World Heritage Status is awarded to places considered to offer outstanding value to humanity and therefore need protection so future generations can enjoy them.
There are more than 1,000 sites on the list, and they include the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the Egyptian pyramids, the Taj Mahal in India and the Grand Canyon in America.
The UK has received the status at more than 30 sites, but the decision to strip Liverpool of its award is a first for a British place. It joins two other locations who have also lost their status.
Read more: Liverpool is stripped of World Heritage Status
The decision to strip Liverpool was done in a secret ballot at a Unesco meeting in China and is thought to centre around development on the city’s waterfront.
Unesco officials said developments had resulted in a huge deterioration of the site, and so its removal was justified.
Committee chairman Tian Xuejun announced 20 votes had been cast in the ballot, with 13 in favour of removal, five against and two being invalid.
But where are these other places who have also been removed from the list? And what’s happened to them? We have the information.
What other sites have lost their World Heritage Status before Liverpool?
So far, only a couple of other sites have also been stripped of the title. They are the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary in Oman and the Dresden Elbe Valley in Germany.
The Oman site was removed in 2007 after being added in 1994, while the German one was delisted in 2009 after being added in 2004.
Liverpool’s removal is the first for a British site and the first for more than a decade.
Why were the sites removed and what happened to them?
According to Reuters , the Oryx Sanctuary was stripped of its title following habitat destruction, poaching and a reduction in the number of rare species seen there.
Unesco said in a statement at the time that the population of rare species was 450 in 1996, but this had fallen to 65 with only four breeding pairs meaning it was likely to die out at the site.
It said: “The committee felt that the unilateral reduction in the size of the sanctuary and plans to proceed with hydrocarbon prospect ion would destroy the value and integrity of the property, which is also home to other endangered species including, the Arabian Gazelle and houbara bustard.
“The committee expressed regret that the state ... failed to fulfil its obligations regarding the conservation of the sanctuary as defined by the World Heritage Convention.”
The Dresden Elbe Valley was removed after a four-lane bridge was built in the heart of the area. Unesco officials said it had failed to keep its “outstanding” human value.
In a statement, they said : “Dresden was inscribed as a cultural landscape in 2004. The Committee said that Germany could present a new nomination relating to Dresden in the future.
“In doing so, the Committee recognized that parts of the site might be considered to be of outstanding universal value, but that it would have to be presented under different criteria and boundaries.”
