A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place or landmark with “outstanding universal value”
to humanity. World Heritage Sites are chosen by the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization, better known by its acronym.
To be on the list, a candidate site must meet at least one of the 10 criteria, such as “to
represent a masterpiece of human creative genius”, “to bear a unique or exceptional
testimony to a cultural tradition”, or “to contain superlative natural phenomena or areas
of exceptional natural beauty”. In that sense, sites can be selected either because
of natural beauty, such as the Great Barrier Reef, or the Serengeti, for example… or
can be chosen because of cultural (and often, historical) importance, the Pyramids of Giza
or Stonehenge, for example.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that World Heritage Sites are incredibly diverse.
The list contains most places you would expect, the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, the Statue of
Liberty… but it also has many places most people have never heard of. Whether it be
a National Park in Tajikistan, or a Board Mill in Finland, sites come in all shapes
and sizes. They range from a single small monument, to grand cathedrals, to massive
natural landscapes, to entire islands or cities… and even one country. And there are a lot
of them - as of 2019, there are 1,121 World Heritage Sites, of which 869 are cultural,
213 natural, and 39 are mixed. In this 4th installment of Winners and Losers I’m going
to look at the diversity of the World Heritage Sites, comparing and contrasting them, and
their place in the world.
I’m going to start off by looking at the number of sites by country - which countries
have the most?
Starting with 5th place, we have France with 45, 4th is Germany with 46, 3rd Spain with
48, and there’s actually a tie for 1st place, between China and Italy, both with 55. I’ve
put China on top though, by using “shared sites”, or sites that span 2 or more countries,
as a tiebreaker. Italy has 6 shared sites, whereas China only has 1.
China’s 55 are split up into 37 cultural, 14 natural, and 4 mixed. Cultural sites tend
to be the most well known of these, with notable examples being the Forbidden Palace, the Terracotta
Army, and of course the Great Wall. But China also has a large number of natural heritage
sites as well: forests, mountains, rivers, etc. In fact, according to this list, China
is the most naturally beautiful country. Or at least, it has the most natural world heritage
sites, with 14. Joint 2nd place are Australia and the United States. Again though, Australia
gets the edge with less shared sites.
Now, switching to cultural sites, which countries come out on top? The top 3 are: Italy, Germany,
and Spain. Perhaps an unsurprising winner, Italy has several of its cities in their entirety
as world heritage sites, and several more historic centres. These include: Venice and
its lagoon, Verona, and Vicenza… plus, the historic centres of Rome, Florence, Naples,
and several more.
Of course, at the opposite end of the spectrum, there are 30 countries with 0 world heritage
sites. Of these, 26 have no sites, while 4 countries haven’t even adhered to the World
Heritage Convention.
Now, it’s one thing to look at countries by just raw number of sites, but it’s not
really fair when you compare the 1.3 billion people of India to the 1.3 million of Estonia.
Nor is it fair to compare 17 million square kilometres of Russia to the 17 thousand of
Kuwait. So in this category, I’m going to look at World Heritage Site density by country.
I’m going to split this up into cultural and natural sites. Since cultural sites are
human achievements, and natural sites are, well, naturally occurring, I’ll rank cultural
sites by population, and natural sites by land area.
For cultural sites, there is a very, very clear winner. Literally the entire country
is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Can you guess which one it is…? I’ll give you a hint,
it’s very small. It is of course, the Holy See, Vatican City. In fact, it’s actually
part of another heritage site. The historical centre of Rome, also includes all of the Vatican.
So… the country is 200% UNESCO World Heritage site…
Ok, but other than the clearly unfair Vatican City, what are the other winners? For this
list, I’ve left out countries with only 1 site as this would skew the numbers in favour
of very small countries. With this exclusion, the winner is Malta, with 3 cultural sites
and a population of less than half a million, meaning that Malta has 0.63 cultural heritage
sites per 100,000 people. Coming in at 2nd and 3rd place, also with 3 sites each, are:
Cyprus, and Montenegro. Montenegro has 2 shared sites, which is why Cyprus takes 2nd, despite
a higher population.
Now you might be wondering, of the countries that don’t have any cultural sites, which
is the most populous? That would be the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with a whopping 86
million people.
So what about natural sites? Again I’ve excluded countries with just 1 site. The clear
winner here is Seychelles, a small archipelago in the Indian Ocean, with 2 natural heritage
sites despite being less than 500km2 in size. The country has a nature reserve, as well
as the Aldabra Atoll.
