Unesco names eight new geoparks as it marks 40th World Heritage Day

Luxembourg and Sweden take the list of locations to 46 countries

The Greek island of Kefalonia, Greece, is among eight new sites which have been designated by Unesco as geoparks. Getty

The UN's cultural body Unesco has designated eight more geoparks around the world as it celebrates its 40th World Heritage Day.

Luxembourg and Sweden have geoparks for the first time and these take the size of network to 177 across 46 countries.

To become a geopark, an area must have outstanding geological heritage and use it to promote and benefit the community through conservation and sustainability.

Two of the newly designated sites are situated in Latin America and six are in Europe.

“It is much more than a label. It is a recognition of geological sites of international value,” Kristof Vandenberghe, the chief of Unesco's Earth Sciences and Geoparks, said.

“You cannot express everything in a monetary value. Sometimes people are discovering again and recognising again how connected they actually are to their landscape.”

In Brazil, the Serido Park and the Southern Canyons Pathways, the Caminhos dos Cânions do Sul, have been given special protection.

The Caminhos dos Cânions do Sul are characterised by Atlantic Forests, one of the planet’s richest ecosystems in terms of biodiversity.

“The site features the most impressive canyons in South America, formed by the unique geomorphological processes that the continent underwent during the break-up of the Gondwana supercontinent some 180 million years ago,” Unesco said.

“The Serido Park bears testimony to the last 600 million years of the Earth’s history and shelters one of South America’s largest scheelite mineralisations, an important tungsten ore, as well as basalt flows that resulted from volcanic activity during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras.

“This geodiversity determines to a large extent the region’s unique biodiversity, especially characterised by the Caatinga. It is the only exclusively Brazilian biome, which means that much of its biological heritage cannot be found anywhere else on the planet.”

In Finland, the Salpausselkä has been added to the list.

It contains hundreds of lakes and ridges which consist of sediment deposited by glaciers.

Germany's Ries parkland in Bavaria, the site of a meteorite strike 15 million years ago, has been designated.

It is the best-preserved crater in Europe and the most intensively studied impact structure among the nearly 200 craters around the world.

In western Greece, the Kefalonia – Ithaca island complex, which consists of caves, sinkholes and underground streams, has become a geopark.

The site, which is the most tectonically active region in Europe, has literary significance as Kefalos and Ithaca are named in the Odyssey as the homeland of Ulysses, the hero of Homer’s poem.

They are also home to prehistoric Hellenistic and Roman monuments, medieval castles, Byzantine and post-Byzantine monasteries and traditional settlements.

Luxembourg's rural Mëllerdall region has been added, it “forms one of the most spectacular sandstone landscapes in western Europe and has been a tourist attraction since the late 19th century”, Unesco said.

The Carpathian Bend Area in Romania, which exhibits 40 million years of geological history, and the Platåbergens in Sweden, which consists of 15 flat-topped table mountains, have been designated.

Some of Sweden’s most interesting historical discoveries have been made in this area, including the first known stone church in Sweden, built by Christian Vikings in the early 11th century.

Owing to coronavirus restrictions, Unesco could not accept applications from Asia, Africa or the Middle East in time for this year's designation but is looking at projects for the creation of geoparks in these areas.