Sudanese authorities have declared a three-month state of emergency after record flooding left over a hundred people dead and tens of thousands homeless.
A UNESCO committee omitted Australia's Great Barrier Reef from its list of world heritage sites it considers to be in danger, a move the government welcomed but conservationists questioned.
After months of occupation by Daesh terrorists, historians worried that Palmyra’s ancient wonders had been completely destroyed, but the havoc is not as bad as was originally feared, according to Syria’s antiquities chief.
The World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF), the leading global conservation organization, on Monday appealed to the government of Tanzania and international community to take urgent measures to protect the remaining elephants in Tanzania's Selous Game Reserve from poaching.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced on Wednesday that the ancient city of Palmyra preserves had suffered significant damage at the hands of ISIS terrorist, but that the archaeological sites retain much of their authenticity.
Ancient artefacts in the city of Palmyra are in much better shape than expected, Syria's antiquities chief said Sunday after regime forces recaptured the desert oasis from the Islamic State group.
The archaeological Palmyra Castle was found to have sustained massive damage deliberately inflicted by ISIS terrorists before they have fled deep into Tadmur (Palmyra) city.
Bushfires engulfing Australian Tasmania could have detrimental long-term effects on the state's unique world heritage forests, according to conservationists.
Water level in the Lake Baikal declined to the extreme low limit of 456 meters [under the Pacific Elevation System] and dropped 0.01 m below it last weekend, Russian water resources authority said on Monday on its website.
The water level at Lake Baikal, the world’s largest freshwater source, having dropped to critical marks in April, may fall by another 28 centimetres next spring, the head of the Baikal Institute told TASS on Tuesday.
Following the massive destruction to world heritage monuments in Nepal after Saturdays devastating earthquake, UNESCO on Monday said they would field an international expert mission to undertake an in-depth damage assessment of the damage to heritage and path to recovery.
UN, 7 March 2015 – Official sources in Iraq reported today the
destruction by Islamic State forces of the United Nations World Heritage
property of Hatra, the capital of the first Arab kingdom, and a city
that bears the roots of Islamic Arab cities, according to a statement
released by the UN body charged with protecting cultural sites.
China
has set out to make a new law to regulate the traditional Tibetan
practice of sky burial, which involves feeding bodies of the dead to
birds. Official sources in Tibet have indicated that the use of sky
burial sites as tourist attraction may be banned.
LHASA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese government's efforts to preserve intangible heritage in Tibet and other ethnic regions have proven effective, said sources at the first Tibet development forum Wednesday. "Of the 386 million yuan (62.7 million U.S. dollars) for cultural heritage preservation allocated by the central treasury between 2002 and 2009, about a quarter was spent in ethnic regions including Tibet," said Li Jianhui, a culture promotion official with the State Ethnic Affairs Commission.
Australia's Great Barrier Reef remains under threat despite efforts to
rein in major sources of damage to the World Heritage-listed icon, the
government said on Tuesday.
Canberra released a five-yearly
review of the reef and moves to protect it, to address concerns raised
by UNESCO and persuade the world body not to put the key tourist
attraction on its "in danger" list next year. "Even with the recent
management initiatives to reduce threats and improve resilience, the
overall outlook for the Great Barrier Reef is poor, has worsened since
2009 and is expected to further deteriorate," the government said in its
outlook report.
Concerns have been raised over the protection of historic towns as
persistent downpours in Central and Southwest China have flooded
Fenghuang, a renowned tourism destination in Hunan Province.
More than 120,000 people were relocated amid power cuts in Fenghuang on Wednesday.
China gained two more UNESCO World Heritage sites Sunday, bringing the nation's total to 47.
The decision was announced by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in Qatar.
The Silk Road,
which served as a corridor for trade and cultural exchanges between
Asia and Europe dating back 2,000 years ago, was inscribed on the World
Heritage List along with the Grand Canal, which runs 1,794 kilometers
from Beijing to Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province.
Australia Thursday called a decision by UNESCO to defer listing the
Great Barrier Reef as in danger "a win for logic," but environmentalists
said it was a final warning.
The UN cultural agency on Wednesday
said the reef could be put on a list of endangered World Heritage Sites
if more was not done to protect it.
It voiced alarm at a
"serious decline in the condition" of the reef, and said "a business as
usual approach to managing the property is not an option."
Australia
was given until February 1 next year to submit a report on what it was
doing to protect the natural wonder. The Queensland state government saw
the deferral as "a tick of approval."