At the meeting of the National Commission for UNESCO, First Deputy Minister Ruslan Grecianik and Director of the Department of Nature Reserve Fund and Biodiversity Eduard Arustamyan proposed to introduce a new serial transnational object «Primeval and ancient coniferous forests of the Carpathian Mountains» on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
He said that despite the war, the Ministry continues to work to preserve the Ukrainian natural heritage. The inclusion of unique forests and ancient coniferous upper mountain forests of the Carpathians in the UNESCO World Heritage is an additional guarantee for the protection of valuable territories and the fulfillment of international obligations within the European integration. The Biodiversity Conservation Strategy 2030 also provides legal protection for all primary and ancient EU forests as well as the EU Forest Strategy 2030. that all surviving primary and old forests should be under strict legal protection.
Also at this meeting, the current status of UNESCO sectors was reviewed and their staffing was approved. Among other issues, the staff of the Natural Heritage Sector of the National Commission for UNESCO was approved.
One of the priority activities of the Branch will be to attract assistance under the sectoral support and international cooperation programme, which will facilitate the development of Ukraine’s biosphere reserves.
The Natural Heritage Sector included representatives of nature protection institutions, including specialists of the Carpathian Biosphere Reserve, the National Parks “Sinevir”, “Uzhansky”, “Boykovshchyna”, “Gorgan”, the Institute of Agroecology and Nature Management of NAAN Ukraine, Ltd “Danube-Carpathian Programme” and the Ukrainian Society for the Protection of Birds.
Eduard Arustamyan noted that this will allow environmental institutions to exert more influence, including in the field of science, since representatives of the Biosphere Reserve «Askania-Nova», Desnia-Starogut and Shatsky National Parks also joined the Science Sector.
In 2007, the first UNESCO World Natural Heritage included beech praforests of the Ukrainian and Slovak Carpathians, later there were ancient beech forests of Germany, and in 2017 – other forests from ten countries of Europe.
The transnational serial object «Beech forests and ancient forests of the Carpathians and other regions of Europe» contains 78 constituent parts from 12 countries of Europe. It is important to note that of 92 thousand hectares of natural heritage, one third or 29 thousand hectares are Ukrainian forests.
