Durban - The World Heritage Committee has voiced renewed fears for the future of some of the world’s most outstanding natural and cultural treasures, including several World Heritage Sites on the continent.
There are more than 900 World Heritage Sites across the world, protected under a UN convention that recognises their “outstanding universal value”.
Of these, 44 sites are listed officially as being in danger – and almost half of those sites are in Africa, ravaged by armed conflicts, rampant poaching of wildlife, illegal logging, mining and other development threats.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has five World Heritage Sites and every one of them remains on the official “danger” list.
They include the Virunga National Park, home to the endangered mountain gorilla, and the Garamba National Park that was, until quite recently, the last refuge of the northern white rhino.
But during the most recent survey of the park last year, none of those animals could be found and the species is now regarded as extinct in the wild.
Elephants have also been decimated.
According to a report presented to the World Heritage Committee at its annual meeting in Cambodia at the weekend, there may be about 1 600 elephants left in the park, down from 3 600 elephants in 2007. Overall, the park’s elephant population has crashed by 85 percent since 1995.
Last year helicopter-borne poachers gunned down 22 elephants in a single day.
A few months later park guards clashed with a group of about 50 rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army, leading to the evacuation of most park rangers.
But the rebels are not the only problem, according to the committee report, as DRC armed forces were also heavily implicated in the poaching.
In the neighbouring Virunga Park, the army is battling M23 rebels, reducing the number of patrols by park guards charged with protecting the 100 or so remaining mountain gorillas.
Two oil companies have also been exploring for oil reserves close to the park and the DRC environment minister hinted last year that the government was considering de-gazetting a section of the park to allow for oil exploration.
A similar picture emerges from the Okapi Wildlife Reserve where the “Simba” rebel group has been engaged in elephant poaching and illegal mining.
Security
The committee report, tabled in Phnom Penh last week, said the security situation in the DRC had deteriorated since the heritage committee’s last annual meeting and there had been little progress in implementing the Kinshasa Declaration of 2011 to secure the future of its World Heritage Sites.
Elsewhere on the continent, Seleka fighters had been implicated in the slaughter of forest elephants in the Central African Republic.
In Tanzania, the number of elephants in the Selous Game Reserve had fallen by 44 percent in less than five years, and the government was pushing to build a new uranium mine, as well as a massive new dam that would “severely impact” the outstanding universal value of the park.
The Stiegler’s Dam project, spearheaded by the Rufiji Basin Development authority and the Brazilian construction group Odebrecht, was likely to flood a large chunk of the reserve and change the entire ecology of the Rufiji Delta.
Committee members have warned that any decision to build a dam inside the park is likely to result in Selous being added to the growing list of world heritage sites in danger.
In Kenya, concern is mounting around the possible construction of a major dam in neighbouring Ethiopia which would affect the Lake Turkana national park.
In Malawi, the committee also voiced concern over reports that the British company Surestream Petroleum was involved in oil exploration that could threaten the Lake Malawi National Park World Heritage Site. - The Mercury