Of course, if we were only to include, y’know, ‘proper’-sized countries, the winners
would be Switzerland, Denmark, and Costa Rica, again, with 3 sites each, coincidentally.
Each of the top 3 has 1 shared site. For Switzerland, Monte San Giorgio, shared with Italy. For
Denmark, the Wadden Sea, shared with Germany and the Netherlands. And for Costa Rica, La
Amistad International Park, shared with Panama.
So who’s the loser of this category? ie - what’s the largest country without a natural
world heritage site? Well, that would be the 10th largest country in the world, Algeria,
at nearly 2.4 million square kilometres. To be fair, more than four-fifths of the country
is desert. So there’s that.
Moving on, and away from countries, taking a look at the world as a whole. UNESCO splits
the world up into 5 different regions, regions which are... a bit odd, to say the least.
The regions are: Europe & North America, Latin America & the Caribbean, Africa, Arab states,
and Asia and the Pacific.
The clear winner here is Europe and North America, having by far the most sites overall,
with 529. The region also has by far the most cultural sites, with actually more than all
4 other regions combined. Although, natural sites, it comes in at 2nd place behind Asia
& the Pacific, which tops the list with 67.
This is a map from the official UNESCO website, showing all the world heritage sites on a
global scale, showing the extent of the various sites.
The next category I’m going to do, is oldest and newest world heritage sites.
The list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites began in 1978, with 12 entries on the list. Listed
as #1 are the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador.
New World Heritage Sites are added every year, with 29 being added in 2019. Perhaps the most
notable of these is the ancient city of Babylon, part of modern-day Iraq, and location of one
of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Hanging Gardens.
But of course, when a site was inscribed into the World Heritage Site list doesn’t have
anything to do with how old or new it actually is. So what are some of the most ancient sites
on the list?
Well, many of the sites date back to before recorded history. Due to the uncertainty of
the dates and the difficulty of this category, I’ll just suggest a few potential candidates
for the oldest site.
Starting in France, we have the Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc, containing the earliest-known
and best-preserved figurative drawings in the world, possibly up to 32,000 years old.
It’s believed that around 20,000 years ago, a large boulder fell and blocked the entrance
to the cave, therefore keeping it so well preserved until it was discovered in 1994.
But, of course, if you’re looking for an actual structure that was built, and is somewhat
intact today, a good candidate might be Göbekli Tepe, an archaeological site located in modern-day
Turkey. What it actually... is is still a mystery, but the leading thought is that it
was some kind of temple. Dating the site, is of course extremely difficult, but it is
believed to have been constructed in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, somewhere around 9,500 BC. For
context, that means that we in the present day are closer in time to the construction
of the Pyramids of Giza, than the construction of this structure is to them... predating
them by 6-7,000 years.
Now, the newest World Heritage Site was actually more challenging than I expected. The newest
one I was able to find, and not even that new, really, is the iconic Australian landmark,
the Sydney Opera House, inaugurated in 1973.
The Opera House was designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, and according to UNESCO constitutes
“a masterpiece of 20th century architecture”.
Now moving on to something that usually comes first in Winners & Losers - size. It seemed
less relevant in this episode. The largest on the list site is actually a new entry in
2019, the French Austral Lands and Seas, at 67.3 million hectares. A little unfair since
it contains a whole slice of Antarctica, roughly equal to the size of the country of Iraq...
a slice of Antarctica that isn’t even any different from the rest of the continent!
Next is the Phoenix Islands Protected Area of Kiribati. Again, not entirely fair since
it’s mostly water… but, then again, so are the next two on the list as well. In 5th
place are the Galápagos Islands, 1000km west of the Ecuadorian mainland. These islands
helped Charles Darwin develop his theory of natural selection and write his revolutionary
book On the Origin of Species, published in 1859.
On the other hand, the smallest heritage site seems to be a small family house, the Rietveld
Schröder House in the Dutch city of Utrecht, at just 75 square metres, or 800 square feet.
Built in 1924, the house is considered an icon of the Modern Movement in architecture,
becoming a World Heritage Site in the year 2000.
Other tiny sites include... the Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak, in Bulgaria, at about double
the size of the Schröder House, and then there’s also the Holy Trinity Column in
the Czech Republic, which the UNESCO site lists as 0.05 hectares, or 500m2.
