Broads may bid for World Heritage status

The Norfolk Broads could join the Egyptian pyramids, Machu Picchu, the Great Barrier Reef and the Serengeti as a prestigious World Heritage Site, if a bid for official status goes ahead. The ultimate cultural accolade, the UNESCO designation would raise the area’s profile on the global scene and help preserve this important wetland. According to the official description, the 890 World Heritage Sites are “places of outstanding universal value to all humanity and are of great importance for the conservation of mankind’s cultural and natural heritage.”

The Broads is already a member of the UK’s family of National Parks and a wetland of international importance and renown, but later this week Broads Authority members will meet to discuss whether the Authority should go ahead with a bid to have the area designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The decision to bid for recognition of the Broads as a cultural landscape under the World Heritage Convention was first mooted in 2005-2006, but was put on hold to await government guidance.

The World Heritage Convention was established in 1972 by UNESCO (United Nationals Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.)  At the beginning of this year the Government decided to scrap its current “tentative list” and draw up a shorter list from which one would be selected each year for WHS nomination. There are currently 28 UNESCO-recognised sites in the UK, including Durham Cathedral and Castle, Canterbury Cathedral, Ironbridge Gorge, Stonehenge, Blenheim Palace, the City of Bath, the Tower of London, the Palace of Westminister, Dorset and East Devon Coast, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape.

“The Broads is a very special area and we believe merits this international recognition,” says John Packman, Chief Executive of the Broads Authority. “Our preliminary view suggests that the Broads would meet the UK criteria in three of the ten categories under which sites can be nominated.  As a member of the UK’s family of National Parks we are some distance there already.”