From Yellowstone to the Garden of Eden, climate change puts the majority of World Heritage Sites at risk Blogging Sole

Paris – Almost three -quarters of the cultural and natural heritage sites of the globe are threatened too little or too much water, the United Nations cultural agency announced on Tuesday. Due to the rise in temperatures, extreme weather events, including hurricanes, droughts, floods and heat waves, have become more frequent and more intense, warn scientists.

Sixty -three percent of the 1,172 non -marine sites on the UNESCO heritage list are exposed to at least a risk of serious water – including water stress, drought, river floods or coastal floods, UNESCO said.

“Water stress should intensify, especially in regions such as the Middle East and North Africa, some parts of South and North Asia China-posing long-term risks for ecosystems, cultural heritage and communities and the tourist economies that depend on it,” he added.

Cultural sites were most often threatened by the water shortage, while more than half of the natural sites were faced with the risk of flooding a neighboring river, the UNESCO study showed.

In India, the Taj Mahal monument in Agra, for example, “faces the water shortage which increases pollution and exhausts groundwater, which damage the mausoleum,” said the study.

In the United States, “in 2022, a huge The floods have closed the entire Yellowstone National Park And cost more than $ 20 million in infrastructure repairs to reopen. »»

The report gave four other examples.

The marshes of southern Iraq – the renowned house of the Eden biblical garden – “face extremely high water stress, where more than 80% of the renewable offer is removed to meet human demand,” he added.

And competition for water should increase in the marshes, where migratory birds and residents live from buffaloes, while the region warms up in the years to come.

At the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, Victoria’s falls – originally called Mosi -Oa -Tunya (“The smoke that Thunders”) before being renowned by the Scottish explorer David Livingstone – faced a recurrent drought and are sometimes reduced to a net.

In Peru, Chan Chan’s pre -Columbian city and its delicate 1000 -year -old love walls faced an extremely high risk of river flooding, Unesco said.

In China, the increase in sea level driven largely by climate change leads to coastal floods, which destroys mudlands where migratory water birds find food, he added.

The specific warning concerning the floods and the drought occurs about a decade after an independent scientific study found that 720 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the Statue of Liberty and the Tower of London, could be consumed by the rise of the seas Within 2,000 years if the climate continues to warm up at current rates.

The study calculated that 136 sites would be in danger if the overall average temperatures increase to 3 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial levels-a figure well inside the range projected in the latest United Nations report On climate change, which provided that without changes in significant policy, there is a 97% probability of Celsius warming at 2 degrees and 37% of the average chances of Celsius warming at 3 degrees.