Great Barrier Reef World Heritage
Nature in Danger
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2022.8Keywords:
The Great Barrier Reef, World Heritage, environmental impacts, global warming, genetic engineering, 'naturalness'Abstract
The Great Barrier Reef is inscribed on the World Heritage List for its natural values, including an abundance of marine life and extraordinary aesthetic qualities. These and the enormous scale of the Reef make it unique and a place of ‘Outstanding Universal Value’. In the twentieth century, protection of the Great Barrier Reef shifted from limiting mechanical and physical impacts on coral reefs to managing agricultural runoff from adjacent mainland to minimise environmental impacts. By the early twenty-first century, it was apparent that threats to the Great Barrier Reef were no longer a local issue. Global warming, more frequent extreme weather events and increased ocean temperatures have destroyed vast swathes of coral reefs. Conservation scientists have begun trialling radical new methods of reseeding areas of bleached coral and creating more resilient coral species. The future of the Great Barrier Reef may depend on genetically engineered corals, and reefs that are seeded, weeded and cultured. This article asks whether the Great Barrier Reef can remain a natural World Heritage site or whether it might become World Heritage in Danger as its naturalness is questioned.
References
Anthony, K., Bay, L. K., Costanza, R., Firn, J., Gunn, J., Harrison, P., … Moore, T. 2017. ‘New interventions are needed to save coral reefs’, Nature Ecology & Evolution 1(10): 1420–22.
Aplin, G. 2007. ‘World Heritage Cultural Landscapes’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 13(6): 427–46.
Banfield, E. 1908. The confessions of a beachcomber. Sydney: Angus & Robertson.
Bowen, J. and Bowen, M. 2002. The Great Barrier Reef: History, science, heritage. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, J. 2015. ‘Bringing together nature and culture: Integrating a landscape approach in protected areas — policy and practice. In Gambino, R. and Peano, A. (eds), Nature policies and landscape policies: Towards an alliance. Cham: Springer, pp. 33–42.
Brown, S. 2012. ‘Applying a cultural landscape approach in park management: An Australian scheme’, Parks 18(1): 99.
Burke, H. and Smith, C. 2010. ‘Vestiges of colonialism: Manifestations of the culture/nature divide in Australian heritage management’, in Messenger, P. M. and Smith, G. S. (eds), Cultural heritage management: A global perspective. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, pp. 21–37.
Cleere, H. 1995. ‘Cultural landscapes as world heritage’, Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 1(1): 63–68.
Daley, B. and Griggs, P. 2006. ‘Mining the reefs and cays: Coral, guano and rock phosphate extraction in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, 1844–1940’, Environment and History 12(4): 395–433.
Daley, B. and Griggs, P. 2008. ‘“Loved to death”: Coral collecting in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, 1770–1970’, Environment and History, 14(1): 89–119.
Deane, F., Wilson, C., Rowlings, D., Webb, J., Mitchell, E., Hamman, E., … Grace, P. 2018. ‘Sugarcane farming and the Great Barrier Reef: The role of a principled approach to change’, Land Use Policy, 78: 691–8.
Douvere, F., & Badman, T. (2012). Report on the Reactive Monitoring Mission to the Great Barrier Reef (Australia), 6–14 March 2012. Paris: UNESCO
Fabricius, K. E., Okaji, K. and De’ath, G. 2010. ‘Three lines of evidence to link outbreaks of the crown-of-thorns seastar Acanthaster planci to the release of larval food limitation’, Coral Reefs 29(3): 593–605.
Great Barrier Reef Foundation. 2017. Resilient reefs successfully adapting to climate change, https://www.barrierreef.org/uploads/Final%20report%20Resilient%20Reefs%20Successfully%20Adapting%20to%20Climate%20Change%20program.pdf.
Harrison, R. 2015. ‘Beyond “natural” and “cultural” heritage: Toward an ontological politics of heritage in the age of Anthropocene’, Heritage & Society, 8(1): 24–42.
Lee, E. 2016. ‘Protected areas, country and value: The nature–culture tyranny of the IUCN’s Protected Area Guidelines for Indigenous Australians’, Antipode, 48(2): 355–74.
