The following is abridged from a statement issued on July 10 by Friends of the Earth International.
Friends of the Earth International, the Climate Justice Programme and Greenpeace have reacted angrily after the World Heritage Committee refused to take urgent action to protect some of the world's finest sites from climate change.
The failure is all the more remarkable as the World Heritage Centre has also published a survey showing the enormous threat that climate change poses to World Heritage sites across the world.
The committee, which is holding its annual meeting in Lithuania:
- rejected calls to try and prevent widely acknowledged risks from climate change to five World Heritage sites, including Everest;
- ignored the importance of countries significantly reducing their greenhouse gas emissions;
- agreed with US demands to delete reference to the Kyoto Protocol, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change science and a Peruvian proposal regarding emergency measures; and
- endorsed a weak "world heritage and climate change strategy" that focuses on the impacts but not the causes of the problem. The issue will be debated at the 2007 UNESCO General Assembly.
The five sites under severe threat from climate change were drawn to the committee's attention by petitions from 37 organisations and individuals, who asked that they be placed on the World Heritage "in danger" list. The sites are Mount Everest/Sagarmatha National Park (glaciers), the Peruvian Andes (glaciers), Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park in the US and Canada, and the Great Barrier and Belize Barrier (coral) Reefs.
But the need to act urgently to prevent glacial lakes bursting in the Himalayas and Peru, for example, was not taken up, despite suggestions from the Peruvian delegation of the possibility of emergency plans.
The failure comes despite increasing evidence of the major threat that global warming poses to World Heritage sites. A survey of 83 countries by the World Heritage Centre, just published, revealed that 125 World Heritage Sites are threatened by climate change, including 19 glacier sites and seven coral reefs. The World Heritage Convention legally requires all countries to pass sites listed under the convention intact to future generations. But campaigners argue that unless urgent action is taken on climate change, this will not happen.
They called on the committee to send a mission of qualified observers to visit five World Heritage sites to evaluate the nature and extent of the threat and to propose measures that could be taken to mitigate the threat. They also called for the committee to recognise that countries that have signed up to the World Heritage Convention must significantly cut their greenhouse gas emissions as part of their duty to protect and transmit World Heritage Sites to future generations.
Co-director of the Climate Justice Programme Peter Roderick said: "We are extremely angry that the World Heritage Committee has not taken any meaningful action to protect some of the most important sites on Earth from climate change. They are good at drawing up wonderfully drafted documents, but the idea of actually doing anything seems to pose a problem. Moreover, ducking the issue of why climate change is affecting these sites will make their efforts to adapt to the impacts largely futile. The world is entitled to expect better from the committee. Bending over backwards as a result of fear of the US and Canada will tarnish the committee's reputation."
According to Friends of the Earth International's climate campaigner Catherine Pearce, "The survey by the World Heritage Committee suggests that climate change is already impacting on scores of the world's most spectacular natural heritage sites. Unless the international community takes urgent action to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases the situation will get much worse."
Executive director of Pro Public (Friends of the Earth Nepal) Prakash Sharma, lead petitioner on the Sagarmatha/Everest petition, said: "The committee has failed in its duty. I feel sad that its members are not acting in accordance with the responsibility that has been given to them to protect the most significant parts of the world which future generations have every right to enjoy. It seems to me hypocritical. Committee members ought to be working seriously in the light of all the evidence of climate change and its impacts on World Heritage Sites. They have lost their moral right to be members of the World Heritage Committee. I hope the committee will re-think its decision, and take serious action urgently to fulfill its responsibilities."
Greenpeace climate campaigner Stephanie Tunmore said that "The committee could have sent a strong and influential signal about the need to address the causes of climate change and moved forward on protecting sites. But US and Canadian climate scepticism has prevailed once again. The result is a timid and inadequate response to an urgent problem requiring radical action."
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, July 19, 2006.
Visit the