A Global Crisis
Looting at Zabalam, Iraq. © Carabinieri T.P.C. Italia
The archaeological record of human civilization - our global heritage - is vanishing, and we hardly realize it. If this trend continues, though, the world will soon have lost many of the remaining foundations of humankind’s history. The losses in the past decade include ancient monuments, buildings, archeological sites, and even entire historic cities and townscapes, all of which have survived for hundreds or even thousands of years. The damage to cultural sites appears widespread and accelerating and represents a permanent loss to the planet, akin to endangered species loss. Awareness of the crisis, however, both internationally and locally, remains low.
This report, Saving Our Vanishing Heritage: Challenges to and Solutions for Preserving Endangered Cultural Heritage Sites in the Developing World, has compiled published reports on over 400 major archaeological and heritage sites and found that 142 had been damaged or experienced loss between 2000 and 2009. Sites covered in the study include UNESCO Inscribed and Tentative List Word Heritage sites, as well as nationally recognized heritage sites in developing countries. GHF reviewed public records, international press reports and other verifiable accounts of destruction, including gut-wrenching photos and vivid video of the desperate state of endangered sites around the world. GHF’s resulting report brings together - for the first time - this once fragmentary anecdotal evidence into a unified picture documenting the perilous state of our global heritage in the world’s developing countries.
