Climate change biggest threat to natural World Heritage sites

This handout photo taken on April 24, 2018 and released on May 21, 2018 by Roland Digby WWT (Wildfowl and Wetlands Trusts) shows the spoon-billed sandpipers in Meinypilgyno, Russia. – Animal and plant species are vanishing — sometimes before we know they exist — at an accelerating pace, but conservationists are pushing back against the juggernaut of mass extinction. From captive breeding to satellite tracking; restoring habitats to removing predators; shaming multinationals to nursing baby pandas and orangutans — in all these ways, scientists and other have given doomed creatures a second chance. (Photo by Mark Simpson / Roland Digby WWT / AFP)

by Nina LARSON
Agence France-Presse

GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — Climate change has become the biggest threat to UN-listed natural world heritage sites like glaciers and wetlands, and has pushed Australia’s Great Barrier Reef into “critical” condition, conservationists said Wednesday.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) revealed in a new report that shifts due to the changing climate now imperil a full third of the 252 UNESCO-listed natural sites around the globe.

Overall, 94 of the sites are facing significant or critical risk from a wide range of factors — including tourism, hunting, fire and water pollution — marking an increase from the 62 listed in the previous study published in 2017.

The study also hinted that the Covid-19 pandemic was taking a toll on some of the world’s most beautiful and precious natural places.

However, climate change is by far the biggest single threat.

(FILES) This file photo taken on November 20, 2014, shows an aerial view of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of the Whitsunday Islands, along the central coast of Queensland. – Climate change has become the biggest threat to UN-listed natural world heritage sites like glaciers and wetlands, and has pushed Australia’s Great Barrier Reef into “critical” condition, conservationists said December 2, 2020. (Photo by Sarah LAI / AFP)

It constitutes a high or very high risk factor at 83 of the sites, and has thus overtaken invasive and non-native species, which topped the threat list three years ago.

The report “reveals the damage climate change is wreaking on natural World Heritage, from shrinking glaciers to coral bleaching to increasingly frequent and severe fires and droughts,” IUCN director-general Bruno Oberle said in a statement.

“This report signals the urgency with which we must tackle environmental challenges together at the planetary scale.”

The coronavirus crisis had showed the need for the global community to “stand together and work as one for the common good,” the IUCN report said.

Covid impact

(FILES) In this file photo taken on February 7, 2017, clouds are reflected in the Florida Everglades, otherwise known as the river of grass, on Miccosukee Tribal land adjacent to Florida Everglades National Park, Florida. – Climate change has become the biggest threat to UN-listed natural world heritage sites like glaciers and wetlands, and has pushed Australia’s Great Barrier Reef into “critical” condition, conservationists said December 2, 2020. Protected areas in the Everglades National Park in the United States are also among the sites now deemed in critical condition. (Photo by RHONA WISE / AFP)

Since its assessment had begun before the novel coronavirus first surfaced late last year, IUCN said it had systematically recorded how the crisis was affecting the World Heritage sites.

But the report said it was becoming clear that the pandemic and associated restrictions were impacting or had the potential to impact more than 50 of the sites.

Some of the effects were positive, “most notably a decrease in pressure from tourism visitation on natural ecosystems,” it said, warning though that “negative factors are numerous.”

It pointed to how the closing of sites to tourism were causing a significant loss of revenues and livelihoods, as well as how limits on in-person staffing had led to reduced control over illegal activities.

“These factors are increasing the risk of wildlife poaching and illegal use of natural resources, with incidents recorded in some sites since the pandemic,” the report said.

Overall, the study found that 30 percent of the sites faced “significant” threats, and seven percent are considered “critical”, meaning they “require urgent, additional and large-scale conservation measures” to be saved.

Alarmingly, two new sites have been moved up into the critical category since 2017, including the world’s largest coral reef.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has seen dramatic coral decline amid ocean warming, acidification and extreme weather, which in turn has resulted in shrinking populations of marine species, the report found.

Protected areas in Mexico’s Gulf of California are also among the sites now deemed in critical condition, joining the likes of the Everglades National Park in the United States and Lake Turkana in Kenya, which already figured on the list.

The IUCN report said climate change had also exacerbated the spread of invasive species in a number of areas, including South Africa’s Cape Flora Region Protected Areas.

View of an area covered by Lily pads (Nymphaeaceae) at the Pantanal wetlands, in Mato Grosso state, Brazil on March 6, 2018. – The Pantanal is the largest wetland on the planet located in Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, covers more than 170,500 km2 and is home to more than 4,000 species of plants and animals. This ecosystem is at risk of collapsing if the rivers’ headwaters are not protected from the advance of monoculture plantations, waterways, hydroelectric plants and deforestation warn scientists and activists. (Photo by CARL DE SOUZA / AFP) / TO GO WITH AFP STORY by Eugenia LOGIURATTO

Brazil’s Pantanal Conservation Area was meanwhile badly damaged by unprecedented wildfires in 2019 and 2020.

Meanwhile, the rapidly-melting Kaskawulsh Glacier had altered the river course, depleting fish populations in the Kluane site in Canada and the United States.

The IUCN report found that eight sites had improved since 2017, but double as many have deteriorated in that time.