Natural history museum holds a conference on the annexation of marshes to world Heritage List
Research Center and Museum of natural history at Baghdad University held a symposium entitled “natural and cultural heritage of Iraq’s southern marshes and their importance in the nomination to World Heritage List” in the presence of representatives of the ministries of environment and agriculture along with the participation of a number of professors at the center and researchers interested in the demographic matter. This symposium discussed six papers that focused on plant and animal diversity as well as the geological southern marshes. It also highlighted the economic returns of the marshes since they are considered as folklore in order to deliver our voice to annex marshes to World Heritage List after getting initial approvals at Paris conference that included Hoveizeh, easter and western Hamar marshes in addition to the central marshes located between the provinces of Maysan, Nasiriyah and Basra. The Iraqi Supreme Committee seeks to annex the marshes and the archaeological areas of Ur, Eridu and Uruk while the participants called for submitting recommendations to the Iraqi foreign ministry to win the vote of the countries in Istanbul conference held in mid-July next. It is worth mentioned that Iraq had 12 thousand archaeological sites that varied in terms of historical importance since some of them were formerly cities and capitals of great empires and based on the reports of the International Union for the protection of the environment and the UN environment Program and other organizations, Iraq’s southern marshes is one of the most important freshwater ecosystems in the world being located in a dry area in which rainfall decreases while high evaporation rates increase.