UNESCO designated sites, including World Heritage (WH) sites, Biosphere Reserves (BR), and UNESCO Global Geoparks (UGGp), conserve valuable natural and cultural heritage, unique biodiversity, and geological landscapes. These sites demonstrate sustainable resource management and contribute to sustainable science education.
Most of the UNESCO designated sites in Asia and the Pacific are exposed to multiple hazards. The adverse impact of the disaster will threaten the valuable assets, lives of residents and visitors, and local economy. The hazards arising from Climate Change have been the pressing issue in some places like Pacific islands, and some of those hazards may not be reduced just by adaptation. Promoting Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) through proper disaster risk management activities can save those valuable tangible and intangible assets from disaster damage. Yet, there are gaps in the level of implementation of disaster risk management activities at the sites in this region.
The project aims at developing capacity of disaster risk management of UNESCO designated sites in the region. The project will 1) develop a disaster risk management handbook for UNESCO designated sites in the region, 2) implement small pilot projects at UNESCO sites in the region, and 3) organize knowledge exchange meetings. This assessment is implemented to collect good practices and identify success factors and challenges which will be the contents of the disaster risk management handbook.
UNESCO designated sites have commonalities in their key assets but are diverse in scale, geography, and management scheme, which makes it difficult to immediately transfer the lessons learned from one site to another. Therefore, meaningful knowledge sharing is possible if we pay attention to different governance of sites and focus on the process rather than result. Therefore, the handbook will showcase the good practices which include implementation process and associated success factors and challenges. And the handbook will categorize the knowledge per key site governance schemes: national government-led, local government-led, community/private sector-led, and mixed.
