Six sites win prestigious world heritage status

SIX sites located in Brazil, China, Mexico, France’s Reunion Island and the South Pacific nation of Kiribati won World Heritage status from a UNESCO panel meeting in Brazil.

Four existing World Heritage sites were also expanded to include nearby natural or cultural treasures in Austria, Bulgaria, Romania and Spain, the UN cultural agency said in a statement.

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee, in a 10-day meeting in Brasilia that will wrap up today, has already added or extended 17 other sites to its list, bringing the total number of sites around the world with the prestigious stamp to 910.

The latest additions comprised three culturally important sites and three environmentally unique ones.

Sao Francisco Square in the north-eastern Brazilian town of Sao Cristovao was designated a World Heritage site because of a church and convent there, and a palace and associated houses, all from the 18th and 19th centuries that “creates an urban landscape which reflects the history of the town since its origin”.

China’s Danxia, or rugged red landscapes that emerged from river silt deposits in south-west China, were added because of their role in preserving subtropical forests and hosting flora and fauna, including 400 considered rare or threatened.

Mexico had two sites inscribed.

The first, the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, or the Royal Inland Road, which was a route that runs from north of Mexico City into the United States, was used to transport silver from mines for 300 years from the 16th century. UNESCO noted it “fostered the creation of social, cultural and religious links in particular between Spanish and Amerindian cultures”.

The second was a complex of prehistoric caves in the Central Valley of Oaxaca, some of which bear “archeological and rock-art evidence for the progress of nomadic hunter-gathers to incipient farmers”.

One of the caves contained seeds and corn cob fragments dating back thousands of years that are thought to be the earliest evidence of domesticated plants on the continent.

France’s Reunion Island, in the Indian Ocean, gained its first World Heritage site within its national park. The area, dominated by volcanic peaks and cliffs, comprises “subtropical rainforests, cloud forests and heaths creating a remarkable and visually appealing mosaic of ecosystems and landscape features,” UNESCO said in its statement.

Kiribati’s Phoenix Islands, a zone that is the largest marine protected area in the world, also won heritage endorsement. The island group “conserves one of the world’s largest intact oceanic coral archipelago ecosystems, together with 14 known underwater sea mounts” thought to be extinct volcanoes, complete with a staggering variety of marine species.

Existing sites expanded by the committee included ones that now take in an Austrian castle, a Bulgarian national park, a monastery in Romania and prehistoric rock art in Spain.

On Saturday, UNESCO announced heritage labels for an imperial palace in Vietnam, temples in China, an Australian penal colony, a historic bazaar in Iran, 14th-century villages in South Korea, an 18th-century astronomical observatory in India, Sri Lanka’s Central Highlands region, and the Papahanaumokuakea archipelago in the US.

The committee also added Florida’s Everglades and Madagascar’s tropical forest to a special list of 31 sites considered to be in danger.