UN cultural agency calls for Laos, Cambodia to invite monitoring teams to contentious UNESCO sites

BANGKOK (AP) — The United Nations’ cultural agency recommended Thursday that Laos invite a monitoring mission to the historic city of Luang Prabang, a World Heritage Site where a nearby dam project on the Mekong River has raised concerns it could lose the coveted status.

While the World Heritage Committee welcomed Laos’ efforts to improve data collection on the possible effect of the dam and mitigate any harm to the UNESCO site, it recommended the country invite a new team of experts to assess the state of conservation first-hand.

Laos seemed agreeable to the idea, with its delegate telling the group at its annual meeting in New Delhi that authorities were prepared to work “hand in hand” with UNESCO to preserve the site.

The city, where legend has it that Buddha once rested during his travels, was inscribed on the UNESCO list in 1995 for its unique mix of historic Laotian and French colonial architecture on a peninsula at the confluence of the Mekong and the Nam Khan rivers.

The multibillion-dollar dam being built some 25 kilometers (15 miles) upstream, and its changes to the flow of the Mekong, has raised concerns about the effect on protected wetlands and the city’s riverbanks.

The dam is also being built near an active fault line. Although design studies have concluded it could withstand an earthquake, many local residents are worried about what would happen if it should collapse and unleash a wall of water.

UNESCO also has concerns about the protection of historic buildings, unrelated to the dam’s construction.

In a similar move, the Committee recommended that Cambodia invite a new team of experts to monitor the situation at the Angkor UNESCO site, one of the largest archaeological sites in the world, where