Climate crisis, tourism may place Venice on UNESCO heritage danger list

Subject: International Relations

Section: Places in news

Context:

The Italian city of Venice should be added to a list of world heritage sites in danger, experts from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have stated in a new report.

Details:

The recommendation to put the city on the World Heritage in Danger list was made by UNESCO and advisory body experts in its provisional agenda ahead of the 45th session of the agency’s World Heritage Committee.
Other sites include:Kyiv, Lviv and the historic centre of Odessa, Ukraine, the town of Timbuktu in Mali and several sites in Syria, Iraq and Libya.
The UNESCO World Heritage property comprises the city of Venice and its lagoon situated in the Veneto region of northeast Italy.
Causes of danger include:
- Too much tourist inflection
- Effects of climate change
- In November 2019, historical treasures and buildings were endangered due to flooding.
- In February 2023, the lakes dried up due to severe drought.
These issues are causing deterioration and damage to building structures and urban areas, degrading the cultural and social identity of the property and threatening the integrity of its cultural, environmental and landscape attributes and values.
Measures taken:
- Ban large ships like cruise ships from the San Marco Basin-Giudecca Canal.

UNESCO World Heritage Committee (WHC):

The World Heritage Committee is composed of representatives of 21 States Parties to the World Heritage Convention who meet annually.
- This year, the session is scheduled to be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on September 10-25, 2023.
- The Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage is an international agreement that was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO in 1972.
- It is based on the premise that certain places on Earth are of outstanding universal value and should therefore form part of the common heritage of humankind.
- It basically defines the kind of natural or cultural sites which can be considered for inscription on the World Heritage List.
The Committee is in charge of implementing the Convention.

What is the List of World Heritage in Danger?

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) compiles the list of World Heritage in Danger.
The List contains world heritage sites that are threatened by various conditions such as natural disasters, armed conflicts, wars, pollution, unchecked urbanization, poaching, and uninhibited tourist development.
At present there are 55 properties under the list. None of them is from India.

The following sites from India have been delisted from the List:

Group of Monuments at Hampi: Listed from 1999 to 2006. The site was listed because of the partial construction of two cable-suspended bridges within the protected archaeological areas.
Manas Wildlife Sanctuary: Listed from 1992 to 2011. The reason was poaching and damage to the park’s infrastructure and a reduction in the population of some species particularly the Greater One Horned Rhino following an invasion by militants of the Bodo tribe in 1992.