces landed on June 6, 1944, during World War II, two theatres built in Brazil's Amazon forest, and the Tunisian village of Sidi Bou Said.