The sites fighting to be removed from the Unesco World Heritage List

It recognises places of "outstanding universal value" and can catapult lesser-known sites to global fame. So why are some places pleading to be removed from the list?

Set in the mountains of central Slovakia, the tiny village of Vlkolínec is a picture-perfect medieval hamlet with more houses than people. Its roughly 20 full-time residents live in 45 fairytale-like cottages painted in bright colours clustered around an 18th-Century bell tower.

Because of Vlkolínec's distinctive architecture, this remarkably intact settlement was added by the United Nations as a World Heritage site in 1993. Since then, more than 100,000 visitors have descended on the community every year. Recently, some locals have argued that the designation and associated tourism has created more issues than they're worth and want to have the village delisted.

Roughly 7,000km away in Tanzania, the Maasai International Solidarity Alliance has also called for removing the wildlife-rich Ngorongoro Conservation Area from the World Heritage List. The area is home to pastoralist communities and some of Africa's most iconic safari experiences, but locals argue that conservation policies tied to its internationally protected status have led to residents being displaced from ancestral grazing lands.

These disputes are highlighting a growing debate about what happens when the interests of local communities collide with efforts to preserve places deemed important to humanity.

The ever-expanding World Heritage List is overseen by Unesco, an international United Nations committee that identifies and protects places it deems to have "outstanding cultural or natural importance to humanity". Since it inscribed its first 12 sites in 1978, its list has grown to 1,248 sites across 170 countries. These range from famous landmarks such as Machu Picchu and the Great Wall of China to lesser-known places such as Romania's Wooden Churches of Maramureș and the ancient Moroccan oasis settlements of Ait-Ben-Haddou.

The World Heritage List emerged from a post-World War Two push to protect culturally and environmentally significant places threatened by conflict, industrialisation and modern development.

Because Unesco designation can unlock international conservation funding, it is one of the world's most influential tools for heritage protection. Supporters point to examples such as the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System, which was removed from Unesco's "In Danger" list in 2018 after stronger environmental protections were introduced; and Angkor Wat, where decades of restoration and conservation work helped save a site badly damaged by war and looting.

"The credo of Unesco is about shared heritage, conserving it, celebrating it and recognising it as an accomplishment of humankind," says John H Stubbs, a preservation scholar and former vice president at the World Monuments Fund.

But since the World Heritage List's early days, the rise of social media has increasingly made Unesco status something that may help to preserve a site while simultaneously changing the communities who live nearby through tourism.

Greg Richards, a researcher who studies cultural tourism and overtourism, compares the Unesco designation to star ratings in guidebooks that point tourists to "must-see" places. He also notes that more visitors is one of the most predictable results of being added to the list.

"I think the consensus among the leading experts in the world is that there is a whole range of possible things that can result from getting a Unesco listing, but one that will definitely happen........

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