Unesco sees mass tourism as a threat to protecting world heritage

The general director of the UnescoAudrey Azoulay highlighted mass tourism as one of the major threats facing the protection of world heritage and called for the implementation of sustainable practices to mitigate it during the 46th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee.

“Mass tourism, which affects local populations affected by housing shortages, low wages and environmental risks, must be the focus of our attention,” Azoulay said during her speech before the World Heritage Committee, which began yesterday in New Delhi and meets until July 31.

Instead, the director general called for the development of sustainable tourism that would enable cities and sites to improve the flow of visitors.

Urban pressure, human pressure and the development of new infrastructure are some of the concerns that have led UNESCO to include some sites considered World Heritage Sites on its List of World Heritage in Danger.

In addition to taking measures against mass tourism, Azoulay also called on governments to speed up the fight against the climate crisis, which he described as “a priority”, since “is having devastating effects” in the form of increasingly serious natural disasters.

Some examples he mentioned were Tropical Cyclone Gombe, which hit Mozambique in 2022 and left more than fifty dead and hundreds of thousands affected, or the earthquake on the island of Luzon, in the Philippines, also in 2022, which affected the city of Vigan, declared a World Heritage Site.

In this regard, he called on governments to include local populations in their strategies to protect heritage, noting that they are often relegated to the background despite being the closest to the sites in question.

Talks on the List of World Heritage in Danger, which currently includes 56 sites, will begin tomorrow, Tuesday, according to UNESCO’s agenda. Over the course of two days, representatives will discuss the current status of these sites, as well as the possible inclusion or removal of new sites from the list.

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee is composed of representatives of 21 States, elected from among the 195 States Parties to the Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.