Canada List of Potential World Heritage Sites |
04 May 04 |
On April 30, 2004 Canada's Minister of the Environment, the Honourable David Anderson, unveiled Canada's updated Tentative List for World Heritage Sites (WHS), 11 sites of unimaginable beauty and exceptional wonder.An area spanning the Manitoba and Ontario border, referred to as the Atikaki/Woodland Caribou/Accord First Nations site, has been added to the list. Environmental organizations refer to the WHS nominated lands as part of 'The Heart of the Boreal'. The selected sites for Canada's Tentative List may be nominated to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee beginning in 2005. The UNESCO World Heritage Committee decides if nominated sites will ultimately be placed on the World Heritage List. The World Conservation Union - IUCN, undertakes assessment, technical reviews, and support to potential world heritage sites. The current priority, most relevant in Canada and Russia, is the urgency for boreal forest regions in both hemispheres to have World Heritage Sites. For this reason recommendations from the October 2003 IUCN workshop in St. Petersburg, include moving faster than one WHS per year per country, as has been policy in the past. The World Heritage List is a means of recognizing that some places, either natural or cultural, are of sufficient importance to be recognized by the international community. Membership on the List is the most significant global designation any site can achieve. Updating the Tentative List has provided an opportunity for the Government of Canada, in cooperation with other levels of government, First Nations, and relevant stakeholders, to identify sites of outstanding value for consideration by the World Heritage Committee. View the map of the WHS nominee View the full Environment Canada press release View the Environment Canada Backgrounder: Criteria for Determining Outstanding Universal Value View the Environment Canada Backgrounder: The UNESCO World Heritage Convention - Updating Canada's Tentative List Source: Environment Canada
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