Natural World Heritage and climate change

• Natural World Heritage sites are recognised as places of ‘Outstanding Universal Value’ under the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention.
• While natural World Heritage sites make up less than 1% of the Earth’s surface, they protect over 20,000 globally threatened species and make a substantial contribution to global biodiversity, sustainable development and climate change solutions.
• The extraordinary values found in natural World Heritage sites are increasingly threatened by climate change, which interacts with other threats like invasive alien species.
• Enhanced efforts are needed to strengthen climate action at the site level, regionally and globally.