Speaker 1: You're listening to a CNA podcast.
Speaker 1: Think of some of the world's greatest sites, the Taj Mahal,
Speaker 1: the Sydney Opera House, Angkor Wat, or highly valued protected
Speaker 1: parts of our natural world. Yellowstone National Park, Ha Long Bay,
Speaker 1: the Okavango Delta. What do they have in common? Well,
Speaker 1: they're UNESCO heritage listed sites, and they're all desperately threatened
Speaker 1: by climate change. Today we look at the future of
Speaker 1: the most important places on our planet.
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Climate Conversations. I'm Jack Go coming
Speaker 1: to you from Bangkok, Thailand, and from Singapore HQ Sle
Speaker 1: Ling Tan. How are you going? Hi,
Speaker 2: Jack. I, how am I going? How am I doing?
Speaker 2: How am I going?
Speaker 1: I'm doing well.
Speaker 2: I'm well, thank you.
Speaker 2: I've been looking forward to this pod for a bit.
Speaker 2: I'm quite a history and architecture buff and the seven
Speaker 2: wonders of the world uh fueled a lot of my
Speaker 2: childhood imagination and sense of adventures. I'm sure it did
Speaker 2: yours as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Nice. Have you ever played the game
Speaker 1: where you have to like remember what
Speaker 1: Are the seven wonders of the world, the new ones,
Speaker 1: we're talking or the new ones, all the old ones,
Speaker 1: and see how many you've been to. Well, it's what's
Speaker 1: kind of weird, of the new ones is there's actually
Speaker 1: 8 of them because they still count the pyramids. Because
Speaker 1: the pyramids still exist, they're classified as an ancient wonder
Speaker 1: of the world and also a kind of an honorary status.
Speaker 1: New wonder of the world.
Speaker 2: So I haven't been to a lot of them, but
Speaker 2: you know, back in my day when I was a child,
Speaker 2: we didn't really differentiate between the ancient ones and the
Speaker 2: new ones. I remember, you know, with my brother, we
Speaker 2: would talk about the Great Wall, we would talk about
Speaker 2: Taj Mahal, the pyramids. I remember the Hanging Gardens of
Speaker 2: Babylon as well in the Colosseum that I've been to
Speaker 2: the Colosseum, not the not the gardens, but the Colosseum.
Speaker 2: I've been there. You're not that old.
Speaker 2: Ah. So yeah, can you name the 7 old ones
Speaker 2: and the 7 new ones there? Uh,
Speaker 1: the 7 new ones, yeah, because that is a bit
Speaker 1: of a game with some of my friends and fellow
Speaker 1: geography nuts we like to, you know, how many have
Speaker 1: you been to? So you've got the Great Wall, you've
Speaker 1: got the Colosseum, Machu Picchu, Petra in Jordan, Chichen Itza
Speaker 1: in Mexico. You've got Taj Mahal.
Speaker 1: And Christ the Redeemer. So I think I've been to
Speaker 1: 44 of
Speaker 2: the. Well, that's not too bad. That's not too bad. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The ancient ones, the lighthouse of Alexandria, the Colossus of Rhodes,
Speaker 1: Hanging Gardens, Pyramid
Speaker 2: mausoleum of, I can't pronounce this. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: mausoleum,
Speaker 2: the mausoleum of Halicarnassus. There is, you mentioned the Colossus
Speaker 2: of Rhodes. There's another one.
Speaker 2: Zeus, the statue of Zeus, in what is now present
Speaker 2: day Turkey, I believe.
Speaker 1: And is there library, the library?
Speaker 2: No, you're thinking the Great Library of Alexandra, not on
Speaker 2: the seven wonders list, but there's one more in Celch.
Speaker 2: It's a ruin Temple of Diana, Temple of Artemis
Speaker 1: Temple of Artemis or Dionysus.
Speaker 2: No, Dys of wine. It's different. That's
Speaker 1: the temple.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: OK, we digress. But now it is actually time for
Speaker 1: the quiz. So we've already done multiple quizzes. Now, we're
Speaker 1: talking about UNESCO listed sites. They're often huge areas, they're
Speaker 1: often vast wildernesses, not just cultural sites. Of course, that
Speaker 1: can make it hard to protect them, which is something
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about today. But I want you to answer,
Speaker 1: which is the largest UNESCO listed site on the planet.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you four options.
Speaker 1: Is it the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, the Phoenix Islands
Speaker 1: protected area of Kiribati? Is it the Kluwane, Wrangle, Saint Elias,
Speaker 1: Glacier Bay, Tatanini Alsek? Sorry for the pronunciation. That is
Speaker 1: in the US and Canada spans Alaska, Yukon, and the
Speaker 1: British Columbia series of national parks. Or is it the
Speaker 1: Algerian section of the Sahara Desert?
Speaker 1: The answer will be at the end.