Lilley, I. and Pocock, C. 2018. ‘Australia’s problem with Aboriginal World Heritage’, The Conversation, 13 December, https://theconversation.com/australias-problem-with-aboriginal-world-heritage-82912.
Lowenthal, D. 2005. ‘Natural and cultural heritage’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 11(1): 81–92.
McCalman, I. 2017. ‘Linking the local and the global: What today’s environmental humanities movement can learn from their predecessor’s successful leadership of the 1965–1975 war to save the great barrier reef’, Humanities 6(4): 77.
Mclntyre-Tamwoy, S. 2004. ‘“My Barrier Reef”: Exploring the Bowen community’s attachment to the Great Barrier Reef’, Historic Environment 17(3): 19–28.
Miller, I., Sweatman, H., Cheal, A., Emslie, M., Johns, K., Jonker, M. and Osborne, K. 2015. ‘Origins and implications of a primary crown-of-thorns starfish outbreak in the Southern Great Barrier Reef’, Journal of Marine Biology, doi: 10.1155/2015/809624.
Olsson, P., Folke, C. and Hughes, T. P. 2008. ‘Navigating the transition to ecosystem-based management of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(28): 9489–94.
Pocock, C. 2002. ‘Sense matters: Aesthetic values of the Great Barrier Reef’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 8(4): 365–81.
Pocock, C. 2004. ‘Real to reel reef: Space, place and film at the Great Barrier Reef’, in Ferrero-Regis, T. and Moran, A. (eds), Placing the moving image (3rd ed.). Brisbane: Griffith University, pp. 53–68.
Pocock, C. 2006. ‘Sensing place and consuming space: Changing visitor experiences of the Great Barrier Reef’. In Meethan, K., Anderson, A. and Miles, S. (eds), Tourism, consumption and representation: Narratives of place and self. Wallingford: CABI, pp. 94–112.
Pocock, C. 2009. ‘Entwined histories: Photography and tourism at the Great Barrier Reef’. In Robinson, M. and Picard, D. (eds), The framed world: Tourism, tourists and photography. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 185–97.
Pocock, C. 2010. ‘A playground for science: Great Barrier Reef’, Queensland Historical Atlas, 2009–10, http://www.qhatlas.com.au/content/playground-science-great-barrier-reef.
Pocock, C. 2020. Visitor encounters with the Great Barrier Reef: Aesthetics, heritage, and the senses. London: Routledge.
Pocock, C. 2022. ‘Visualising heritage landscapes in future: aesthetics, embodiment, and meaning’. In Goetcheus, C. & Brown, S. (eds), Routledge Handbook of Cultural Landscapes, in press.
Rössler, M. 2002. ‘Linking nature and culture: World Heritage cultural landscapes’. In Ceccarelli, P. and Rössler, M. (eds), Cultural landscapes: The challenges of conservation. Paris: UNESCO, pp. 10–15, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000132988.
Rössler, M. 2006. ‘World Heritage cultural landscapes: A UNESCO flagship programme 1992–2006’. Landscape Research 31(4): 333–53.
Smith, A. 2013. ‘People and their environments: Do cultural and natural values intersect in the cultural landscapes on the World Heritage List?’. In Frankel, D., Lawrence, S. and Webb, J. (eds), Archaeology in environment and technology: Intersections and transformations. London: Routledge, pp. 181–203.
Suggett, D. J., Camp, E. F., Edmondson, J., Boström-Einarsson, L., Ramler, V., Lohr, K. and Patterson, J. T. 2019. ‘Optimizing return-on-effort for coral nursery and outplanting practices to aid restoration of the Great Barrier Reef’, Restoration Ecology 27(3): 683–93.
Tweed, W. C. 2010. Uncertain path: A search for the future of national parks. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
UNESCO World Heritage Centre. 2019. Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. Paris: UNESCO.
Westcott, D. A., Fletcher, C. S., Kroon, F. J., Babcock, R. C., Plagányi, E. E., Pratchett, M. S. and Bonin, M. C. 2020. ‘Relative efficacy of three approaches to mitigate crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef’, Scientific Reports 10(1): 1–12.
Wright, J. 1977. The coral battleground. Sydney: Angus & Robertson.
