While wars and revolutions have lengthy threatened nationwide cultural heritage sites — most just lately in Iran and Ukraine — a brand new hazard has emerged in the type of climate change.
UNESCO World Heritage sites from the 4,000 year-old pyramid temples in Iraq to the historic statues of Easter Island are facing excessive erosion and deterioration as temperatures rise and storms and droughts intensify. A 2025 examine confirmed that 80% of World Heritage sites are facing local weather stress as supplies resembling wooden and stone battle to adapt to a warmer world.
Here are a couple of of the world’s most climate-vulnerable UNESCO-listed cultural sites.
‘Cradle of civilization’: Ziggurat of Ur
Thousands of years of historical past may vanish as rising temperatures drive excessive erosion throughout Iraq’s World Heritage-listed historic southern cities on account of local weather change.
The legendary Ziggurat of Ur, a 4,000-year previous pyramid temple in-built homage to the moon god Nanna, is crumbling as shifting sand dunes and excessive winds put on away at its northern facet.
The web site can also be affected by rising salty groundwater — linked to persistent heat and drought — eroding the mud bricks marking the historic Mesopotamian temples and spiritual sites the place Sumerian rituals had been practiced.
“These salt deposits appeared due to global warming and climate change,” mentioned Kazem Hassoun, an inspector at the antiquities division in Dhi Qar — the modern-day province that was as soon as the heartland of historic Sumerian civilization.
Referring to the historic Royal Cemetery of Ur, Hassoun mentioned the salt deposits may ultimately trigger the “complete collapse of the mud bricks” at the web site since salt crystals seep into the foundations and increase inside the porous supplies.
Further alongside the Euphrates River, the UNESCO World Heritage archaeological sites of the historic metropolis of Babylon are additionally in danger of abrasion on account of excessive salinity ranges — which is endangering historic clay-based constructions.
At the Temple of Ninmakh, a Seventh-century B.C.E monument devoted to the mom goddess of fertility and creation, archaeologists are utilizing a 7,000-year-old method to create desalinated mudbricks to fight salt erosion.
Mosques of Isfahan, Iran
While war is the most recent threat to Persia’s grand spiritual monuments, the mosques constructed throughout the millennia in the Iranian metropolis of Isfahan are more and more susceptible to a fast-changing local weather.
The Masjed-e Jame, also referred to as the ‘Friday Mosque’, embodies the evolution of mosque structure over 12 centuries. Started in 841 C.E. and regularly constructed, reconstructed and renovated, it’s thought-about a “museum of Iranian architecture,” based on UNESCO, and was a blueprint for spiritual and academic structure throughout Iran, Iraq and Syria.
Nearby, the Meidan Emam World Heritage Site is an unlimited seventeenth century central sq. and residential to the Mecca-facing Imam Mosque that’s famed for its blue-tiled dome and complex calligraphy.
But the Imam Mosque types a part of the UNESCO-listed complicated that’s already struggling extreme local weather change impacts, together with sinking land (subsidence) attributable to the over-exploitation of groundwater —made worse by extended droughts. Extreme temperatures and sharply fluctuating humidity are additionally affecting the buildings, say consultants.
Gradual subsidence is inflicting main stress to historic monuments like the Imam Mosque and the Masjed-e Jame as earth fissures type the place the land is sinking.
“Earth fissures in Isfahan Province can be decimeters [10 centimenters] wide, and together with differential subsidence rates, have the capacity to tear buildings apart,” famous the UNESCO Land Subsidence International Initiative.
“The cracks are getting deeper, and some columns have tilted,” Bahram Nadi, a member of the specialised land subsidence activity pressure in Isfahan, informed the Tehran Times of the Imam Mosque in September 2024. “If urgent action is not taken, we risk losing this invaluable piece of our heritage.”
Easter Island’s historic Moai statues
The world-renowned Moai statues on Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, may very well be usually underwater inside half a century, based on a 2025 examine by researchers from the University of Hawaii.
Ahu Tongariki, the iconic ceremonial platform in Rapa Nui National Park that hosts 15 statues courting again round 800 years, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Yet this place of deep cultural and historic significance may very well be battered by massive seasonal waves pushed by sea stage rise linked to local weather change, the examine mentioned. Coastal flooding may threaten 51 cultural belongings in the space.
“This research reveals a critical threat to the living culture and livelihood of Rapa Nui,” mentioned Noah Paoa, a University of Hawaii researcher and lead writer of the examine, in a press release.
“For the community, these sites are an essential part of reaffirming identity and support the revitalization of traditions,” he added, noting that they’re “the backbone” of the island’s very important tourism business.
“Failure to address this threat could ultimately endanger the island’s UNESCO World Heritage Site status,” Paoa mentioned.
Great Wall of China
Extending greater than 21,000 kilometers (13,000 miles) throughout northwestern China, the Great Wall of China is an historic defensive community of fortifications constructed and rebuilt over two millennia. The landmark was designated a World Heritage Site in 1987, with UNESCO stating that its “historic and strategic importance is matched only by its architectural significance.”
But regardless of its longevity, the wall is eroding at an accelerating charge, worsened by local weather change, based on a staff of China-based researchers.
Because sections had been constructed in lots of areas with rammed earth, massive parts of the edifice are susceptible to “severe deterioration” on account of excessive wind erosion, heavy rainfall and salinization, resulting in “cracking, disintegration, and even eventual collapse,” mentioned the examine.
The researchers estimate that solely round 6% of the wall’s complete size is well-preserved, whereas roughly 52% has already diappeared or is extremely degraded. They are calling for pressing conservation measures, together with the enhancement of a mossy protecting layer often known as a “biocrust.”
Edited by: Teresa O’Connell
