Protect world heritage sites to conserve biodiversity: UN

Subject: Environment

Section: Biodiversity

Context:

Protecting world heritage sites can help conserve biodiversity and meet the targets set by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), according to a joint assessment by UNESCO and IUCN.

Biodiversity in UNESCO WHS:

The total of 1157World Heritage sites take up only 1 per cent of the earth’s surface.
UNESCO World Heritage sites (WHS) are home to 75,000 species of plants, and over 30,000 species of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians — a fifth of all the species mapped globally.
Today, up to 1/3 of remaining elephants, tigers and pandas can be found in these sites, as well as at least one in 10 great apes, giraffes, lions and rhinos.
They are home to all remaining Javan rhinos, vaquitas (the world’s smallest cetacean) and pink iguanas, as well as more than half of all Sumatran rhinos, Sumatran orangutans and mountain gorillas.
Threats to these WHS:
- agricultural expansion,
- infrastructure development,
- Poaching,
- overexploitation of resources and
- proliferation of invasive species.
Every 1 degree Celsius rise in global temperature can double the number of species threatened by dangerous climate conditions.

These WHS are instrumental in:

World Heritage List:

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) seeks to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity. It has a World Heritage List for the same.
This is embodied in an international treaty called the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted by UNESCO in 1972.

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN):

IUCN is a membership Union uniquely composed of both government and civil society organizations.
Created in 1948, IUCN has evolved into the world’s largest and most diverse environmental network.
It is headquartered in Switzerland.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, is the world’s most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of plant and animal species.
The IUCN World Heritage Outlook provides conservation outlook assessments for all natural World Heritage sites.

About the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF):

Adopted in 15th COP of UN-CBD held in Montreal, Canada in 2022.
The framework has 4 long-term goals to be achieved by 2050 and 23 targets that the world needs to achieve by 2030.
In 2020, the world failed to meet the last set of targets, the Aichi Targets.
The countries will monitor and report every five years or less on a large set of indicators related to progress.
The CBD will combine national information submitted by late February 2026 and late June 2029 into global trends and progress reports.