On world heritage site by UNESCO

Today the salvation of rare natural areas is a fairly urgent problem for the entire world community. This is connected with the annual decrease in primary forests areas, destruction of unique ecosystems, pollution of freshwater reservoirs. Scientists all over the world are looking for the ways of saving and preserving, untouched by man corners on the Earth. A variety of actions are held, scientific and public organizations focused on preserving unique ecosystems for us and for future generations are created.

The purpose of the UNESCO Convention is to attract the international community efforts to preserve the unique cultural and nature sites.

In order to carry out its mandate, UNESCO performs five principal functions:

• •    Prospective study of what forms of education, science, culture and communication will be needed in the world tomorrow?

• •    Advancement, transmission and sharing of knowledge: primarily based on scientific research, training and teaching.

• •    Regulatory activities: the preparation and adoption of international acts and binding recommendations.

• •    Providing expert’s services to Member States for their policy making in the sphere of their projects development.

• •    Exchange of specialized information. [4]

Russia, undoubtedly, is saturated with unique and untouched by economic activities natural systems.

There are 26 natural and cultural items that have the status of World Heritage sites ( WHS ) in our country today. And it is 2,5 % of the total number of the objects in the world. Here are some of them:

• •    Lake Baikal

• •    Volcanoes of Kamchatka

• •    Golden Mountains of Altai

• •    Western Caucasus

• •    The natural reserve complex "Wrangel Island"

• •    The Moscow Kremlin and the Red Square

• •    Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Groups of Monuments related with

it.

• •    Kizhi Pogost

• •    Citadel, Ancient City and Fortress Buildings of Derbent. [3]

Fig. 1. Types of cultural UNESCO WHS in Russia, units.

Churches, monasteries, temple complexes.

The historic city center.

Kremlin.

Other objects.

• 16 objects out of 26 belong to the "cultural" category, 10 - to the "natural" objects. The structure of the types of cultural WHS in Russia are shown in Fig. 1. A large part of them occupy the temple complexes.

In 2015 the leading positions in the number of UNESCO WHS occupied Italy, China and Spain. Russia was on the 4th place in the list. (Fig. 2)

Listed WHS, are significantly different in size from the area less than 1,000 hectares (reserve "Vallée de Mai" in the Seychelles, which occupies only 19.5 hectares) to such vast areas as a complex of mountain parks and reserves on the border of Alaska and northwest of Canada (9.8 mln. ha.), lake Baikal with the surrounding national parks and reserves (8.8 mln. ha), Galapagos Islands (about 8.77 million. ha,

Fig. 2. The countries - leaders in the number of UNESCO WHS, units.

including - 8 million hectares of adjacent waters). As for Russia, it makes full use of the potential of its large area: 3 out of 5 of its sites are more than 3 million hectares in area, and "Lake Baikal" is the second on the list in its size.

At the 38th session of the World Heritage Committee, held in June 2014 in Doha (Qatar) 26 new sites were added to the list of theWHS, 21 of them have cultural criteria, 4 - natural, 1 - multimodal and 4 - the advanced.

In March 2016 the list of WHS consists of 1031 objects. It includes 802 cultural, 197 natural and 32 mixed sites. (Fig. 3). [5]

The objects are located on the territory of 163 member countries that signed the Convention of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage protection. Countries, where the World Heritage sites are situated bear the responsibility of their preservation.

Fig. 3 Types WHS UNESCO world, units.

Endangered пСultural.

Natural.

The natural and cultural.

WHS status is very attractive in terms of obtaining a number of advantages in the environmental context, and in terms of the full support of the territories inscribed in the World Heritage List. The Convention provides wide opportunities in the legal, informational and economic fields, relations and contacts that are developing and improving for more than thirty years.

Main advantages:

• •    additional guarantees of safety and integrity of unique complexes;

• •    the increasing prestige of territories and institutions that control them;

• •    popularization of the included in the list objects;

• •    development of alternative forms of nature management (ecotourism);

• •    organization of monitoring and control of the conservation conditions of natural objects.

Fully respecting the sovereignty of States and not prejudicing the rights of property provided by national legislation, the States Parties of this Convention recognize that the protection of World Heritage - is the duty of the whole international community. UNESCO helps to strengthen the capacity of developing countries, particularly in the field of fundamental and natural sciences, engineering and technologies. In cooperation with various agents-donors UNESCO gives advises and provides technical assistance to governments in order to enable them to develop and implement effective policy and strategy in the field of science and technology.