From Beijing’s ancient alleyways to the banks of the Thames, some of the world’s most celebrated historic places are being altered, crowded or quietly dismantled — and critics say the international body tasked with safeguarding them is either unable or unwilling to stop it.
Unesco’s World Heritage programme has spent more than four decades designating the planet’s most significant natural and man-made sites, and its list now runs to over 1,000 locations across 161 countries. This week, the 39th session of the UN heritage committee in Bonn is expected to add a further 18 sites, among them Scotland’s Forth Bridge, the Champagne wine region of France and the ancient Turkish city of Ephesus — which has been seeking the designation since 1993.
But as the list grows longer, so does the list of grievances against the organisation’s ability to do what its name suggests.
The most visible failure has been in conflict zones. The systematic demolition of ancient sites across Syria and Iraq by Islamic State militants exposed the organisation’s total inability to intervene when threatened sites lie in territory beyond the reach of international law or diplomacy. Unesco could document the losses. It could not prevent them.
The problems closer to home are less dramatic but arguably more corrosive. In London, a succession of tower developments along the South Bank prompted the organisation to warn that the setting of the Palace of Westminster — a protected world heritage site — was being irreversibly compromised. It threatened to place the site on its endangered list. That threat was subsequently dropped following lobbying by the UK’s ambassador to the organisation, leaving campaigners to question what the designation is actually worth.
Only two sites have ever been removed from the list in its entire history: an antelope conservation area in Oman, whose protected land was reduced by ninety percent by the government, and Dresden, where a new road bridge was judged to have destroyed the historic river panorama of the city’s baroque skyline.
Beyond the question of protection, there is a growing argument that Unesco’s stamp of approval can itself hasten the transformation — and degradation — of the places it honours. The designation has become a powerful marketing tool, drawing tourist numbers that fundamentally alter the character of sites and their surroundings. The town nearest Angkor Wat in Cambodia has expanded into a resort strip driven almost entirely by the two million or more visitors who now arrive each year. Niagara Falls is flanked by casino towers and hotels. In both cases, the Unesco label played a direct role in generating the footfall that followed.
Nowhere illustrates the paradox more clearly than Beijing. After the Forbidden City was inscribed in 1987, the surrounding historic neighbourhood was subjected to large-scale clearance. Traditional courtyard houses and narrow hutong lanes were demolished — ostensibly in the name of conservation — and replaced with enlarged reconstructions and purpose-built heritage streets designed primarily for tourism. Long-term residents were displaced. Zhang Jie, a professor of architecture at Tsinghua University who has spent two decades working to preserve Beijing’s historic fabric, has described the risk of entire historic cities being flattened or homogenised in pursuit of a heritage aesthetic that no longer reflects genuine history.
The Great Wall of China, also a Unesco site, has seen significant portions either rebuilt in a heavily restored form or dismantled by local residents for building materials. A recent analysis by the Chinese Association of Cultural Relics found that roughly a third of the wall has now disappeared.
As the Bonn committee prepares to welcome its latest cohort of designated sites, the question of what the status actually guarantees — for preservation, for authenticity, for the communities that live within and around these places — remains without a satisfactory answer.