Speaker 2: OK, that is a bit difficult, but before we get
Speaker 2: into this, I do want to point out that not
Speaker 2: all the wonders of the world that we were discussing
Speaker 2: earlier are part of UNESCO World Heritage sites. There are overlaps.
Speaker 2: All the new ones, I believe, are World Heritage.
Speaker 1: the other ones that don't exist anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, but they're not the same. They are also
Speaker 2: classified by different organizations.
Speaker 1: It's hard to
Speaker 1: heritage lists something that is no longer standing. And that
Speaker 1: kind of brings us to our main story this week.
Speaker 1: As climate change intensifies, the places that humanity hold dear
Speaker 1: are under threat. A recent report by UNESCO and the
Speaker 1: World Resources Institute found that nearly 3/4 of all heritage
Speaker 1: listed sites around the world are highly exposed to water-related hazards.
Speaker 1: Think droughts, floods, and storms.
Speaker 1: And in many places, these hazards are overlapping. It's threatening
Speaker 1: the future of our most magnificent landscapes, monuments that have
Speaker 1: stood the test of time, witness wars and triumphs, the
Speaker 1: collapse and rebirth of civilizations.
Speaker 1: This isn't the only report looking at the threats to
Speaker 1: World Heritage. Data and analytics company ClimateX last year ranked
Speaker 1: the top 50 sites most vulnerable to climate-related risks globally.
Speaker 1: Number one is in our backyard, the cultural landscape of
Speaker 1: Bali in Indonesia, specifically the Subak system, which is those
Speaker 1: famous stepped irrigation system used in their paddy fields, which
Speaker 1: is threatened by surface flooding, extreme heat, and the risk
Speaker 1: of drought.
Speaker 1: Now all of these sites are special for a reason,
Speaker 1: and there are calls to do more to save them.
Speaker 1: Lee Ling is someone well versed in what the United
Speaker 1: Nations is up to. I'm sure you'll be able to
Speaker 1: give us a bit of a primer of what we're
Speaker 1: actually talking about here, like, what is UNESCO? What does
Speaker 1: a heritage site actually mean? Oh,
Speaker 2: we love good little primers on this pod. So basically,
Speaker 2: UNESCO is the UN Educational, scientific and cultural Organization. And
Speaker 2: what it does is it look at all those things
Speaker 2: that make up its mouth.
Speaker 2: Full of a name, but the gist is that it
Speaker 2: contributes to peace building, it promotes education and knowledge, it
Speaker 2: tries to level the playing field and fight poverty also
Speaker 2: fosters and organizes into cultural exchanges. Now the World Heritage
Speaker 2: listing is one of UNESCO's jobs and perhaps the most visible.
Speaker 2: These are places of outstanding cultural or natural importance to
Speaker 2: humanity that still stand today.
Speaker 2: Now, a heritage site can be listed by UNESCO for
Speaker 2: cultural reasons, natural reasons or for just being an architectural
Speaker 2: or engineering marvel. It chronicles our natural history but also
Speaker 2: marks what we humanity can accomplish. So they can be
Speaker 2: romantic grand masterpieces like the Taj Mahal attribute by an
Speaker 2: emperor to his beloved wife or the Grand Canyon, known
Speaker 2: for its natural beauty. I'm sure many of us have
Speaker 2: been there, seen it, I have breathtaking, but
Speaker 2: So well known for its geological history, these celebrate human
Speaker 2: ingenuity or land use, like, you know, the Philippine Cordilleras,
Speaker 2: the famous rice terraces there, or it could also be
Speaker 2: sites that contain important biodiversity or threatened species like the
Speaker 2: Galapagos Islands, home to species of plants and animals found
Speaker 2: nowhere else on the earth. There are many criteria and
Speaker 2: lots of evaluations, but the designation brings countries benefits like
Speaker 2: tourism revenues, prestige.
Speaker 2: Access to funding and protection under international treaties and all
Speaker 2: in all there are nearly 1200 sites on the list.
Speaker 2: Italy has the most heritage sites followed by China, which
Speaker 2: of course is where the Great Wall is and that's
Speaker 2: on the list as well. And you know, Jack, these
Speaker 2: World Heritage sites are under threat from natural and man-made events,
Speaker 2: things like conflict, over tourism, earthquakes, frequency of droughts and floods,
Speaker 2: and of course water is a major problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right. So 73% of all heritage sites are
Speaker 1: facing a water-caused threat. That's what UNESCO is telling us.
Speaker 1: That has to be a serious concern, right? And 90%
Speaker 1: of those are cultural sites. So they're close to us,
Speaker 1: they're in cities, they're around human populations a lot of
Speaker 1: the time, and we value those places. We visit them.
Speaker 1: These lines from the report kind of struck me. These
Speaker 1: Sites stand as powerful reminders of humanity's enduring relationship with water.
