World Heritage and outstanding universal value in the Pacific Islands

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the World Heritage Committee has sought to address the current and future credibility of the World Heritage List through capacity-building programmes in regions currently under-represented on the List, including the Pacific Islands, to support States Parties to nominate places of potential outstanding universal value. Since 2004, the Pacific 2009 World Heritage Programme has been successful in contributing to a dramatic increase in the number of World Heritage site in the independent Pacific Island nations but as this paper discusses, this does not necessarily equated to an increase in the representation of the heritage values of Pacific Islanders on the World Heritage List, highlighting tensions between the concept of outstanding universal value, the processes of nomination and the rights of customary landowners in the inscription and management of World Heritage properties in the region.

Keywords:

• Pacific
• World Heritage
• indigenous

Notes

1. There are currently 962 properties on the World Heritage List.

2. Two independent organisations advise the World heritage Committee - IUCN (International Union for the conservation of Nature) for natural heritage sites and ICOMOS (International Council of Monuments and Sites) for cultural heritage sites.

3. Nominated properties must satisfy a least 1 of 10 World Heritage Criteria given in the Operational Guidelines (UNESCO 2012, Paragraphs 77–78).

4. World Heritage – Pacific 2009 Programme http://whc.unesco.org/en/pacific2009. Accessed January 2014.

5. The Advisory Bodies to the World heritage Committee for evaluation of World Heritage nominations are the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS).

6. Europe has 46% of the Sites. European predominance is larger for Cultural Sites (53%) than for Natural Sites (23%). In contrast, sub-Saharan Africa has 9% of all Sites, and the Arabian countries have 7%. The Americas and Asia–Pacific are better represented with 17 and 21%, respectively (Frey, Pamino, and Stener 2013, 5).

7. The 12 independent Pacific Island nations who are signatories to the World Heritage Convention are Fiji, Tonga,.Samoa, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, Cook Islands, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau.

8. Tentative Lists are an inventory of properties submitted by States Parties that they consider to be cultural and/or natural heritage of outstanding universal value that the country intends to nominate for inscription on the World Heritage list in future.

9. The Pacific Heritage Hub http://www.pacificheritagehub.org Accessed January 2014.