A significant part of the world's heritage is currently endangered and on the verge of permanent destruction due to the effects of a rapidly changing world. Poverty and looting, conflicts as well as uncontrolled mass tourism or unprecedented economic and social evolutions in many parts of the world, are amongst the most immanent dangers threatening some of the most significant archaeological and cultural heritage sites in the world.

Last month, the Global Heritage Fund published the report Saving our Vanishing Heritage that focuses on the situation in the developing world where a large number of important cultural heritage sites exist and where the challenges are most acute. The Ename Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation was an active member of the Editorial Committee.

Saving Our Vanishing Heritage explores the challenges facing our most significant and endangered archaeological and heritage sites in the developing world— and what we can do to save them —before they are lost forever.

The focus on the developing world is driven by the large number of important cultural heritage sites which exist in regions with little capacity to safeguard their existence. In the first decade of the 21st century, we have lost or seriously impaired hundreds of our most precious historic sites — the physical record of our human civilization.

Vanishing surveys over 500 global heritage sites and highlights the accelerating threats facing these cultural treasures. The primary goals of the report are (1) to raise critically needed global awareness, (2) to identify innovative technologies and solutions and (3) to increase funding through private-public partnerships. This report also represents the first attempt to quantify the value of heritage sites as global economic resources to help achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It focuses on significant global heritage sites that have high potential for future tourism and responsible development, but the report’s findings and recommendations can and should be extended to other realms of heritage preservation. Because global heritage sites can generate extremely high economic asset values, these sites can help to greatly diversify local economies beyond tourism and sustenance agriculture reducing dependency and alleviating poverty.

How we as a global community act — or fail to act — in the coming years will determine if we save our global heritage and can realize the untapped economic opportunity these precious sites offer for global development in the world's lowest-income communities and countries.

For more information, please freely download the report at the website of Global Heritage Fund. http://www.globalheritagefund.org/vanishing