New World Heritage Sites unveiled

The World Heritage Committee holding its 33 session chaired by, the Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of Spain to UNESCO Mar¡a Jes£s San Segundo, has inscribed two new natural sites and 11 cultural sites on UNESCO's World Heritage List. Since it also withdrew one site, from the List, Dresden Elbe Valley (Germany), the List now numbers a total of 890 properties. The removal has been for the second time in the history of the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage adopted by UNESCO in 1972, a site was removed from the World Heritage List when the Committee decided that Germany's Dresden Elbe Valley could no longer retain its status as a World Heritage site of outstanding universal value. The decision was due to the construction underway of a four-lane bridge in the heart of the cultural landscape. The Committee also inscribed three sites on UNESCO's List of World Heritage in Danger to help raise international support for their preservation. One site was removed from the Danger List. More sites may be inscribed on the Danger List as the Committee continues examining state of conservation reports on Tuesday.

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Mount Wutai (China)

With its five flat peaks, Mount Wutai is a sacred Buddhist mountain. The cultural landscape numbers 53 monasteries and includes the East Main Hall of Foguang Temple, the highest surviving timber Building of the Tang Dynasty with life size clay sculptures. It also features the Ming Dynasty Shuxiang Temple with a huge complex of 500 statues representing Buddhist stories woven into three dimensional pictures of mountains and water.

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The Ruins of Loropni (Burkina Faso)

The 11,130m2 property, the first to be inscribed in the country, with its imposing stone walls is the best preserved of ten fortresses in the Lobi area and is part of a larger group of 100 stone enclosures that bear testimony to the power of the trans-Saharan gold trade.

Cidade Velha, Historic Centre of Ribeira Grande (Cape Verde). The town of Ribeira Grande, renamed Cidade Velha in the late 18th century, was the first European colonial outpost in the tropics. Located in the south of the island of Santiago, the town features some of the original street layout impressive remains including two churches, a royal fortress and Pillory Square with its ornate 16th-century marble pillar.

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The Dolomites (Italy)

Comprise a mountain range in the northern Italian Alps, numbering 18 peaks which rise to above 3,000 metres and cover 141,903 ha. It features some of the most beautiful mountain landscapes anywhere, with vertical walls, sheer cliffs and a high density of narrow, deep and long valleys.

A serial property of nine areas that present a diversity of spectacular landscapes of international significance for geomorphology marked by steeples, pinnacles and rock walls, the site also contains glacial landforms and karst systems. It is characterized by dynamic processes with frequent landslides, floods and avalanches.

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Shushtar, Historical Hydraulic System (Iran)

A masterpiece of creative genius, can be traced back to Darius the Great in the 5th century B.C. It involved the creation of two main diversion canals on the river Kƒrun one of which, Gargar canal, is still in use providing water to the city of Shushtar via a series of tunnels that supply water to mills. It forms a spectacular cliff from which water cascades into a downstream basin. It then enters the plain situated south of the city where it has enabled the planting of orchards and farming over an area of 40,000 ha. known as Mianƒb (Paradise).

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The Tower of Hercules (Spain)

The Tower has served as a lighthouse and landmark at the entrance of La Coru¤a harbour in north-western Spain since the late 1st century A.D. when the Romans built the Farum Brigantium. The Tower, built on a 57-metre-high rock, rises a further 55 meters. It is divided into three progressively smaller levels, the first of which corresponds to the Roman structure of the lighthouse. Immediately adjacent to the base of the Tower, is a small rectangular Roman building.

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Sulamain-Too Sacred Mountain (Kyrgyzstan)

Dominates the Fergana Valley and forms the backdrop to the city of Osh, at the crossroads of important routes on the Central Asian Silk Roads. For more than one and a half millennia, Sulamain was a beacon for travellers revered as a sacred mountain. Its five peaks and slopes contain numerous ancient places of worship and caves with petroglyphs as well as two largely reconstructed 16th-century mosques. One hundred and one sites with petroglyphs representing humans and animals as well as geometrical forms have been indexed in the property so far.

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The Sacred City of Caral-Supe (Peru)

The 5000-year-old 626-hectare archaeological site of The Sacred City of Caral-Supe is situated on a dry desert terrace overlooking the green valley of the Supe river. It dates back to the Late Archaic Period of the Central Andes and is the oldest centre of civilization in the Americas. Exceptionally well-preserved, the site is impressive in terms of its design and the complexity of its architectural, especially its monumental stone and earthen platform mounts and sunken circular courts. One of 18 urban settlements situated in the same area, Caral features complex and monumental architecture, including six large pyramidal structures.

