Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras
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How it came to be
The Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras are five terrace clusters in Ifugao Province in northern Luzon: Batad, Bangaan, Mayoyao, Hungduan and Nagacadan. In 1995 they became the first property ever inscribed on the World Heritage List in the cultural landscape category.
UNESCO describes the Ifugao fields as having followed the contours of the mountains for 2,000 years. The Ifugao Archaeological Project, using Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates, instead reports that the terraces were built around the time of Spanish contact, about 400 years ago. Each cluster is capped by a communally managed forest called muyong, and water gathered from the mountaintop forests irrigates the fields.
Because of young people leaving and forest loss, the terraces were placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2001 and removed in 2012 after conservation improved. The well-known Banaue terraces near the town centre are not part of the site, because of the many modern buildings among them.
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