The 2008 World Monuments Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites was announced today by Bonnie Burnham, president of the World Monuments Fund (WMF), the nonprofit organization that, for more than 40 years, has helped save hundreds of endangered architectural and cultural sites around the world. This year’s list highlights three critical man-made threats: political conflict, unchecked urban and industrial development, and, for the first time, global climate change.

Announced every two years, the WMF Watch List acts as a call to action, drawing international public attention to threatened cultural heritage sites across the globe. The Watch List is assembled by an international panel of experts in archaeology, architecture, art history, and preservation. For many historic sites, inclusion on the List is the best, and sometimes the only, hope for survival.

The 2008 Watch List clearly shows that human activity has become the greatest threat of all to the world’s cultural heritage, causing irreparable harm to many of the important places in the world that provide unique access to shared human history. Pollution eats away at ancient stones. The rapid rise in global tourism is bringing more and more people to fragile and often unprotected places. Cities and suburbs are spreading unchecked, at the expense of historic landscapes and buildings. Political discord and armed conflict are not only wreaking havoc on sites directly—with modern weapons more destructive than ever—but are destroying communities, leaving the world’s cultural heritage open to neglect, vandalism, and looting. And, perhaps most daunting of all, the destructive effects of global climate change are already clearly apparent. The 2008 Watch List includes several sites that are threatened right now by flooding, encroaching desert, and changing weather patterns. Sadly, future lists will bring many more.

To learn more about WMF:
http://wmf.org/index.html