Tasmania’s World Heritage Area extension all about politics

In late June, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)’s World Heritage Committee accepted the Australian Government’s nomination for a so-called ‘minor’ boundary modification to extend the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (TWWHA).

This will add 172,000 hectares of (mostly) forest to the 1.4 million hectares of Tasmanian wild lands and forests which were World Heritage listed in 1982 and extended in 1989 following the Helsham Inquiry.

It increases the proportion of Tasmania’s land surface listed under World Heritage from 20% to 22.5%. Even before this addition, no other jurisdiction on the planet had an equivalent proportion of its land on the World Heritage List.

It could be argued that this development is inconsequential as it merely confers international status to 49,000 hectares that was already reserved in an existing national park and various other formal conservation reserves; and formalises the reservation of a further 123,000 hectares of mostly State forest that was due to be reserved anyway under the terms of the recently legislated Tasmanian Forests Agreement (TFA). The TFA stems from the ‘forest peace deal’ thrashed out by timber industry and ENGO negotiators from 2010 - 13.

However, ignoring how the TWWHA was extended because these areas were already reserved or were earmarked for future reservation by other means, would effectively confer tacit approval to an inappropriately politicised process which arguably devalues the science-based World Heritage concept and does no credit to Australia.

Concerns about this process surfaced as soon as it became apparent that Greens politicians had been working behind closed doors with then Federal Environment Minister, Tony Burke, to develop a WHA nomination concurrent with the ‘forest peace deal’ negotiations.

Particular concerns related to 1) the factual veracity of the nomination given its preparation by environmental ideologues; 2) the nomination’s promotion as only a ‘minor’ WHA boundary modification; 3) its suitability given that a UNESCO Mission which examined the same State forests in 2008 concluded that they didn’t warrant World Heritage listing; and 4) the undue influence of politics on what should be an independent scientific evaluation of the significance of physical and cultural values.

A World Heritage Site is a place listed by UNESCO because of its special cultural and/or physical significance. World Heritage listing is determined on the basis of one or more of ten selection criteria. These include four criteria for physical (or natural) significance and six criteria related to cultural significance.

The requirements for physical (or natural) significance include “superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty ........ outstanding examples representing significant on-going ecological and biological processes”;or “the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity”.

Cultural significance criteria potentially applicable to dense tall eucalypt forests in Tasmania include: 1) “an outstanding example of a traditional human ... land use..... which is representative of a culture ... of human interaction with the environment”; 2) “to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or a civilisation.....”; and 3) “to be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions ......”. 

In March 2008, a joint UNESCO/IUCN/ICOMOS Tasmanian Wilderness Reactive Monitoring Mission was undertaken in response to “repeated concerns by well organised Australian and Tasmanian non-governmental environmental orgaisations (ENGOs)” about the supposed effects of forestry activities in State forests adjacent to the TWWHA’s boundaries, and their claims that tall, wet eucalypt old growth forests were under-represented in Tasmania’s conservation reserves.

Tasmania’s ENGOs engaged Peter Hitchcock – the dissenting commissioner in the 1989 Helsham Inquiry – to lobby the Mission for a major extension to the TWWHA using arguments that built on recommendations that he’d made 19 years earlier. Following the Mission, he was again engaged by the ENGOs to lobby the World Heritage Committee to overturn its findings. 

Despite the ENGOs efforts, the Mission found that the State forests adjacent to the TWWHA were part of “a multiple use landscape” with a mix of old growth, mature, and regenerating forests from past timber harvesting (including a significant roading network), that was well managed and posed little threat to the TWWHA. An additional finding was that old growth tall wet eucalypt forest was already adequately represented in the already existing TWWHA and in other Tasmanian national parks and reserves. The 2008 Mission’s overall conclusion was that it “does not recommend any change to the boundaries of the property (the TWWHA) to deal with such threats”.   

On the question of cultural significance, the Mission noted that while there is a need to enhance the resources devoted to “protecting archeological and aboriginal sites within and adjacent to the property (the TWWHA), ... there is no need for extending the boundaries of the property for this purpose”.

Despite this 2008 advice, just five years later the World Heritage Committee accepted that these same areas were now worthy of World Heritage listing. This was somewhat bewildering given that the science shouldn’t have changed over the short intervening period. Accordingly this has raised concerns over the dominant role of Greens politicians and ENGOs in the preparation of the listing nomination and whether they may have misled the IUCN and World Heritage Committee.

This is centred on the later provision of hitherto unseen mapping to the World Heritage Committee that is suspected of not showing the extent to which Tasmania’s tall wet eucalypt forest were already reserved in national parks and other reserves outside the existing TWHHA. This may have created an enhanced perception of the need to expand the TWWHA. Concern over this has stimulated an FOI request to enable the veracity of all the information provided to the World Heritage Committee as part of the listing nomination process to be assessed.     