Speaker 1: While water is fundamental to their significance, it can also
Speaker 1: pose serious risks when its balance is disrupted, threatening the
Speaker 1: integrity of these irreplaceable places. So you have these extremes
Speaker 1: as well, either not enough water or too much water,
Speaker 1: and that's impacting these places.
Speaker 2: Right. And the report mentions
Speaker 2: Many examples of those from Victoria Falls in Zambia, which
Speaker 2: is experiencing multi-year droughts to the Saga Martha National Park
Speaker 2: in Nepal, affected by this phenomenon called glacial lake outburst
Speaker 2: floods or gloss, which is linked to accelerating glacial retreat.
Speaker 2: Now Jack, I mean between the both of us, you're
Speaker 2: the authority here on gloss, right? You've done reporting.
Speaker 2: On gloves in Nepal and
Speaker 1: you can call me
Speaker 2: the glo guru. There you go.
Speaker 2: Take it away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have. I have reported on glos. So I went
Speaker 1: to Aam Mustang in Nepal, looked at the glo issue there.
Speaker 1: So you have these abnormal annual melts due to global
Speaker 1: temperature rise, glaciers at high altitudes are feeding massive amounts
Speaker 1: of water into the surrounding lakes, because they're melting.
Speaker 1: And then you have the risk of these lakes collapsing,
Speaker 1: and that has communities throughout the region really on edge.
Speaker 1: It's really dangerous. And I visited villages that have been
Speaker 1: hit by cloths in the past. There's no way of
Speaker 1: really knowing when a lake might burst. So you have
Speaker 1: similar things also playing out in Bhutan and in China
Speaker 1: and India and Pakistan. So just one of the impacts
Speaker 1: of global warming on potentially.
Speaker 1: Heritage sites and communities as well.
Speaker 2: And the
Speaker 2: report also shows that Asia is central to this narrative, right?
Speaker 2: Water issues on this continent are significant and serious. Climate
Speaker 2: change being a factor, yes, but there are other human
Speaker 2: activity like urbanization, river regulation and upstream water withdrawal that
Speaker 2: are making things worse for these heritage and cultural sites
Speaker 2: and we could lose them.
Speaker 2: We'll see them degraded in the years to come. They
Speaker 2: include Petra and Jordan, which we talked, we touched on earlier,
Speaker 2: the Angkor complex in Cambodia, Timbuktu in Mali, and the
Speaker 2: complex of Hui monuments in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Yeah, going back to the ClimateX report that I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: it's really clear to see the imprint of Asian heritage
Speaker 1: sites at high risk. So as well as the Bali landscape, rank.
Speaker 1: is #1, Indonesia has other listings, 2 in the top 50,
Speaker 1: like Komodo National Park, you have uh Vietnam's Ha Long
Speaker 1: Bay there as well. There are multiple sites in China, India,
Speaker 1: South Korea, Japan, Pakistan. And to come up with these conclusions,
Speaker 1: Climate X modeled the future likelihood of 16 different climate hazards,
Speaker 1: including extreme heat, tropical cyclones, and flooding across 8.
Speaker 1: Different warming scenarios over a century. So it's probably not
Speaker 1: that surprising either that their findings do concur with the
Speaker 1: type of risks that UNESCO itself recognizes.
Speaker 2: And for those of you who listen to us regularly,
Speaker 2: you know, we try to wrap up these types of
Speaker 2: chats by looking at some of the solutions that are
Speaker 2: on the table or being put in place and what
Speaker 2: we try to.
Speaker 2: We argue about the
Speaker 1: solutions you bring some of your gloom to the discussion. Yeah,
Speaker 2: OK, what can actually be done about this though and
Speaker 2: slow the decay because it's expensive to protect or restore
Speaker 2: antiquities and vast landscapes can't recover overnight, right? And it's
Speaker 2: not like the extreme events are going to stop. They're
Speaker 2: only going to get worse. So what UNESCO does is
Speaker 2: it provides emergency support.
Speaker 2: To states and countries to help in areas like rapid
Speaker 2: response and technical support, keeping in mind the need for
Speaker 2: long term resilience and disaster risk reduction. So adaptation is
Speaker 2: a key thing that they look at, they look at
Speaker 2: innovative ways to manage water at sites, early warning systems,
Speaker 2: better ways to manage water resource, and of course also
Speaker 2: trying to promote traditional.
Speaker 2: Knowledge, local stewardship and even looking back in time at
Speaker 2: ancient solutions to solve some of these problems of today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a whole raft of potential solutions. And yeah, this idea
Speaker 1: of old knowledge, I think is really interesting, complimenting that
Speaker 1: with modern technology. And I saw this when I did
Speaker 1: a story about the climate impacts on ancient sites in Egypt.
Speaker 1: A couple of years ago. So when they were built,
Speaker 1: millennia ago, these structures were meant to last forever, for eternity.
