Tom Howarth is a Newsweek journalist founded in Bristol, UK, whose purpose is to report on nature and science. It covers climate change, biodiversity, excessive weather, zoonotic diseases, and more. Send an email to t. howarth@newsweek. com. languages: English.
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Recent research knew some of the world’s top iconic World Heritage sites as threatened by climate-related threats, adding 21 in the United States.
Led through corporate climate research X, the report highlights the vulnerability of 500 UNESCO sites around the world, with a maximum threatened until 2050 if urgent action is not taken to curb greenhouse fuel emissions.
According to the analysis, Florida’s Everglades National Park is the most threatened in the United States, facing a diversity of climate risks, adding coastal flooding, tropical cyclones, excessive heat, drought and typhoon surges.
Washington Olympic National Park is also among the top 50 maximum-sensitive sites at risk due to river hazards and surface flooding, as well as landslides.
“The prospective has a profound effect on the replacement of the climate in these places. But it’s not just our heritage beyond that’s threatened, it’s also our gift,” Lukky Ahmed, CEO and co-founder of Climate X, said in a statement.
Globally, the Sansa, a collection of ancient Buddhist mountain monasteries on the Korean Peninsula, has surpassed the list of maximum sites for climate change. The report cites river and surface flooding as the main threats to those monasteries, some of which date back to the seventh century.
Other high-risk sites come with the Australian opera house in Sydney, the Indonesian cultural landscape of Bali, the Chinese cultural landscape of the West Lake in Hangzhou, and the Norwegian fjords of western Norway
“While the loss of those cultural treasures, many of which have suffered for millennia, would be devastating, it is also important not to forget that the genuine social and economic impact on climate replacement is going away here and now,” Ahmed said.
Climate X co-founder Kamil Kluza echoed the urgency of the situation, telling Newsweek, “I think the message is that the dangers are there and they want them to be actively worked on.
“That capital budgets cash for weather adaptation, as well as cutting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. “
The report was generated by the Spectra Climate X platform, which uses complex algorithms to engineer the long-duration probability of 16 other climate risks, adding excessive heat, tropical cyclones and floods – Acrosing 8 warming scenarios over a 100-year horizon.
Each site assigned a threat score, ranging from one (no threat) to F (high threat), based on projected overall loss percentages.
Sites in Africa, the Middle East and Latin American countries were excluded from the research because climate X does not yet have a policy in those regions. Other excluded sites were in an assessment that they were not at risk.
In total, UNESCO, the educational, clinical and cultural organization of the United Nations, 1,223 World Heritage sites, covering the entire world.
The United States is home to 26 World Heritage Sites, Yosemite, and Yellowstone National Parks.
In response to the report, UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre clarified to Newsweek that the organization was not involved in the analysis and has no information about the methodology employed.
“UNESCO is not in a position to comment on it at this stage,” the Centre stated.
Ahmed concluded by calling on governments, preservationists, and the global community to prioritize the protection of these sites.
“Our findings serve as a stark warning for governments, preservationists and the global community to prioritize the safeguarding of our planet—to preserve our ancient monuments and our current assets and infrastructure—and to protect life today and into the future,” he said
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Tom Howarth is a Newsweek reporter based in Bristol, U.K. His focus is reporting on nature and science. He covers climate change, biodiversity, extreme weather, zoonotic diseases and more. Tom joined Newsweek in August 2024 from BBC Science Focus and has previously worked at the European Southern Observatory. He is a graduate of the University of Cambridge, where he obtained a master’s degree in advanced chemical engineering. You can get in touch with Tom by emailing [email protected]. Languages: English.
Tom Howarth is a Newsweek reporter based in Bristol, U.K. His focus is reporting on nature and science. He covers climate change, biodiversity, extreme weather, zoonotic diseases and more. Tom joined Newsweek in August 2024 from BBC Science Focus and has previously worked at the European Southern Observatory. He is a graduate of the University of Cambridge, where he obtained a master’s degree in advanced chemical engineering. You can get in touch with Tom by emailing [email protected]. Languages: English.