Brazil’s Lencois Maranhenses National Park, famous for its white dunes that fill with blue and emerald lagoons during the rainy season, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site on Friday.
The vast park, named for the dunes’ resemblance to a sheet spread across the landscape (“lencois” means sheets in Portuguese), is located in the northeastern state of Maranhao, in a transition zone between the Amazon, Cerrado and Caatinga biomes.
The decision was taken during the 46th annual meeting of the United Nations World Heritage Committee, which took place in the Indian capital New Delhi.
Lencois Maranhenses is the 24th location in Brazil to be included in the list of places of significant cultural or natural significance.
The national park was established in June 1981 and covers an area of 156,000 hectares, more than half of which consists of dunes and multi-coloured lagoons, which attract more than 100,000 tourists annually.
According to UNESCO, it is the largest dune area in South America.
The Lencois Maranhenses are a protected area “where the desert meets the sea, creating a unique landscape,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in a letter sent to UNESCO in early 2023 to push for the site to be inscribed as a World Heritage Site.
Several Hollywood film shoots also took place in the park.
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