A report highlighting International Best Practice
recommendations for World Heritage Protected Areas and identifying
'best practice' models and practical solutions that could be
applied in the Wet Tropics
Literature Review
Jennifer A. Gabriel
School of Anthropology, Archaeology and Sociology, James
Cook University
ISBN 9781921359255
First completed February 2007
Published by RRRC February 2009
MTSRF Project 4.9.1 -
Indigenous landscapes of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area
Executive Summary
The effective management of World Heritage sites is dependent on
implementing a range of governance options that best addresses the
conservation of ecosystems in tandem with the rights of Indigenous
communities to fully participate in all stages of design, planning
and implementation of conservation initiatives. The primary
challenge lies in supporting co-management and community-based
conservation initiatives and frameworks with policies, funding, and
legislative institutions that sustain rather than constrain
Indigenous conservation management practices.
In the last decade there have been significant developments in
international conservation policy and practice; including a move
away from viewing sites as isolated protected areas, to
conceptualising conservation zones within larger-scale units of
analysis. This paradigm shift has generated new opportunities
and challenges for the co-management of conservation 'landscapes'
and 'seascapes', based on the rights, institutions and knowledge of
Indigenous and traditional peoples. The shift from
considering conservation zones as discreetly bounded sites to a
broader recognition of their contiguous relationship with regional
landscapes and seascapes, has been accompanied by awareness that
new forms of governance, policies and protocols are required to
address conservation objectives at multiple levels. In particular,
recognising alternative forms of governance and participatory
management models, such as Community Conserved Areas (CCAs) or
Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs), as legitimate forms of
conservation management has become an international
priority.
Initiatives focusing on more equitable and effective models of
co-management have become the cornerstone of 'best practice'
conservation, not just in terms of capacity-building for Indigenous
communities, but also for building 'resilience' into
ecosystems. Since 2003, the IUCN has been active in promoting
the legitimacy of community-based forms of governance through
'collaborative protected area management' (or conservation
partnerships) supporting Indigenous community rights and social
structures.
For the effective governance of World Heritage sites,
co-management (or 'cooperative management') offers flexible
possibilities for negotiating a balance between the conservation of
World Heritage values and the formal recognition and realization of
Indigenous common property rights and responsibilities toward the
protection of both cultural and natural values. Co-management
of World Heritage sites requires the establishment of equitable
partnerships amongst stakeholders, taking into consideration
site-specific requirements and capacities of all
stakeholders. Equitable relationships are based on an equal
capacity to contribute to decision-making processes, with
recognition of different ways of representing interests,
priorities, capacities and ambitions.
A 'partnership approach' to protected area governance requires
not only the provision of adequate legislative and funding sources,
but ensuring that formal conservation agreements are reinforced
through 'bridging' mechanisms and protocols between Traditional
Owners, non-governmental organisations, funding institutions, and
state and federal governments.
In the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, after many years of
persistence and purposefulness, the rainforest Aboriginal groups of
the area (Traditional Owners) successfully negotiated a regional
('protocol') agreement between state, Indigenous stakeholders and
conservation organisations. The Regional Agreement was
implemented in 2005 as a ministerially approved mandate to pursue
Aboriginal cultural and natural resource management. As Bruce White
(pers. comm. 2007) has highlighted; 'the key stone of the
[Regional] Agreement is a Memorandum of Understanding creating a
single Aboriginal natural and resource management agency
(Aboriginal Rainforest Council) and a whole raft of protocols
crossing policy, planning, and operational natural resource
management matters, within which the Aboriginal Rainforest Council
plays a critical role instituting within World Heritage Area
management practice'.
Importantly, whilst the Regional Agreement may not be a legally
binding and enforceable agreement of the kind that may have
originally been envisaged (by the Aboriginal participants on the
Review Steering Committee and the Aboriginal negotiating team),
Bruce White (pers. comm. 2007) makes the point that it has the
advantage of being 'relatively far reaching in its coverage of all
management activities for the World Heritage Area', and is
flexible, responsive, and readily adaptable to recommendations and
lessons learnt from annual reviews. Annual reviews are
facilitated through a regional workshop open to all agencies and
Aboriginal peoples of the Wet Tropics, encouraging the
participation and 'celebration' of the Agreement (Bruce White pers
comm. 2007). If we draw upon Dover's five core principles for
successful adaptive and innovative frameworks (cited in Hill
2006:581), it is evident that: (1) persistence; (2) purposefulness;
(3) information richness and sensitivity; (4) inclusiveness and (5)
flexibility are all qualities exemplified in the Wet Tropic
Regional Agreement and its natural and resource management agency,
the Aboriginal Rainforest Council (ARC). These core
principles and flexible mechanisms for ecosystem management in the
Wet Tropics Region provide a legitimate form of co-operative
management that needs to be sustained, funded and supported by
state and federal governments for the future benefit of the Wet
Tropics Region and the fulfilment of 'best-practice' guidelines
requiring the meaningful participation of Aboriginal people in all
areas of world heritage management.