Speaker 1: But amid this human-induced climate change crisis, even the the
Speaker 1: strongest foundations may not survive. Crazy to think that they've
Speaker 1: stood for thousands of years and within decades, we are
Speaker 1: doing a pretty good job of dismantling them. But they
Speaker 1: are using new technologies over there, things like remote sensing.
Speaker 1: They use advanced mapping, visualization, so I think that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: It's something that probably we need to pay more attention to,
Speaker 1: but of course these technologies aren't going to help everywhere.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to find the right solution for the
Speaker 1: right type of sites, and when so many of them.
Speaker 1: 73% are threatened. It's going to take a big effort,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting too that so many of these sites
Speaker 2: kind of define who we are today as part of
Speaker 2: modern civilization and yet they are looking way back into
Speaker 2: the past and well into the future.
Speaker 2: For the solutions. I thought that was quite
Speaker 2: fascinating
Speaker 1: work and hopefully I mean hopefully something
Speaker 1: works.
Speaker 2: Anyway, we should also say that right now the 47th
Speaker 2: session of the World Heritage Committee is meeting at the
Speaker 2: UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Climate change, of course, is a
Speaker 2: central topic and we'll see if anything comes out of
Speaker 2: those discussions.
Speaker 1: OK, back to the quiz then. I've been doing lots
Speaker 1: of talking. I don't know if you've had much time
Speaker 1: to think. This one's tough. Yeah, repeating it for you,
Speaker 1: which is the largest UNESCO heritage site by size on
Speaker 1: the planet? Amazon rainforest in Brazil, the Phoenix Islands protected
Speaker 1: area in Kiribati, a bunch of national parks that I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say again.
Speaker 1: Basically glacial national parks spanning a big section of the
Speaker 1: US and Canada or the Sahara Desert, specifically in Algeria.
Speaker 2: OK, this
Speaker 2: is this is me. OK.
Speaker 2: OK. Amazon rainforest, I know that.
Speaker 2: Part of it is designated as UNESCO heritage site, not
Speaker 2: the whole thing
Speaker 1: dodged that I've,
Speaker 2: I know what you're doing. I, you know, the fact
Speaker 2: is you have 3, you have two very vague ones
Speaker 2: one OK one and one that's so detailed. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: this so anyway, Phoenix Islands protected area and Kiribas, maybe.
Speaker 2: The queen wrangle Saint Elias Liia Bay touch touch Tasini
Speaker 2: Essek
Speaker 1: wow, you've messed that.
Speaker 2: That borders the US and Canada. So that's pretty, that's
Speaker 2: pretty massive. And then you Sahara desert, Algeria. What is
Speaker 2: that Jack, you're just throwing in.
Speaker 2: The Algeria part of a desert that comprises nearly a
Speaker 2: dozen countries. So I'm guessing that one is a herring
Speaker 2: is a red herring. Yeah. So you know, I'm going
Speaker 2: to go with the Kiribas one Phoenix Islands protected area
Speaker 2: because that's quite a vast area.
Speaker 2: of islands and oceans, right?
Speaker 1: You're correct. It is. It is the Phoenix Islands Protected Area.
Speaker 1: It's a, it's just over 400,000 square kilometers. So it's
Speaker 1: larger than California, it's larger than Japan.
Speaker 1: It's about 560 times the size of Singapore. Massive expanse
Speaker 1: of ocean. Wow. But it's quite controversial right now. In
Speaker 1: late 2021, Kiribati modified the fishing rules of this marine
Speaker 1: area and it replaced what was a no-take policy with
Speaker 1: a plan that allows commercial fishing. When I went to Kiribati,
Speaker 1: it was a big topic. You have a lot of
Speaker 1: Chinese vessels starting to fish throughout.
Speaker 1: This marine protected area. Now, it hasn't been delisted, but
Speaker 1: there is pressure on Kiribati right now to work with
Speaker 1: UNESCO to ensure that that doesn't happen. It could become
Speaker 1: the next step, I think, would be it listed, being
Speaker 1: listed as a heritage site at risk, I believe. So
Speaker 1: if we come and do this exact quiz in like
Speaker 1: 5 years, maybe the answer would be something different. OK, well,
Speaker 1: I think the national parks were the largest just
Speaker 1: Including land from what I remember. And yes, the Sahara
Speaker 1: Desert is not a UNESCO heritage site and only small
Speaker 1: sections of the Amazon are. So you nailed that.
Speaker 2: Woohoo.
Speaker 1: OK. OK, that's all for this week. We'll be back
Speaker 1: here next Thursday again. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: Come back soon. Bye for now. Fee Ling Tan, signing
Speaker 1: out. I'm Jack Ford, thanks to the team that produced
Speaker 1: this episode, Sai Yayin, Tiffany Ung, Janai Jahari, and Hei Ning.