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The Italian city of Venice should be added to a list of world heritage sites in danger, experts from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have stated in a new report. Kyiv and Lviv in Ukraine are also on the recommendation for sites to be put on the danger list this year.
The UNESCO has called on the Italian government to ensure the utmost dedication to address long-standing problems in Venice. The corrective measures proposed by the government so far are still insufficient and need to be further developed, it further said.
Venice has been grappling for years with too many tourists and the effects of climate change. The UNESCO World Heritage property comprises the city of Venice and its lagoon situated in the Veneto region of northeast Italy.
The recommendation to put the city on the World Heritage in Danger list was made by UNESCO and advisory body experts in its provisional agenda ahead of the 45th session of the agency’s World Heritage Committee. The session is scheduled to be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on September 10-25, 2023.
The committee will look at over 200 sites in the September session and decide which ones to add to the danger list. For nearly 10 of these sites, the experts recommend that member states put them on the danger list, among which already are the historic centre of Odessa, Ukraine, the town of Timbuktu in Mali and several sites in Syria, Iraq and Libya.
There has not been any “significant” progress in addressing the persistent and complex issues related in particular to mass tourism, development projects and climate change, the committee said in its report.
These issues are “causing deterioration and damage to building structures and urban areas, degrading the cultural and social identity of the property and threatening the integrity of its cultural, environmental and landscape attributes and values,” the panel further said.
In February 2023, the city was in the grips of a drought such that Italian lakes and rivers had dried up. In November 2019, historical treasures and buildings were endangered due to flooding.
The inclusion of Venice in the danger list had already been proposed by UNESCO two years ago, but it was averted at the last minute due to some emergency measures adopted by the Italian government.
One of those measures was the decision to ban large ships like cruise ships from the San Marco Basin-Giudecca Canal, which is still being enforced. The UNESCO panel recommended finding new options for docking large ships outside the lagoon.
The Venetian authorities said they would carefully read the recommendation and speak to the Italian government, “which is the state party with which UNESCO relates”, reported British daily The Guardian.