Qeshm Geopark regains UNESCO status

From an article on Eghtesad Online:

The decision was made on Friday after 10 days of deliberation by UNESCO’s Executive Board in Paris. Seven other geological sites were also added to the list, according to a press release on GGN’s website.

Morteza Sheikhzadeh, director of the International Affairs and Public Relations Office at Qeshm Free Zone Organization, confirmed the news to reporters on Friday evening.

“We received the official approval a few hours after the executive board reached the decision,” Financial Tribune quoted him as saying.

Qeshm Geopark will be a UNESCO site until 2020 when its membership will be reviewed.

“It’s standard procedure,” Sheikhazeh added.

Initially added to the coveted network in 2006, Qeshm Geopark was dropped from the GGN in 2013 due to the authorities’ failure to address the site’s problems, such as underdeveloped infrastructure and unenforced environmental regulations.

After years of back and forth and discussions with UNESCO experts, Iranian authorities submitted the geopark’s dossier for review last year and it received the provisional approval during the Seventh International Conference on UNESCO’s Global Geoparks Network in Torquay, England, held on Sept. 27-30, 2016. The decision was finalized on May 5.

Describing Qeshm as “an island shaped like a dolphin in the Strait of Hormuz, off the southern coast of Iran”, the press release on GGN’s website points to the island’s geological formations that have been shaped by erosion that created “a range of spectacular landscapes and beautiful rock deserts”. Continue

View thew news in Persian on ISNA and Donya-e Eqtesad.

Photo credit © Qeshm Geopark

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