UNESCO Recommends Venice to be listed as World Heritage in Danger

Cruise ships in Venice. (Wikimedia Commons/Mario Roberto Duratur Ortiz)

JAKARTA - UNESCO experts have recommended that Venice and its lagoon be added to the list of World Heritage at Risk, as Italy is not doing enough to protect the city from the effects of climate change and mass tourism.

UNESCO World Heritage Center experts regularly review the condition of the UN cultural agency's 1,157 World Heritage sites. At a meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in September, a committee of 21 member states of UNESCO will review more than 200 sites and decide which sites will be added to the list of dangers.

About 10 of these sites were recommended by experts so that member countries include them on the list of dangers, including the historic center of Odessa, Ukraine, the city of Timbuktu in Mali, to several sites in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

Other sites recommended for inclusion on the hazard list this year are Kyiv and Lviv in Ukraine.

"Resolving these long-standing but pressing issues is hampered by the lack of an overall shared strategic vision for the long-term preservation of the property and the low effectiveness of integrated, coordinated management at all levels of stakeholders," said UNESCO, citing Reuters, August 1.

UNESCO said the remedial measures proposed by the Italian government were "currently inadequate and not detailed enough."

UNESCO added that Italy "has not communicated in a sustainable and substantive manner since its last Committee session in 2021, when UNESCO had threatened to put Venice on a 'black list'.

The agency said it hoped it would result in greater dedication and mobilization "of local and national stakeholders to tackle long-standing problems.

Separately, a spokesman for the Venice government told Reuters the city "will read carefully the proposed decision published today by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee and will discuss it with the government".

Venice, known for its canals and cultural sites, has struggled with mass tourism for years. In one day during the 2019 Carnival, around 193,000 people thronged the historic center.

Venice itself had been preparing to introduce a fee for daily tourists to control visitor numbers, but was delayed due to objections.