Heena Sharma Blog

  Four natural sites and three cultural sites were added to the Unesco World Heritage List . The natural sites added on Monday are the four islands with rich biodiversity in Japan; a coastal area of geo-diversity and bio-diversity in South Korea; part of the mountain ridge running down the Malay Peninsula in Thailand; and a corridor along the eastern coast of the Black Sea in Georgia, reports Xinhua news agency. The three cultural sites are the Dutch Water Defence Lines; the Arslantepe Mound archaeological tell in Turkey; and the Colonies of Benevolence in Belgium and the Netherlands. The World Heritage Committee of the Paris-based Unesco made the announcement during its 44th session held online and chaired from Fuzhou, China. The four islands on a chain in the southwest of Japan, encompassing 42,698 hectares of sub-tropical rainforests, are entirely uninhabited by humans and have high bio-diversity value with a very high percentage of endemic species, many of them globally thr

Governments establish protected areas so that plants and animals can live without human pressures that might otherwise drive them towards extinction. Current Affairs News : In the 146 years since   Yellowstone National Park   in the northwestern United States became the   world’s first protected area, nations around the world have created more than 200,000 terrestrial nature reserves. Together they cover more than 20 million km², or almost 15% of the planet’s land surface – an area bigger than South America. Governments establish   protected areas   so that plants and animals can live without human pressures that might otherwise drive them towards extinction. These are special places, gifts to future generations and all non-human life on the planet. But in a   study published today in Science, we show that roughly one-third of the global protected area estate (a staggering 6 million km²) is under   intense human pressure.   Roads, mines, industrial logging, farms,