With 55 sites inscribed, China is the joint leader among the nations with the most WHS. It will probably be surpassed by Italy again after the combined 2020/2021 WHC, as China has only 1 proposal on the table while Italy has 3. It must have really hurt the Chinese that their Badain Jaran Desert proposal couldn’t be evaluated due to Covid reasons so they miss out on a year – even more so while they are hosting the WHC session. China already wasn’t a big fan of the Cairns Decision of 2000, which limited the number of nominations per country to 1 a year. It has so many more to offer and now it will take them 100 years!

The young Chinese scholar Rouran Zhang has written a study about how China deals with its heritage sites and how they are perceived by their visitors. The WHS of West Lake and Xidi & Hongcun are used as case studies. Zhang is also an expert member at the ICOMOS committee on Cultural Landscapes, so he brings in both the Chinese and the international perspective. “Chinese Heritage Sites and their Audiences” is a book for a scientific audience (with annotations and all …

The WHC meeting in the second half of July will be a special one, as the combined nominations for 2020 and 2021 will be discussed. It brings us a long list of potentials to look at. The first batch of IUCN and ICOMOS evaluations have been published last Friday. The second batch, including mostly extensions and referrals/deferrals from earlier years, will follow in a week or two.

With the lumping together of 2 years worth of nominations, it is also easier to see trends. For example, is the Global Strategy working?

What is the Global Strategy?

The Global Strategy was announced in 1994 to create a more Representative, Balanced and Credible World Heritage List.

A global study carried out by ICOMOS from 1987 to 1993 had revealed that Europe, historic towns and religious monuments, Christianity, historical periods and ‘elitist’ architecture (in contrast to vernacular) were all over-represented on the World Heritage List; whereas, all living cultures, and especially ‘traditional cultures’, were underrepresented.

As the study was done by ICOMOS, its focus was on cultural sites. However, the imbalance between cultural sites and natural/mixed sites later also …

The Dutch part of the Lower German Limes TWHS comprises 26 locations on the 2nd century Roman frontier along the river Rhine. Together with a string of sites in what is now Germany, it formed the north-eastern boundary of the Roman province of Germania Inferior . This Lower German Limes is up for discussion at the upcoming Combined 2020-2021 WHC session in July. I haven’t been able to find any news about the outcome of the ICOMOS advice yet, but it seems unlikely that the site will not be accepted given the history of earlier Limes proposals.

I reviewed the German part of this potential WHS already in 2019: Lower German Limes: Xanten . For a glimpse of the Dutch part, I chose location #25: the Roman aqueduct at Berg en Dal. Berg en Dal is a pretty village close to Nijmegen, which was the most important Roman city in the Netherlands. A legion of 5,000 soldiers was stationed here and a town of craft- and tradesmen developed around it. The aqueduct was a military aqueduct, which supplied the legionary fortress with fresh water. …

On the 31st of January I started the “ TWHS project ”, to pimp up the individual tentative site pages that have always been limited in content on this website. Now, after almost 4 months, we have reached the finish line (except for a few loose ends). It was a massive job, and especially the many descriptions in French or TWHS with hardly or no description at all were tough to do. But we got through it, thanks to all who participated. Each TWHS at least has a basic page now, including over 40% with a photo as well. I think the addition to the country pages with the markers for "extension" and "already (partly) inscribed" also add value.

Some statistics

• When we started the project, there were 1751 TWHS. Now there are 1772.
• We managed to add photos to 755 of these 1772 (keep them coming!)
• 11 different people sent in texts.
• 13 sent in photos.
• We’ve found additional locations for TWHS, so the maps got a boost from it too.
• We’ve discovered 40 TWHS that are already (partly) inscribed as WHS.
• And 73 TWHS that are …

In January I already wrote about my visit to the Dutch Wadden Island of Texel , as part of my goal to visit all national parks in The Netherlands. On Ascension Day 2021 (May 13), I managed to tick off the last one of the 21 parks: another Wadden Island, called Schiermonnikoog. It was my first visit to this island and I went there for a day trip.

The Schiermonnikoog National Park covers the whole island. With only 900 inhabitants and 40 square km surface, it is the smallest inhabited Wadden Island in the Netherlands. Just like at Texel, the Wadden Sea WHS is limited to the island's coastal areas.

