Unesco to RP: Restore Ifugao terraces or it's off heritage list

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) on Thursday said the scenic Ifugao Rice Terraces in the Cordilleras was at risk of being stricken off the World's Heritage List should the Philippines fail to restore it in two years. Carmen Padilla, commissioner of the Unesco National Commission of the Philippines (Unacom), advised the government to take immediate measures to preserve and prevent further deterioration of the terraces, now included in Unesco's "Danger List" of heritage sites. In a media forum at the La Dulce Fontanana in Greenhills in San Juan City, Padilla scored the construction of shanties and other structures on the centuries-old rice terraces in the upland Cordillera region. Radio station dzBB quoted Padilla as saying that the structures may deface the site should an earthquake rock the region. Other factors cited by the committee as contributing to the site's deterioration are the rising unemployment rate among farmers in the area as well as the deforestation activities in the land. Architect Maria Jocelyn Mananghaya, Unacom consultant, pushed for the creation of a functioning management or a permanent secretariat that will enforce the necessary security and safety measures to safeguard the heritage site. Unacom also asked the government to intensify reforestation in the area as well as to tap community-based activities like zoning. The World Heritage Committee in 2001 inscribed the Rice Terraces in the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger, joining 32 other endangered World Heritage Sites. "The Rice Terraces is a delicate, evolving cultural landscape. In the absence of a systematic monitoring program or a comprehensive management plan, it is impossible to guarantee [its] preservation and sustainable development," a statement from the Foreign Affairs department quoted the panel as saying last June. The Ifugao Rice Terraces since then joined Ecuador's Galapagos Island and Israel's Old City of Jerusalem and its walls in the list of heritage sites which are in danger. Meanwhile, sites which had been removed from the list due to improvements in management and conservation include Timbuktu in Mali, Angkor in Cambodia, and more recently the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. - GMANews.TV