Rivers Without Boundaries

As the World Heritage Convention celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2022, over 1100 sites around the world are recognized as World Heritage - places  that are so valuable to humanity that there conservation has been deemed our collective responsibility. Yet many of these exceptional places face  increasing pressure from diverse types of development projects within and around the sites.

The first part of this report presents a general review and collection of case-studies on the impacts of water infrastructure on World Heritage areas world-wide. Analysing case studies from all continents, the report comes to the conclusion that the values of river ecosystems, although widely recognized by science and indigenous cultures alike, so far have not been adequately taken into account during implementation of the World Heritage Convention.