Chao Phraya on heritage watch list

Chao Phraya on heritage watch list

A girl crawls to see a canvas painting under the theme of ‘My Chao Phraya’ displayed at the ‘Strangers to Neighbours’ event. The Bang Lamphu community and its allies in August held the event on Tha Phra Athit Road to show their resistance to the Chao Phraya Promenade project.  (File photo)
A girl crawls to see a canvas painting under the theme of ‘My Chao Phraya’ displayed at the ‘Strangers to Neighbours’ event. The Bang Lamphu community and its allies in August held the event on Tha Phra Athit Road to show their resistance to the Chao Phraya Promenade project. (File photo)

The Chao Phraya River has been enlisted in the 2018 World Monument Watch for cultural heritage sites that face daunting risks.

The river that runs through Thailand's capital city is one of 25 sites placed under the 2018 watch list by World Monuments Fund (WMF), an independent agency devoted to saving the world's treasured sites.

WMF on Sunday released its 2018 World Monuments Watch, consisting of a diverse group of cultural heritage sites spanning across 30 countries and territories, that face daunting threats ranging from human conflicts and urbanisation to natural disasters and climate change. The list also includes unique conservation opportunities.

It includes areas affected by the recent string of hurricanes and earthquakes in the Caribbean, the Gulf and Mexico that will require emergency conservation for damage to cultural heritage sites. Another site is a once-vibrant marketplace, Souq in Aleppo, burned amid fighting between the Syrian government and insurgents.

In case of the Chao Phraya River, the New-York-City based organisation received information from Friends of the River (FoR), a Bangkok-based civic group about the threats posed to the river from an infrastructure project known as "The Chao Phraya Riverside Promenade", a 14-billion-baht plan to build a walkway, bicycle lane and flood wall along the banks of the river. FoR, along with architects and other civic groups, have launched a campaign against the project, saying the plan will damage the river ecology and cultural landscape.

"The announcement of the list shows our campaign against the project is valued and recognised by the international community. The list might turn public and world attention towards what is happening to the Chao Phraya River," Yossapon Boonsom, landscape architect and founder of FoR told the Bangkok Post in a phone interview.

"By building an international coalition, the World Monuments Watch protects both the sites themselves and the shared history they embody," said Joshua David, president & CEO, WMF. "We may be best known for the excellence of our conservation practices, but the human impacts of our work ultimately mean the most. Sites like the 25 on the 2018 Watch are where we come together as citizens of the world and renew our commitments to justice, culture, peace, and understanding."

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