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Chapter 1: What is UNESCO and why was it established?
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Chapter 2: How does UNESCO protect World Heritage Sites?
Yeah, probably so. But also, if something happens, acute disaster from human or natural causes, you'll get some emergency assistance. And then this is another big one that I think probably really comes in handy. There are experts who work at UNESCO who can train your staff, right? You don't have to reinvent the wheel every time and be like, this is an archaeological site.
Let's figure out how to train you, the staff, to preserve it and explain it and all that stuff. You can send them off to, I guess, New York and have them trained up to do those things. Yeah, for sure. And tourism. It's a big deal.
If you're if you get one of your if you are a country when you have a site that you get put on this list, it's a big deal because people, I think, that don't know a ton about this kind of look at it as like a seven wonders of the world list in some ways. And like, oh, here's a place like we got to visit before we die.
Yeah, there's hundreds of wonders of the world as far as the World Heritage List is concerned. Yeah. So originally, Chuck, there were just like physical places and features that were on the World Heritage List called sites. And they were divided essentially into two categories, cultural or natural. And you can kind of generally guess what the criteria was for each category. Yeah.
Like if it's a natural heritage site, that means there's just universal value, maybe scientifically or maybe even just aesthetically. You know, we're talking about the Great Barrier Reef of Australia or Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, stuff like that. And it's, you know, it's about protecting these natural wonders of the world generally. Yeah.
And I mean, we just take for granted that the Serengeti National Park is like amazing. But the reason why specifically it was chosen is because it's one of the best examples of large predator prey interactions. Like you just do not see lions chasing down antelope in Kansas. You don't see it unless the zoo's going crazy. And that's one reason why it's protected.
It's basically the main reason why it's protected. But then there's also an intersecting thing too, that it's also gorgeous. So this fulfills a couple of things. It's biologically important to science, but it's also aesthetically amazing too. Yeah, for sure. And this goes, you know, every single one of these things, we're not just going to go through and list a ton of different places.
But if you're talking about the Yellowstone National Park or the Galapagos Islands, or like I mentioned, the Great Barrier Reef, these all seem like pretty obvious inclusions. For sure. And they were probably included pretty early on in the list's existence. Oh, geez. So that's the natural site. There's also the cultural site.
And these are essentially, you know, human-made environments or structures or places of human occupation where humans did something impressive, important, or it was just part of a larger culture. For example, there's a crossroads in, I thinkā Oh, I don't remember where it was, but it was just a crossroads back in the third century CE. And it was just really important at the time.
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Chapter 3: How does politics influence UNESCO World Heritage designations?
But it's still worth getting. Well, maybe I can grow the beard back out and put some weight back on and convince everyone I'm the ghost of Hemingway and take that seat finally. Well, bring a multi-extra-toed cat with you. Or are they cross-eyed? What is it about those cats? Two tails? Oh, I don't know. Are they polydactyl? I think so.
There's some unique feature that the Hemingway cats on Key West all share. Oh, okay. I want to say it's an extra toe. I'm not sure. Well, moving on, we'll figure that out. There are a total of 1,248 World Heritage Sites right now. The vast amount of those are cultural. I think 78%, 19% are natural, and 3% are mixed. And Europe and North America have almost half of them.
They have 46% compared to Latin and the Caribbean. Latin America and Caribbean at 12%. Asia and the Pacific, 25%. The Arab states, 8%. And Africa, 9%, although we should say Africa holds 20% of all the natural sites, which is pretty impressive and not surprising. That is cool. I say we take a break, but first I also wanted to point out that not all of these are, you know, just like...
up with humanity. Like they also preserve some pretty dark stuff too. One good example is the Navy School of Mechanics in Argentina, which has turned into a site of memory, a museum where they basically preserved the fact that this was a place where people were abducted, tortured, and murdered by dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s and 80s.
And this is a world heritage site because it's important to remember People will do this. Like people will vote people like this into office and keep them there. And those people can turn on their own people and you can be abducted and disappeared and murdered by the state. That happens. That to me is like one of the big driving.
I guess it drives home the point of the World Heritage List more than some of these others. Right. To remember. Not just pretty things. Right. But you don't have to just remember the dark stuff. You can remember all the stuff, but you can't ignore the dark stuff, I guess is what I mean. Well said. Just like Lord Vader himself. What do you say? Like, come on over, baby.
The dark side's feeling great. I think so. That was the line. Should we take that break? Yeah, I think we should. All right. We'll be right back, everybody.
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Chapter 4: What challenges do World Heritage Sites face today?
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All right. So we mentioned early, we're back, by the way, that UNESCO would eventually adopt stuff like oral traditions and performing arts and social rituals and practices and things like that. That happened in 2003 specifically.
And, you know, this was a very valuable ad, I think, like a skill set or a knowledge or just some irreplaceable custom or traditional craft or skill or something that, you know, could be in danger of being lost, you know, if not for stuff like this. Yeah. And again, it can be 12 families shrimp fishing on horseback in Belgium. I want to see that. What does that look like?
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Chapter 5: What are the criteria for a site to be considered for the World Heritage List?
There's a big movement for that. But there's also this sort of idea on the other side of like, well, we will take care of that stuff. because it is in London or New York City. And we're not going to give it back to you. And that same sort of mentality has been sort of, the same thing is sort of applied to World Heritage Sites.
I think a little bit where indigenous peoples are kind of moved out of the conversation because the attitude is like, well, you just don't know what's best for your stuff. Right. It's kind of like if you're a bunch of Westerners coming along as tourists to tour this World Heritage site that's of immense cultural value to this local group.
If current people from the local group show up, they kind of push them out of their way by their face. And they're like, out of the way, you're ruining the diorama. This took place a thousand years ago. We don't care what's going on with you today, even though you're directly related to this, I think is that mentality, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way to say it, I think, sadly.
There's also like a whole, I talked about gaming the system. One of the ways that you can game the system is essentially withdraw, like the United States has done twice now, in the 80s and in 2018. You can withdraw from UNESCO and this convention. But you can still nominate sites, including sites in your own country, right?
So you're getting the best of both worlds where you can get those tourism dollars for getting new World Heritage sites. And you're also not paying dues or you're not spending any of your own money to support other sites. But if you need help with your sites because it's World Heritage site, you can get other countries money who are doing the right thing and paying their dues. Yeah, for sure.
Not a cool thing to do, if you ask me. The other thing that they've seen, I think, kind of starting in the 1990s, it seems like, is when countries are getting together and voting together, like forming PACs and voting blocks to either get listed or to block maybe a site from getting on the danger list, because we said that's kind of like being on the naughty list. Yeah, exactly.
So like Latin American countries will frequently band together and vote in one another's best interests. Or also, I think even countries that aren't members anymore, say the U.S., can basically be like, hey, vote for us for this thing. And, you know, we'll make sure that we up our oil imports from your country by 10 percent or so. Oh, interesting.
You know, so I think the more the more juice you have, the more you can get stuff done, even if you're not a member anymore. Right. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, like you said, this is big money. Like if you're included on this list, they will you'll be a part of their advertising campaign. And then you can also create your own around that, you know, touting inclusion, you know.
Yeah, I can tell you that I want to go see the Minoan palatial centers in Greece, six Bronze Age sites that were part of the late Bronze Age collapse. They're about to be or they were just in 2025 put on. So that's the tourism's working already. So you might not have known about that had it not been included, probably. Yes, I did not know those sites existed. Yeah.
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