| BY TOM PASSAVANT
Pick up just about any tour brochure these days and you're likely to come across the statement that one of the destinations is a "UNESCO World Heritage site." The same thing happens when you open a newspaper or magazine to the travel articles.
Which led me to wonder, just what the heck is a World Heritage site? How did it get to be one? And what does that mean for the average traveler?
The answers, it turns out, were right in front of me during some of my recent travels. Last fall my wife and I were in Luang Prabang, Laos, one of the best-preserved cities in Southeast Asia. Walking down the main street, we noticed the abundance of well-maintained two-story buildings from the French colonial era. On every side street, workers were restoring traditional village neighborhoods of wood and bamboo homes. The allure of Luang Prabang, I learned, was the result of ongoing efforts by a team of UNESCO-funded architects and conservationists.
A few months before that, we had visited Colorado's Mesa Verde, home to the astonishing cliff dwellings inhabited by the Ancestral Puebloan tribes. Another World Heritage site. We had recently been to the temple complex at Cambodia's Angkor Wat and the central zone of the Mexican city of Oaxaca as well. Both were World Heritage sites. All of these places had benefited to some degree from the attention and resulting preservation efforts that the designation had brought with it.
There are now 812 UNESCO World Heritage sites in 137 countries around the world, with 69 in North America. In the U.S. alone there are 18 sites, including such familiar destinations as Yellowstone National Park, Independence Hall and Monticello. Of the total, 628 are designated as cultural, meaning man-made (such as the Acropolis in Athens); 160 are natural (Australia's Great Barrier Reef); and another 24 are mixed (Machu Picchu in Peru). In recent years, the program has grown to the point of being downright unwieldy. "The challenge is to manage the list as it gets bigger," says Christian Manhart, head of Communication, Education, and Partnerships for the World Heritage Centre in Paris. These challenges, you won't be entirely surprised to hear, derive mainly from a lack of funds.
The international agreement that led to the formation of the World Heritage program had its genesis in the 1950s, when the construction of Egypt's Aswan High Dam on the Nile River threatened to flood a valley containing the Abu Simbel and Philae temples. In 1959, UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, launched a campaign, aided by 50 countries, that resulted in the temples being moved to higher ground. Campaigns to save Venice from flooding and to preserve the great Buddhist monument at Borobudur, Indonesia, followed in the 1960s and '70s. In 1965, a White House conference called for the creation of a "World Heritage Trust," and in 1972, the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage was adopted by UNESCO.
The idea was to "encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity." Any country that signed on could nominate sites in its homeland, and that's exactly what they've proceeded to do—in increasing numbers. A 21-nation World Heritage Committee actually decides which sites to approve, though nominees are rarely rejected. After all, tourism is an enormous factor in today's global economy, and anything that shines a spotlight on a local attraction can mean both dollars and jobs flowing in.
Which would not be a problem except for the fact that the World Heritage program is supported by annual dues from member nations that amount to only about $4 million a year—a drop in the bucket compared with what's needed. That means moneys for restoration and upkeep must come primarily from voluntary contributions by member nations, cities and private parties, not from UNESCO. Sometimes there's adequate funding (Mexico is said to maintain its sites well), while other times not (China seems to have a spottier record). But if a country is very poor, like Cambodia, it must depend on the kindness of strangers. Work at Angkor Wat, for example, is supported by various governments and organizations like the World Monuments Fund, The Rockefeller Foundation and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The work we saw in Laos is underwritten by the French government and the French city of Chinon, whose mayor is committed to the cause.
The upshot is that being listed is not some sort of Good Heritagekeeping Seal of Approval. Travelers need to be aware that the exposure a listing brings may mean a site will be overrun by tourist buses. And once those crowds descend, locals can be all too eager to cash in through unchecked development, thereby killing the goose that laid their golden egg.
Or not. The World Heritage Centre does do its best to keep an eye on sites. The Centre monitors each one in Europe, and its List of World Heritage in Danger pinpoints places that are in need of immediate attention. The Centre also trains local personnel in tourism-related activities. Things are looking up on the funding side, too. "Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation has provided $40 million in the last few years," says Christian Manhart, "and we also partner with the travel industry, so Expedia now sells World Heritage tours, to cite just one example."
There is one other valuable thing the World Heritage program does, and that is to launch a thousand travel fantasies. Take a look at the World Heritage 2006 map, which identifies all 812 sites. Just what is the Ancient City of Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka? Why did the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, in Illinois, make the list? The answers, and the map, can be found at whc.unesco.org. Or better yet, get out and see these sites for yourself.
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