While the science shouldn’t have changed since 2008, the politics definitely had. In particular, the election of minority Labor Governments at both Federal and State level, and the ascension of a Federal Environment Minister, Tony Burke, who seemingly brought to the role an agenda to put substantially more land and ocean into permanent reserves irrespective of impacts on resource use industries. This was coupled with his zealous want use (or create) Federal Government powers to, where necessary, overide States in relation to environmental and resource use issues. 

Accordingly, Minister Burke strongly supported the Greens/ENGO push to expand the TWWHA from the start. When at the last minute, the World Heritage Committee was intending to reject the listing nomination due to doubts over its cultural significance, he personally intervened to pledge $500,000 of taxpayer’s money for detailed studies to establish the TWWHA’s cultural significance.

Burke’s determined support for the nomination also included flying a government entourage to the World Heritage Committee’s meeting in Phnom Penh at taxpayer’s expense. This ten-person delegation included senior staff from his department, a Tasmanian representative, an indigenous representative, and a technical advisor (none other than former ENGO lobbyist Peter Hitchcock). This official government presence was complemented by behind-the-scenes lobbying by half-a-dozen high profile ENGO activists who also travelled to Phnom Penh. Presumably this helped to turn the nomination into a listing.  

Minister Burke’s determination to ensure that the World Heritage extension nomination got over the line is emblematic of his primary role in driving Tasmanian forest policy changes to match the agenda of ENGO activists. This includes his earlier interventions on several occassions during the ‘forest peace deal’ negotiations to encourage and cajole industry and ENGO negotiators to reach a preferred outcome – and most notably, his eleventh-hour intervention to drag spent and disillusioned negotiators back to the table by committing $100 million of additional Federal funds as further incentive to force an agreement.

It is widely acknowledged that this effectively ‘bribed’ the ‘peace deal’ outcome from which then flowed the legislated Tasmanian Forests Agreement and, subsequently, the TWWHA extension nomination.

Despite denials by Minister Burke, the central role of domestic politics in the TWWHA extension was confirmed by Greens Leader, Christine Milne, who admitted after the nomination was accepted that “In parallel with the IGA (ie. the ‘forest peace deal’) process, Bob Brown and I worked with Minister Tony Burke to develop this extension and get this World Heritage nomination in....... so that it could be decided ahead of the Federal Election.”

Of most significance has been the Australian and Tasmanian Governments’ determination to present the nomination as a ‘minor modification’ to the TWWHA. In fact, the 172,000 hectare addition represents a 12% increase to the TWWHA’s existing area. Presenting this as a ‘minor modification’ contravenes advice provided to the World Heritage Committee last year by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), that “A notional cut-off of 10% increase has generally been considered to be the absolute upper limit for a modification to be considered via the “minor modification” process,.......”

The political significance of this is that a greater than 10% modification to a World Heritage Site normally requires a full evaluation of the nominated values which typically takes 18 months of investigation, consultation and documentation; whereas under World Heritage operational guidelines a ‘minor modification’ can be accepted for listing without any meaningful evaluation of its claimed values and actual wilderness quality.

As both the Tasmanian and Australian minority Labor Governments are expected to have been voted out of office within the next nine months, only a ‘minor modification’ had the potential to be listed before new Governments opposed to expanding the TWWHA  are expected to take office.

Tasmanian community groups and other stakeholders concerned about the nomination who would have formally alerted UNESCO that it was not a ‘minor modification’ were stymied by being unable to access detailed information about what was being nominated. Minister Burke’s Environment Department did not post the nomination to its website until after UNESCO’s submission deadline had passed in late February.  

Labor’s determination to avoid any meaningful analysis of its TWWHA nomination smacks of consummating deals with Greens political allies and meeting their supporters’ ideological demands for more public lands to be preserved. With a Federal election looming within the next few months, it also presumably helps to improve the Government’s standing in the eyes of environmentally-conscious voters.

Federal Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry, Senator Richard Colbeck, has noted with some justification that Environment Minister Burke “put this up as a minor extension, which we know it is not (because) he was trying to avoid any meaningful analysis of the nominated area....” and that this was “symptomatic of the way Mr Burke operates – a sham process littered with broken promises to industry and favours to green groups”

Tasmanians have every right to feel disenfranchised by an undemocratic process that would probably not enjoy majority support given that so much of their state’s land area was already World Heritage listed. That the State forest component of the TWHHA extension was earmarked for national park status anyway as a condition of the TFA, offers little comfort because this was also conceived behind closed doors with most stakeholders excluded, and was overtly influenced by groups pushing a ‘green’ agenda that also enjoy only minority support.

However, it is UNESCO and the World Heritage Committee that should feel most aggrieved as they have been unwittingly manipulated by political opportunists and, in the absence of any meaningful scientific evaluation, have rather embarrassingly added substantial areas to the World Heritage List that have an extensive history of recent human disturbance, including timber production, regrowth and plantations; and are regularly traversed by roads (including highways, local roads, and forestry roads) and power transmission lines. 

As well as a substantial proportion of the TWWHA extension lacking significant physical values, any cultural values have yet to be determined. Unfortunately, this outcome, and particularly the highly politicised nomination process that has led to it, devalues the science-based World Heritage concept.