Wildlife and humans have faced survival problems before, but now after a long time they started to thrive in some designated locations as a safe living environment.
Many sites recognized by UNESCO after long periods of research have enabled the recovery of endangered species and habitats around the world.
Of the three forms of UNESCO designation, the highest are World Heritage sites: cultural monuments, achievements or natural areas that are considered of global importance and governments are obliged to protect them under the United Nations’ founding treaty, the 1972 World Heritage Convention.
More recently, UNESCO has introduced biosphere reserves, which are examples of sustainable development in action, and global geoparks, which have particularly important geology. Governments are expected to manage these areas as well, but they lack the full legal force of the original.
Although wildlife populations worldwide have collapsed by almost three-quarters since 1970, populations in UNESCO-protected areas have remained largely stable, reports Guardian.
“It’s good news, it shows that these sites are extraordinarily resilient in the face of a changing world,” said Tales Carvalho Resende, one of the co-authors of the People and Nature in UNESCO Sites report published on Tuesday.
But the areas are also under serious threat: Since 2000, more than 300,000 square kilometers of forest cover, an area larger than the Republic of Congo, has been lost within the UNESCO-designated areas, mainly due to agricultural expansion and logging.
About 90% of UNESCO sites worldwide are also considered to suffer “high levels” of environmental stress, mainly extreme heat.
According to UNESCO, one in four designated sites could reach critical climate tipping points by 2050.
These include the disappearance of glaciers, the collapse of coral reefs and the drying out of forests, turning carbon sinks into carbon sources.
Many of the world’s “charismatic megafauna,” whose populations have plummeted in recent decades under an onslaught of poaching, agricultural encroachment and other stresses, have found refuge in UNESCO-designated areas, where they often enjoy far greater protection than in non-designated areas.
About a third of the world’s remaining elephants, tigers and pandas are in UNESCO sites, as are about one in ten of the remaining great apes, giraffes, lions, rhinos and dugongs.
Some of the most endangered species are also found only in UNESCO reserves.
All 10 vaquita, a species of porpoise, believed to be the last of their kind, the approximately 60 remaining Javan rhinos, and approximately 85% of the remaining population of Sumatran orangutans, believed to number approximately 15,000 individuals, can be found in designated locations.
Furthermore, UNESCO sites are also home to around a tenth of the world’s population, which benefits from biodiversity and generates around a tenth of global GDP, according to the report. This is the first global assessment to examine all 2,260 protected areas.
