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 The World Heritage Marine Programme
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The marine environment is under increasing threat from a variety of sources. Relatively intact marine ecosystems are becoming scarcer, and with less than 0.5% of our shores and marine areas worldwide under any form of protection, time is running out to establish a globally comprehensive network of representative and ecologically important marine protected areas. Efforts need to be directed towards the identification of exceptional marine sites, highlighting their global significance and to helping channel international support for their conservation. Considerable awareness raising, capacity building, creation of partnerships an establishment of linkages with pertinent international conventions and programmes is needed to attain these objectives. The UNESCO World Heritage (WH) Centre believes that the WH Convention with its international profile, legal status, site-based orientation and its comprehensive natural heritage criteria provides a practical approach to strategically enhance marine conservation worldwide. Currently, out of the over 754 sites inscribed on the WH List, only 9 have been nominated for their marine features. There is clearly room for greater representativity.
 The World Heritage Marine Programme |
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The World Heritage Tourism Programme
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Tourism is one of the largest industries on earth, and cultural and natural heritage tourism is the most rapidly growing international sector of the industry. World Heritage sites are prime attractors of tourists. The over-riding importance of tourism to World Heritage, both as an opportunity and, if poorly managed as a threat, was recognized by the World Heritage Committee when it authorized the World Heritage Centre, in 2001, t0 develop a World Heritage Tourism Programme. The tourism industry enables the people of the world to visit these places and appreciate their values and significance as common heritage of humankind, an important ally of heritage conservationists and managers. The 754 World Heritage sites, currently distributed across 128 countries provide ideal locations for mutually beneficial experiments in heritage conservation-tourism interactions.
The World Heritage Tourism Programme
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World Heritage Forest Network Implementation
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The World Heritage network of tropical forests provides managers with a vehicle to share experiences, information and lessons learned from numerous biodiversity conservation projects. The network is composed of 47 sites including 16 in Africa, 12 in Asia-Pacific/Oceania and 19 in Latin America. The total area of these sites represents almost 3% of the world's protected areas, making this group of sites a keystone for world nature and biodiversity conservation.
World Heritage Forest Network Implementation |
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