Let’s move on… to the most visited sites. Now whether having the most visitors is the
winner or the loser of this category, is debatable. On the one hand, a lot of visitors implies
popularity, but tourist locations crowded with thousands and thousands of people is
never fun. Not to mention, the entire point of a heritage site is conservation, and people
can cause damage over time.
Getting exact numbers for this wasn’t easy, but a solid contender for top spot is the
Forbidden City palace complex in Beijing, with around 14 or 15 million visitors annually.
Another possible candidate would be “Paris, the Banks of Seine”, as the heritage site
is called. The most visited place in Paris in 2018 was the Notre-Dame cathedral with
12 million visitors… although given the tragic events that took place earlier this
year, that may change in the future.
Some other highly visited sites are: also in China: “Kulangsu”, a small pedestrian-only
island off the southeast coast of the mainland, with more than 11 million annual visitors.
Also with a similar number of visitors is the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in
the United States. The park is part of the Appalachian Mountain chain, on the border
between Tennessee and North Carolina.
Earlier in the video, I briefly mentioned shared sites - a World Heritage Site that
spans 2 or more countries… so which site spans the most countries? That would be the
“Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe”,
to give it its official title... which spans 12 different countries! The site consists
of many different forests all across Europe, from Spain to the Ukraine, and shows the adaptability
of the beech tree and its ability to spread across an entire continent.
Other extensive sites include: the Struve Geodetic Arc, also in Europe, which is a chain
of ‘survey triangulations’ stretching from the tip Norway all the way to the Black
Sea, spanning 10 different countries. This system of markers was used in the 1800s to
help determine the exact shape and size of the Earth.
There’s also The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier, an Outstanding Contribution to
the Modern Movement. 17 sites, mostly in Europe, but also one each in Argentina, India, and
Japan, for a total of 7 countries.
The sites maintaining their cultural significance or natural beauty is of the utmost importance
to UNESCO. For this reason, some sites are designated “in danger” of losing their
status for any number of reasons, such as pollution, deforestation, climate change,
urban expansion, corruption, and quite often - war, unfortunately. There are currently
53 sites on this list. These include the historic centre of Vienna, the Old City of Jerusalem,
as well as the Everglades National Park.
The big winners of this category are actually just the countries with the most sites. Of
the top 5 countries, not one of them has a single site in danger! So that’s good.
On the flip side, the big losers here are: Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Libya, and Afghanistan - four countries that have ALL their heritage sites in danger.
There are two ways to get off the “in danger” list. One, is to somehow improve the situation…
or the other way, lose World Heritage Site status.
Only two sites have ever lost their status. The Arabian Oryx Sanctuary in Oman was directly
removed, skipping the “in danger” list altogether, being delisted in 2007 after the
government’s decision to reduce the size of the protected area by 90%. In addition,
the Dresden Elbe Valley in Germany was delisted in 2009 due to a bridge being built across
the valley, which UNESCO viewed as damaging its cultural value.
That’s all for episode 4 of winners and losers, I hope you enjoyed it, and as always
feel free to leave your suggestions for episode 5!
Now, if you’re interested in learning more about the first ever UNESCO World Heritage
Site, the Galapagos Islands, I would highly recommend an absolutely fascinating documentary
I watched called ‘Wild Galapagos’. This 2-part documentary looks at several different
unique and often unusual species, many of which arrived at the islands against their
will, caught in the strong ocean currents. The documentary shows how these creatures
adapted to an environment where they don’t belong, and how they interact with each other,
whether it be as allies or as predator and prey.
It really is clear why the Galapagos Islands became a World Heritage Site, with their immense
natural beauty and biodiversity. The documentary does a great job of capturing this beauty
with really fantastic footage from start to finish. If you would like to watch it, you
can do so on CuriosityStream, an online streaming service with over 2,400 documentaries and
non­fiction titles, with content spanning science, nature, history, technology, and
so much more.
Membership starts a very affordable $2.99 per month, and you can get started completely
free with a 31-day trial, by signing up at CuriosityStream.com/wonderwhy, and enter the
promo-code “wonderwhy” during the sign-up process.
A massive thank you once again to CuriosityStream for helping to support this channel by sponsoring
this video. And of course, thanks to you for watching, I’ll see you in the next video.