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La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle watchmaking town-planning (Switzerland)

Consists of two towns situated close to one another in a remote environment in the Swiss Jura mountains, on land ill-suited to farming. Their planning and buildings reflect watch-makers' need of rational organization. Planned in the early 19th century, after extensive fires, the towns owed their existence to this single industry. Their layout along an open-ended scheme of parallel strips on which residential housing and workshops are intermingled reflects the needs of the local watch-making culture that dates to the 17th century and is still alive today.

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Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal (United Kingdom)

Situated in north-eastern Wales, the 18-kilometre long Pontcysyllte Canal is a feat of civil engineering of the Industrial Revolution, completed in the early years of the 19th century.

Covering a difficult geographical setting, the building of the canal required substantial, bold civil engineering solutions, especially as it was built without using locks. The aqueduct is a pioneering masterpiece of engineering and monumental metal architecture, conceived by the celebrated civil engineer Thomas Telford.

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The Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bains (France)

Where brine has been extracted since the Middle Ages if not earlier, have been inscribed as an extension to Claude-Nicolas Ledoux's Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans. The site is now to be known as From Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bains to the Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans, the production of open-pan salt. The extension features three buildings above ground: salt stores, the Amont well building and a former dwelling and is linked to the Royal Saltworks.

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Levoia (in Slovakia)

Was inscribed as an extension to Spissky Hrad and the extended site is now to be known as Levoia, Spissky and the Associated Cultural Monument.

The historic town-centre of Levoia was founded in the 13th and 14th-centuries within fortifications. Most of the site has been preserved and it includes the 14th century church of St James with its ten alters of the 15th and 16th centuries, a remarkable collection of polychrome works in the Late Gothic style, including an 18.6-metre high alterpiece completed around 1510 by Master Paul.

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Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park (Philippines)

Is an extension to the Tubbataha Reef Marine Park inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1993. The extension represents a threefold increase in the size of the original property.

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The Royal Tombs of the Joseon Dynasty (Republic of Korea)

Form a collection of 40 tombs scattered over 18 locations. Built over five centuries, from 1408 to 1966, the tombs honoured the memory of ancestors, showed respect for their achievements, asserted royal authority, protected ancestral spirits from evil and provided protection from vandalism. Spots of outstanding natural beauty were chosen for the tombs which typically have their back protected by a hill as they face south toward water and, ideally, layers of mountain ridges in the distance. Alongside the burial area, the royal tombs feature a ceremonial area and an entrance.

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Stoclet House (Belgium)

When banker and art collector Adolphe Stoclet commissioned this house from one of the leading architects of the Vienna Secession movement, Josef Hoffmann, in 1905, he imposed neither aesthetic nor financial restrictions on the project.

+The house and garden were completed in 1911 and their austere geometry marked a turning point in Art Nouveau, foreshadowing Art Deco and the Modern Movement in architecture. Stoclet House is one of the most accomplished and homogenous buildings of the Vienna Secession, and features works by Koloman Moser and Gustav Klimt, embodying the aspiration of creating a 'total work of art' (Gesamtkunstwerk).

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The Wadden Sea (Germany / The Netherlands)

Comprises the Dutch Wadden Sea Conservation Area and the German Wadden Sea National Parks of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein. It is a large temperate, relatively flat coastal wetland environment, formed by the intricate interactions between physical and biological factors that have given rise to a multitude of transitional habitats with tidal channels, sandy shoals, sea-grass meadows, mussel beds, sandbars, mudflats, salt marshes, estuaries, beaches and dunes.

The inscribed site represents over 66% of the whole Wadden Sea and is home to numerous plant and animal species, including marine mammals.

It is also a breeding and wintering area for up to 12 millions birds per annum and it supports more than 10 percent of 29 species. The site is one of the last remaining natural, large-scale, intertidal ecosystems where natural processes continue to function largely undisturbed.

Americans think old age begins at 68

Sixty-eight was the average age given by 2,969 US adults aged 18 and older who were asked by researchers when they thought old age begins.

But people 65 and older said old age starts six years later, at 74, while those aged 30-64 say it begins at around 70.