How to get there

Schiermonnikoog can only reached by ferry from the port of Lauwersoog (Groningen). The transfer with a big boat takes about 50 minutes, there are also smaller boats which can take you there in 20 minutes for a surcharge. Ferries leave a few times a day ( schedule ), there is no pre-booking possible. When it is very busy they just will add another boat. You’re not allowed to take your own car with you to the island, only inhabitants can …

Over the years, many reviewers have pointed out the location of the WHS Plaque or a framed Certificate of Inscription in describing their visits. Finding them is almost a niche within a niche hobby! There is even a Flickr group dedicated to the subject (it got a bit sidetracked but the earlier entries do have some good examples) and a stock photo collection . Personally I am not so obsessed by this – I notice them in passing but usually am more interested in finding the OUV or an angle that has not been reviewed on this website yet. I even had a hard time finding photos of the things for this blog post.

But due to the general interest I’d like to poll how we can incorporate these markers in the website.

The Story behind the Plaques and Certificates

A few years ago already, Solivagant has explained the background story on these markers in depth in this forum topic. The bottom line is:

• There are no “official” plaques that are handed out to new WHS, a site should place one (“whenever possible”) after having been inscribed.

• “It …

Last week, 3 foreigners accompanying an anti-poaching patrol in Arly NP in Burkina Faso were murdered . With the focus of the jihadist killers on the white people within a larger group, this does look like a terrorist act. However, it also highlights the issue of poaching as they may not have liked the international attention for their illegal activities in the region and the park. I have used this tragic act for a refreshment of 2 connections on our website: “ Poaching ” and “ Rangers killed by Poachers ”.

Poaching as a threat

According to the IUCN Outlook 2020 , poaching is the number 1 threat to natural WHS in Africa and Asia and the 4th overall. The COVID-19 pandemic also causes an increased risk of poaching, as in-person staffing is reduced and illegal activities can flourish.

So far we only had 6 sites in our Poaching connection, but I got 52 hits on a text search for “poaching” on the UNESCO website. After some further scrutinizing, using the UNESCO documents and the IUCN outlook reports for the individual sites, I was able to extend the connection to 39 WHS. Notable additions …

In March 2021 I spent 2 weeks in Costa Rica, my first visit to this country. It had never been that high on my wish list – too touristy and no specific highlights that appealed to me. But it’s quite an ideal destination during Covid times: a real outdoor destination with good healthcare and few limitations. I easily covered 3 of its WHS, its only TWHS and several additional parks by rental car. Find below my Top Tips for Travelling to Costa Rica as a World Heritage Traveller.

1. It's so easy

Travelling in Costa Rica is like doing a jigsaw puzzle with only 100 pieces. The travel complexity factor is very low: everything runs smoothly, a lot of English is spoken, it is remarkably clean, you can drink the tap water, you can pay in USD or colones which both can be withdrawn from ATM’s. Many accommodations are owned by foreigners who cater to North American and/or Western European tastes. All this makes Costa Rica an ideal destination for travellers who venture outside of their own continent for the first time …

Like Talamanca , Guanacaste is a vast area which value is hard to summarize in one phrase. One can easily spend days visiting its specific features, its OUV ranges from the marine (turtle nesting sites) to the terrestrial with dry tropical forests and much more. I am only the third reviewer on this website , 11(!) years after the last one. However parts of the included area close to Liberia are quite popular with the beach tourists that mostly come from the USA.

There’s a similar choice to make as with Talamanca as to which included area to visit. The WHS comprises a contiguous area of seven protected zones. I did a half-day visit from Liberia to “Horizontes Forestry Experiment Station”. I had also wanted to add a stay near “Rincon de la Vieja National Park” (probably the most touristy part), but a rescheduling of my flight back to Europe forced me to cut my stay short.

Horizontes was a late discovery during my preparations. It needed pre-booking for Covid reasons as well, however the process wasn’t as smooth as with other parks in Costa Rica. Payment could only be done by bank transfer …

Corcovado currently is the only entry on the Tentative List of Costa Rica. There seem to be no plans to bring it forward (again), after the 2004 withdrawal caused by a negative IUCN advice. At the time it was dismissed with not much further explanation than “too small”, too small even for its mammals to survive in the near future. It could not match similar sites ( Darien , Talamanca ) that were already inscribed. Although I can see the point, I still found it the most worthwhile destination of my Costa Rica trip.

I based myself for 3 nights in Drake Bay, the most common access point on the Osa Peninsula. It is off the beaten tourist track, but not that remote. The area around Drake Bay itself is already really nice, I did a late afternoon birding tour there and hiked part of the Drake Bay Trail (a 20km long coastal path) on my own. I could have easily stayed one or two nights longer, tying in a trip to Isla del Cano for example.

For my Corcovado visit I booked a day tour to the Sirena station of the National Park …