Lisbon, July 13, 2025 (Lusa) - The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) added Maputo National Park to its World Heritage List on Sunday.
The organisation adopted the inscription this morning during its 47th meeting in Paris, with UNESCO highlighting that Maputo National Park “includes terrestrial, coastal and marine ecosystems and is home to nearly 5,000 species. The site complements the conservation values of iSimangaliso [a neighbouring park in South Africa], enhancing biodiversity protection across the entire ecosystem of the Maputo region”.
It adds that the site features “diverse habitats, including lakes, lagoons, mangroves and coral reefs”, including long beaches, dunes, marshes, extensive wetlands and diverse grasslands, providing a habitat for a range of South African marine species, and the text also highlights its long history of conservation.
Maputo Park is linked to the iSimangaliso Wetland Park in South Africa, which already has World Heritage status and is one of the sites the IUCN previously identified as having “exceptional potential” for World Heritage status, serving as the official nature advisory body to the World Heritage Committee.
The history of environmental protection south of the Mozambican capital began in 1932, when it was a small hunting area where elephants were the main prey. In 1969, the importance of local biodiversity led to the area being classified as the Maputo Special Reserve.
The reaction to the decline caused by the civil war that followed independence received its main impetus in 2006 with the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Government and the Peace Parks Foundation.
As a result of this cooperation, Maputo National Park has been growing steadily since 2010, benefiting from various species reintroduction and translocation programmes.
The iconic giraffes and elephants have their habitat here. They can often be seen walking along National Road 1 (N1), but Maputo National Park combines the “sea and land” aspects in a total area of 1,718 square kilometres.
The authorities officially created it on 7 December 2021, bringing together two contiguous protected areas, the Maputo Special Reserve (1,040 square kilometres on land) and the Ponta do Ouro Partial Marine Reserve (678 square kilometres).
The administrator of the Maputo park told Lusa on 4 July that the elevation of its status will change the “visibility of the park”, a place to be presented to the world as a world heritage site because it is unique, with “universal values” defended by UNESCO.
“Above all, it changes visibility. We want to believe and hope that it will improve and increase the number of visitors and tourists, and that we will move in a more consolidated way towards the financial sustainability of the park, with all the consequences for the tourism industry and the development of communities,” said Miguel Gonçalves.
With the elevation of the Mozambican park to World Heritage status, the administrator had previously said that the two parties (Mozambique and South Africa) would move forward with talks to find a new form of management, with the main concern being the movement of species.
“If this happens, we will create a joint committee and a joint operational plan [with South Africa]. Each country will manage its own operations, and we will coordinate jointly to maintain the value of both parks,” the administrator said at the time.
“We will create this committee where we will sit down and discuss approaches to daily management, which will align with the reality of each country and with the legislation of each country; we simply need to ensure that the universal values remain intact,” Gonçalves added.
PME/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
