Ahead of the meeting of the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO in Fuzhou, China, from July 16-31, several heritage sites have been listed as “World Heritage in Danger,” meaning they risk being removed entirely.
The UN’s cultural agency recommended removing Liverpool’s waterfront from its list of world heritage sites over concerns about overdevelopment.
It also proposed that sites including Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Venice and Budapest be put on the list as well as the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania.
In Europe, the sites being added to the World Heritage in Danger list are Budapest and Venice, which have both been the subject of concerns on development and cruise ship tourism.
The valley of Kathmandu in Nepal is proposed for inscription on the List of World Heritage in Danger, as is the region around Lake Ohrid in Albania and Macedonia.
The guidance was published by UNESCO ahead of a meeting of its World Heritage Committee, which oversees the coveted accolade, in Fuzhou, China, from July 16-31.
UNESCO said in a statement recently that the Maritime Mercantile City in central Liverpool is a “property proposed for deletion from the World Heritage List” at the meeting in China.
This series of buildings, warehouses and docks along the waterfront were given World Heritage status in 2004 for what UNESCO said bears “witness to the development of one of the world’s major trading centres in the 18th and 19th centuries.”