Meanwhile, people younger than 30 brought the average down to 68 by saying old age begins before 60. The poll, by the Pew Research Center Social and Demographic Trends, showed that older survey respondents were united on one issue: they personally do not feel that they have hit old age.

When asked whether they feel old, nearly seven in 10 adults aged 65 and older said no, they do not, a 152-page report of the results said.

Even among the over-75s, a solid majority, 61 percent, said they don't feel old.

Asked whether they feel older or younger than their age, half of American adults said younger.

Young adults, those aged 18-30, were the least likely to say that they felt younger than they really are. Just 23 percent feel that way, while those aged 50 to 74 were the most likely (61 percent) to say they felt more youthful than their numerical age.

Indeed, nearly half of respondents aged 50 and older said they feel at least a decade younger than they are. The poll was conducted by mobile and landline telephone over a four-week period between February and March this year.

Forty-four percent of the respondents, or 1,332, were 65 or older. AFP

Indian heritage architecture is 'nobody's baby'

In the days of the British Raj, Watson's Hotel in Bombay was the place to stay and be seen, its sweeping staircases, plush bars, restaurants and grand ballroom a symbol of colonial splendour.

But with the British long gone from India and the 150-room hotel closed, renamed and taken over by a ragbag of shops, offices and tenants, the distinctive building in the city now called Mumbai faces an uncertain future.

Despite the 138-year-old building being protected by law, years of neglect have seen it placed on the local municipal authority's "most dilapidated" list of dangerous structures at risk of collapse during the monsoon rains.

That prospect has enraged heritage campaigners, who see the pre-fabricated five-storey building as a vital part of the city's rich and varied history.

"It's probably the world's oldest inhabited cast-iron structure," said Abha Narain Lambah, a conservation architect who has helped save many of the city's historic buildings, including Mahatma Gandhi's former home, Mani Bhavan.

"It's iconic. But it's endemic of the problems that face a lot of India's historic buildings," she told AFP.

Watson's Hotel, where France's Lumiere Brothers first showed their newfangled invention of cinematography in India in 1896 and the US writer Mark Twain once stayed, has been under threat for some time.

In 1999, a survey carried out by the Mumbai-based Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) found the building was suffering from "severe structural distress" but there was not enough money to repair it.

Six years later, two balconies collapsed onto the street below, killing one person and injuring six others. The collapse was described at the time as a "disaster waiting to happen".

The New York-based non-governmental organisation the World Monuments Fund placed Esplanade Mansions, as the privately-owned former "whites only" hotel is now known, on a list of the world's 100 most endangered monuments in 2006.

"Even if there is a benefactor who says 'I will restore this building,' the logistics of being able to physically move the tenants out and restore it is a nightmare," said Lambah, who sits on the UDRI executive committee.

In a sign of the difficulties, tenants, many of them law firms serving the nearby courts, have told the state housing and development body that they will not leave the premises while repair work is carried out. Laws exist to protect historic buildings, but like much in India, they are either not enforced, liable to pressure from builders and politicians or disregarded in the battle for space in the country's rapidly growing cities.

In Mumbai alone, a city of 18 million people and two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and Elephanta Caves, the restoration of several historic buildings is caught up in a mass of bureaucracy.

Redevelopment plans for Crawford Market, a historic but crumbling working bazaar partly-designed by the father of British writer Rudyard Kipling in the mid-19th century, have been discussed for years, without much headway.

One proposal even suggested razing parts of the Gothic building, which was the first in the city to have electric lighting, to make way for a modern mall.

Lambah, who fought the demolition plans, is involved in restoring Mumbai's opera house - the only one in India - as well as the Romanesque Elphinstone College, whose alumni include major figures in Indian nationalism.

But despite receiving the go-ahead for the opera house project from Mumbai's heritage committee last year, she is still waiting for other cogs in the municipal machinery to turn.

"There's a huge amount of red tape and bureaucracy for each project. That's the essence of the problem," she said.

For campaigners, public ignorance, apathy, government agencies not working together and a lack of conservation specialists are threatening the very existence of India's wealth of heritage sites.

"It becomes nobody's baby," said Lambah.

Cities like Paris or London have made their historic buildings into an asset, making them tourist attractions, often with the help of the private sector and non-governmental organisations, she said.

"It's this that we need to shake up. We need to change the mindset that heritage is not a liability," she said. MUMBAI (AFP)