The Hindu : Front Page : Evaluation of Western Ghats to begin this week

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Monday, Oct 11, 2010
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Evaluation of Western Ghats to begin this week

K.S. Sudhi

Preparatory to nominating the Ghats as World Heritage site

IUCN is independent evaluator for heritage sites
Inspection in Kerala to start at Parambikulam

KOCHI: The evaluation of serial sites in the Western Ghats to gauge whether its conservation and biological diversity values are universally outstanding will begin this week.

The appraisal, to be carried out by an International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) team, is part of the preparatory process for nominating the Ghats as a World Heritage site. India had been campaigning for including the 39 serial sites in the Ghats in the world list for quite some time.

The Union Ministry of Environment and Forests had earlier submitted a dossier for all the serial sites to the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The IUCN is the independent evaluator for the World Heritage sites in its capacity as formal advisory body to the World Heritage Convention.

The two-member IUCN team, comprising R. Wendy Strahm and Brian Furze, will begin its inspection in the Kerala part of the Western Ghats at Parambikulam.

The team is expected to reach Parambikulam on Tuesday, T.M. Manoharan, Principal Chief Conservator of Forest, said.

The team will also visit Munnar, Periyar and Kalakkadu Mumdanthurai areas during the week.

Presentation

A presentation on the serial sites in the Kerala part will be made before the visiting team in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday, Mr. Manoharan said. Elaborate prepara tions have been made to brief the team about the speciality of each site in the Kerala region.

Experts have been designated for making the presentations and providing required information to the team, Mr. Manoharan said.

The Ministry has sought the nomination of the sites according to criteria seven and 10 of the operational guidelines for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention which deal with “areas that contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity, including those containing threatened species of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation.”

Conservation interest

Though the Western Ghats are known around the world as an area of conservation interest, the evaluators will assess whether it is a globally outstanding site. It will be the evaluators' task to shed light on this using all available literature and discussions, a World Heritage Evaluations Project Management expert said in an e-mail communication.

The integrity and intactness of the sites, the management aspects and the steps introduced for dealing with threats will be evaluated. The presence of a “convincing management regime” in place for the sites will also be taken into account, experts said.

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