From Heritage New Zealand, Summer 2004

by Alice Shopland

Who decides which sites get world heritage listing and why? What are the possibilities for New Zealand?

What places in New Zealand are of such international significance that they should be designated World Heritage sites? Among other sites in each country, China has its Great Wall, Egypt has Abu Simbel and Greece has the Acropolis. We had the Pink and White Terraces, which would presumably have been a shoo-in.

As it is, we have three World Heritage sites: Te Wahipounamu (the southwest of the South Island), the New Zealand Sub-Antartic Islands, and Tongariro National Park. Te Wahipounamu includes four national parks - Westland Tai Poutini, Mount Aspiring, Aoraki/Mt Cook and Fiordland.

Te Wahipounamu and the Sub-Antartic Islands are recognised for their natural values, but Tongariro National Park is recognised for both natural and cultural values. Usually it’s one or the other, so Tongariro is unusual in that it is one of the few World Heritage sites recognised for both natural and cultural attributes.

While natural values predominate in New Zealand’s World Heritage sites, that’s not the case in general. Of the more than 750 sites currently listed, 77 per cent are inscribed for their cultural values, 20 per cent for their natural values, and just 3 per cent for a mix of cultural and natural values.

Department of Conservation archaeologist Kevin Jones explains the dominance of cultural listings: “Modern thinking, with its awareness of cultural relativism, makes it very difficult to objectively balance the significance of cultural sites. How do you compare the merits of a Christian cathedral and a Moslem mosque, for example?”

He’s implying that, unlike two beech forests or two limestone cave systems, two “similar” potential cultural listings will often prove impossible to rank, which means both may be listed.

But achieving World Heritage listing is no saunter in the park. The standards are extremely high, and the process is very competitive.

Jones, an archaeologist with the science and research unit of DoC, has been a board member of ICOMOS New Zealand for about eight years. (ICOMOS, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, is one of the UNESCO bodies charged with assessing cultural World Heritage nominations. Most of his work for ICOMOS has been in Australia, making assessments of their proposed World Heritage archaeological sites.

He has done on-the-spot inspections of the Greater Blue Mountains and the Purnululu (Bungle Bungles) nominations, for example. Both nominations were successful on their natural merits but not their cultural.

“The real difficulty arises when you’re dealing with religious sites which haven’t left substantial traces,” he says.“That’s often the situation with Aboriginal society in Australia. ICOMOS deals with monuments and sites. It’s difficult when you have the intangibles but no monument or site.

This is an issue that New Zealand has brought to the attention of the committee, which can sometimes be rather Eurocentric.

Tumu te Heuheu is head of the New Zealand World Heritage delegation. He is also paramount chief of Ngati Tuwharetoa, the tribe associated with Tongariro.

He relates how, at a World Heritage meeting in Helsinki, appear prepared by New Zealand, Australian and Canadian representatives was presented, promoting greater participation by indigenous people in the assessment of World Heritage sites.

“It was a bit different in terms of how the rest of the world saw World Heritage!” he says.“We didn’t really get a buy-in from other countries. Some felt reasonably comfortable with it, but many weren’t quite sure about it. When you’re raising issues about sharing governance, it takes a while for communities to come to terms with that sort of approach.
“It made us really appreciate what the treaty [of Waitangi] has done for keeping people talking to each other in this country.”

Nothing formal emerged from the presentation of the paper, but te Heuheu says the issue is being kept alive: the committee decided it should stay on the table.

Since then, the director general of UNESCO has visited New Zealand. And one of the things he wanted to discuss and clarify while he was here was the issue of intangible cultural heritage. This was heartening for te Heuheu: “The intangible is the spiritual; in this part of the world we have a great affinity with that. That question is being raised throughout the world… there is a desire to try and understand what it means.”

Part of being a signatory to the World Heritage Convention is a commitment to maintaining heritage sites. And good existing protection is a prerequisite for World Heritage listing.

As it says on the UNESCO website, “World Heritage conservation is a continuous process. Listing a property does little good if it subsequently falls into a state of disrepair or if a development project risks destroying the qualities that made the property suitable for World Heritage status in the first place.”

Having your conservation and restoration practices put under the scrutiny of an international body is one of the hurdles of World Heritage listing. Another is the high cost of maintaining the sites in an authentic manner, including doing any repairs with materials and techniques as close as possible to the original. Overall, a listing will give strength to local conservation agencies in their battle to save heritage.

Development may also have to be controlled in the vicinity, Kevin Jones says, and that of course has an impact on the local community.

For these reasons, there is extensive public consultation before a site is nominated to the World Heritage committee. Similarly, a privately owned site would never be named or even nominated for World Heritage status without the consent of the owner, and evidence of ongoing protection for the site.

But there are many potential benefits from listing – now and in the future.

“The ultimate purpose of World Heritage listing,” according to Jones, “would be to publicise the existence of these sites more widely. Then there will be a feedback effect in terms of ensuring the wise conservation of the archaeological and landscape values under which they’ve been nominated.”

Jones feels that a good argument can be made for a number of cultural sites in New Zealand to be listed: “Particularly sites of Polynesian origin but also some from the 1840s onwards.”

One of his top picks would be “cultural landscapes” in the Bay of Islands such as the Kerikeri Basin. “The principal cultural interest there is the encounter between Maori and European society in the form of the missions, and the important physical features are pa sites occupied from 1810 onwards, which feature in pre-European traditions, and several mission settlements.”

Another of his suggestions would be the Auckland volcanic cones, presented as a serial site (a group of pieces of land with a common subject or theme). They should qualify, he believes, because as pa sites they are examples of field monuments and settlements, with a strong living tradition still associated with them.

He emphasises that “this is only professional opinion, and there is a long track to be followed in terms of consultation with iwi and local communities in those places before these would be practical for nomination.

“The process is difficult, because it’s very much at the forefront of conservation, good national government policy and indigenous cultural policy – and that’s the way World Heritage should be.”

Other sites he mentioned as potential cultural nominees included Napier and Oamaru.

“The trend now is to see these places not simply in terms of buildings or groups of buildings, but also in terms of the social history and the social movements which they represent. The Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens in Melbourne, for example, were successfully nominated by Australia because the nomination was very much written in terms of the meaning of the exhibition movement in the 19th century.”

Oamaru might not be a successful nomination simply on the strength of its old buildings, but might be more favourably received as illustrating the theme of international trade, because of its significance as a goldfields port and in the
export of frozen meat.

Tumu te Heuheu sees the World Heritage Convention as an opportunity to influence what is preserved for future generations. “If we look at the world, it doesn’t seem to be a very nice place to be at the moment. With World Heritage, we’re trying to establish values, trying to understand what the next 100 years might be like and consider which parts of all the world’s cultures should be saved. It’s about cultures sharing their heritage with other cultures. And I believe it may give us a better chance of surviving the next 100 years.”

DoC is preparing a public discussion paper to encourage people to consider which New Zealand sites they would like to see considered for World Heritage listing. It is expected to be available by mid-December, with submissions due in March 2005.