Chile, officially the Republic of Chile (Spanish: República de Chile [reˈpuβlika ðe ˈʧile]), is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far south. With Ecuador it is one of two countries in South America which do not border Brazil. The Pacific coastline of Chile is 6,435 kilometres. Chilean territory includes the Pacific islands of Juan Fernández, Salas y Gómez, Desventuradas and Easter Island. Chile also claims about 1,250,000 square kilometres (480,000 sq mi) of Antarctica, although all claims are suspended under the Antarctic Treaty.

Chile's unusual, ribbon-like shape—4,300 kilometres (2,700 mi) long and on average 175 kilometres (109 mi) wide—has given it a varied climate, ranging from the world's driest desert—the Atacama—in the north, through a Mediterranean climate in the centre, to a rainy temperate climate in the south. The northern desert contains great mineral wealth, principally copper. The relatively small central area dominates in terms of population and agricultural resources, and is the cultural and political center from which Chile expanded in the late 19th century, when it incorporated its northern and southern regions. Southern Chile is rich in forests and grazing lands and features a string of volcanoes and lakes. The southern coast is a labyrinth of fjords, inlets, canals, twisting peninsulas, and islands.

Easter Island (Rapa Nui: Rapa Nui); (Spanish: Isla de Pascua) is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeastern most point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile annexed in 1888, Easter Island is widely famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai (pronounced /ˈmoʊ.аɪ/), created by the early Rapanui people. It is a World Heritage Site with much of the island protected within the Rapa Nui National Park. In recent times the island has been used as a cautionary tale for the cultural and environmental dangers brought upon by the over-exploitation of resources, however this theory is now being contested by ethnographers and archaeologists alike who argue that the introduction of diseases carried by European colonizers and slave raiding, which devastated the population in the 1800s, had a much greater social impact than environmental decline and that introduced animals, first rats and then sheep, were greatly responsible for the island's loss of native flora which came closest to deforestation as recently as 1930-1960. The underlying island geology is one of extinct volcanoes.

This is a list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the Americas (North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean). Hawaii and Easter Island are included here given their political ties to the Americas despite being geographically located in Oceania. Mexico is the country with the most sites in the region, and has the fifth most in the world.

Rapa Nui National Park is a World Heritage Site located on Easter Island, Chile. The park is divided into seven sections:

The early history involves human settlement roughly one millennium before present. Subsequent human overpopulation and resultant deforestation led to collapse of the human society. Archaeological evidence of the earlier habitation consists of the moai themselves as well as the pollen and fossil records. Through these records, scientists have come to understand the role of a now extinct Rapa Nui Palm, which offered food, fuel and transport for the early settlers. Chile first declared the island a National Park in 1935, and on 22 March 1996 UNESCO designated the island a World Heritage Site. Park boundaries have since varied on several occasions, to return land to the islanders.

A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a site (such as a forest, mountain, lake, desert, monument, building, complex, or city) that is on the list that is maintained by the international World Heritage Programme administered by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, composed of 21 state parties which are elected by their General Assembly for a four-year term. A World Heritage Site is a place of either cultural or physical significance.

The program catalogues, names, and conserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common heritage of humanity. Under certain conditions, listed sites can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund. The programme was founded with the Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage, which was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on November 16, 1972. Since then, 186 state parties have ratified the convention.

As of 2009^[update], 890 sites are listed: 689 cultural, 176 natural, and 25 mixed properties, in 148 states. Italy is home to the greatest number of World Heritage Sites to date with 44 sites inscribed on the list. UNESCO references each World Heritage Site with an identification number; but new inscriptions often include previous sites now listed as part of larger descriptions. As a result, the identification numbers exceed 1200 even though there are fewer on the list.

The Americas, or America, (Spanish: América, Portuguese: América, French: Amérique) are the lands of the Western hemisphere or New World, comprising the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions. America may be ambiguous in English, as it is more commonly used to refer to the United States of America. The Americas cover 8.3% of the Earth's total surface area (28.4% of its land area) and contain about 13.5% of the human population (about 900 million people).

Moai, or mo‘ai (pronounced /ˈmoʊ.аɪ/), are monolithic human figures carved from rock on the Polynesian island of Easter Island, Chile between the years 1250 and 1500. Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the island's perimeter. Almost all moai have overly large heads three-fifths the size of their bodies. The moai are chiefly the living faces (aringa ora) of deified ancestors (aringa ora ata tepuna). The statues still gazed inland across their clan lands when Europeans first visited the island, but most would be cast down during later conflicts between clans.

The statues' production and transportation is considered a remarkable intellectual, creative, and physical feat. The tallest moai erected, called Paro, was almost 10 metres (33 ft) high and weighed 75 tonnes; the heaviest erected was a shorter but squatter moai at Ahu Tongariki, weighing 86 tons; and one unfinished sculpture, if completed, would have been approximately 21 metres (69 ft) tall with a weight of about 270 tons.