29 Jun 2012

UNESCO / WORLD HERITAGE SITES

The UN’s cultural organization UNESCO today approved new World Heritage sites in Palau, Israel, Indonesia, Morocco and Palestine.UNESCO

Posted at: June 29, 2012 1:31 pm

Duration: 00:58

Available in: SD

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Full script

STORY: UNESCO / WORLD HERITAGE SITES
TRT: 0:58
SOURCE: UNESCO / NICK MARTORANO, WWW.OCEANWONDERS.ORG
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: NATS

DATELINE: FILE

SHOTLIST:

FILE – NICK MARTORANO, WWW.OCEANWONDERS.ORG - DATE UNKNOWN, ROCK ISLANDS, PALAU

1.	Various shots, Rock Islands
2.	Various shots, underwater corals and fish

FILE – UNESCO - DATE UNKNOWN, MOUNT CARMEL, ISRAEL

3.	Various shots, NahalMe'arot/Wadi el-Mughara Caves

STORYLINE:

The UN's cultural organization UNESCO today (29 June) approved new World Heritage sites in Palau, Israel, Indonesia, Morocco and Palestine.  The Palestine site, the church of the Nativity, was the first in the Occupied Territories. 
 
Palau's Rock Islands Southern Lagoon covers more than a hundred thousand hectares, with 445 uninhabited islands of volcanic limestone. The site harbours the highest concentration of marine lakes anywhere – isolated bodies of seawater separated from the ocean by land barriers. The complex reef system features almost four hundred coral species and sustains a large diversity of plants, birds and marine life including at least 13 shark species.

In Israel, the NahalMe'arot / Wadi el-Mughara Caves at Mount Carmel contain cultural deposits representing half a million years of human evolution, with evidence of burials, early stone architecture and the transition from a hunter-gathering lifestyle to agriculture and animal husbandry.

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee, meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia this week, also accepted Palestine's request to declare the purported birthplace of Jesus, the Church of Nativity and pilgrimage route in Bethlehem, a World Heritage Site. At the same time the site, located in the West Bank ten kilometers south of Jerusalem, was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger as it has been damaged by water leaks.

Palestine became a full member of UNESCO in October 2011.

In Indonesia, the traditional 'subak' system for irrigating rice paddies was declared a World Heritage activity, and in Morocco Rabat was recognized as a modern capital and historic city.