Wildlife and humans are already facing survival challenges but now they are beginning to thrive after a long time within certain designated sites as safe habitats to live.
Many sites recognized by UNESCO after long-term research have allowed the recovery of threatened species and habitats around the world.
Of the three forms of UNESCO designation, the highest are World Heritage Sites, which are cultural monuments, achievements or natural areas that are considered to be of global importance, and governments are obliged to protect them under the United Nations organization’s founding treaty, the World Heritage Convention of 1972.
More recently, UNESCO has introduced biosphere reserves, which are examples of sustainable development in action, and global geoparks, which contain particularly important geology. Governments are also expected to manage these areas, but they lack the full legal power of origin.
While wildlife populations have declined by nearly three-quarters globally since 1970, wildlife populations in UNESCO-protected areas have remained largely stable, reports Guardian.
“This is good news, it shows that these sites are extremely resilient in the face of a changing world,” said Teles Carvalho Resende, one of the co-authors of the People and Nature in UNESCO Sites report published on Tuesday.
But the sites are also under serious threat: more than 300,000 square km of tree cover, an area larger than the Republic of the Congo, has been lost within UNESCO-designated sites since 2000, mostly due to agricultural expansion and logging.
Approximately 90% of UNESCO sites globally are considered to be under “high levels” of environmental stress, primarily extreme heat.
According to UNESCO, one in four designated sites could reach critical climate change tipping points by 2050.
These include the disappearance of glaciers, collapse of coral reefs and drying up of forests, turning them from carbon sinks to carbon sources.
Many of the world’s “charismatic megafauna”, whose populations have declined in recent decades due to poaching, agricultural encroachment and other stresses, have found refuge in UNESCO-designated sites, where they often receive far greater protection than non-designated areas.
About a third of the world’s remaining elephants, tigers and pandas are in UNESCO sites, as well as one in 10 of the remaining great apes, giraffes, lions, rhinos and dugongs.
Some of the most endangered species are also found only in UNESCO reserves.
All but 10 of the vaquita, a species of porpoise believed to be the last of their kind, the 60 or so remaining Javan rhinoceros, and about 85% of the remaining population of Sumatran orangutan, believed to number around 15,000 individuals, are found within the designated sites.
Additionally, UNESCO sites are also home to about a 10th of the world’s population, benefiting from biodiversity that generates about a 10th of global GDP, according to the report, which is the first global assessment to examine all 2,260 protected areas.
