Climate change ‘primary threat’ to World Heritage properties



One of the world’s first cities came close to being razed to the ground during this summer’s tragic floods in Pakistan. Although Mohenjo-Daro survived, it has become a symbol of the threat that global warming poses to the cultural heritage of mankind.

Built around 3000 BC Indus civilization on the territory of modern South Asia, Mohenjo-Daro was not washed away by floods, most likely due to the genius of its creators.

Situated high above the Indus River, the city was equipped with a primitive drainage and sewerage system that allowed most of the flood waters to be diverted.

About 1,600 Pakistanis have died in the floods and another 33 million have been affected by the natural disaster “probably” exacerbated by global warming, according to World Weather Attribution. network of researchers.

The ancient metropolis “could have disappeared with all the archaeological traces” it contains, said Lazar Eloundu Assamo, director of the world heritage program at the UN agency UNESCO.

The Pakistani site has been a “victim” of climate change and is “very lucky” to still be in existence, exactly 100 years since it was first discovered in 1922, Assamo said.

Fortunately, “the situation at Mohenjo-Daro is not catastrophic,” said Thierry Geoffroy, a brick architect who visited the site on behalf of UNESCO.

Despite subsidence in some areas and water damage to some buildings, the site “can be repaired,” Geoffroy said.

– “A huge impact” –

For 50 years, the Paris-based UNESCO has been compiling a list of World Heritage Sites, important sites deemed worthy of protection, and is marking a milestone in Greece this week.

“To protect this heritage ourselves… is to counter the effects of climate change and biodiversity loss. This is the main threat … which we tangibly assess,” UNESCO Director Audrey Azoulay said at a conference in Delphi on Thursday.

Of the 1,154 World Heritage Sites, she said, “one in five sites and more than a third of natural sites already see this threat as a reality.”

“We are facing many more floods, hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons,” said Rohit Jigyasu of the International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM).

“We have these climate-related natural disasters that are having a huge impact on places like Mohenjo-Daro,” he said.

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Huge wildfires have scorched Canada’s World Heritage Rocky Mountains, and the flames have swept 15 kilometers (nine miles) from Delphi this year as heatwaves amplify the intensity of wildfires in the Mediterranean Basin.

Meanwhile, in Peru, landslides hit the foothills of Machu Picchu in the Andes this year.

Other less visible changes can also have major consequences.

In Australia, the protected Great Barrier Reef is experiencing episodes of bleaching due to rising water temperatures.

In Ghana, erosion washed away part of Fort Princestein, which survives as a famous slave trading post.

– Termites and drought –

“Slow factors” that do not have an immediate impact are creating “new types of risks at many of these sites,” Jigyasu said.

These include invasions by wood-eating termites into areas that were previously either too dry or too cold for the insects to breed.

In other countries, drying up of the soil due to reduced rainfall could have a “destabilizing” effect on some heritage sites, said Aline Magnin, director of the French State Historical Monuments Research Laboratory.

In drought conditions, she says, “soils shrink and … force the foundation to move” and then “suddenly swell when it rains,” leading to cracking.

When they are dry and hard, they absorb less water, which contributes to flooding.

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“We may have certain heritage sites that we cannot save, that we cannot transfer, that may be doomed to extinction,” said Anne Bourges, a researcher at the French Ministry of Culture.

“When you lose a piece of it, not only the heritage suffers, but the entire social system around it,” added Bourges, who is also general secretary of the International Council of Monuments and Landmarks (Icomos), a non-governmental organization.

In Mongolia, archaeological sites were abandoned and then looted because “the population no longer had access to water,” Jigyasu added.

Expected water shortages in the future could also lead to increased conflicts that could result in the loss of important heritage sites.