Next year Canada turns 150. What better present than a gift to the future: preservation of our outstanding heritage sites?
Parks Canada is leading a new public process to nominate more Canadian sites to the World Heritage List just in time for our birthday celebrations. From Coast Salish clam gardens to endangered whales’ feeding grounds, Pacific coastal waters are home to countless areas worthy of protection as World Heritage Sites. Have your say on what gets protected on the List, and consider proposing irreplaceable marine sites to be recognized as part of our natural heritage treasure vault.
Gwaii Haanas World Heritage Site (Photo: Dale Simonson).
The World Heritage Convention
Most countries in the world, 192 in total, have signed on to the World Heritage Convention. Over 1,000 sites are inscribed on the World Heritage List run by the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This treaty uniquely combines protection of cultural sites like the Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu, Stonehenge and natural sites like the Great Barrier Reef, the Galapagos, and Ngorongoro Conservation Area in the United Republic of Tanzania.
When a national government ratifies this treaty, it agrees to propose and protect heritage sites within its borders. UNESCO does not identify sites, or propose them for listing, as is sometimes mistakenly thought. Nor does UNESCO control these sites. A signatory country also agrees tocare for its sites after they have passed the rigorous listing process.
Canada’s World Heritage Sites and Public Nomination Process for New World Heritage Sites
We have two Lists of World Heritage Sites:
- Canada's 18 World Heritage sites include the Rideau Canal and L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site. BC’s World Heritage Sites are Kluane / Wrangell-St. Elias / Glacier Bay / Tatshenshini-Alsek which we share with the US; and SGang Gwaay on Haida Gwaii.
- Canada’s Tentative List of World Heritage Sites of six sites includes Pimachiowin Aki and Gwaii Haanas. These sites await full designation.
This month, Parks Canada opened a public nomination process to add to Canada’s Tentative List. It has published a number of guidance documents to assist communities to prepare a nomination, starting with a standard application form.
One key point to emphasize: it is essential to obtain Indigenous support for sites within traditional territories.
Outstanding Universal Value
Proving a site deserves World Heritage Site designation requires assessment of its Outstanding Universal Value (OUV). Ten stringent criteria determine OUV: six related to cultural value and four related to natural value. A site must meet at least one of these ten selection criteria, though usually a site meets multiple criteria.
Mixed cultural-natural value sites can be designated too – Canada’s Pimachiowin Aki is an example of a mixed site that has been going through the process for many years.
Another prime example of a mixed natural-cultural site that preserves the deep blue sea isPapahānaumokuākea off Hawaii, listed in part due to its deep cosmological and traditional significance for living Native Hawaiian culture.
Benefits of Designation as a World Heritage Site
The first and foremost benefit is the increased likelihood of conservation success when a site is designated. Cases where World Heritage Site designation has assisted marine conservation include:
- Rebuilding the near extinct green turtle population around Aldabra Atoll in the Seychelles;
- Defeat of a salt factory project in a lagoon critical for Pacific grey whale breeding in Mexico; and
- Preservation and jobs thanks to the designation of iSimangaliso Wetland Park in one of South Africa’s poorest regions.
Read more World Heritage success stories here.
Conservation success is often related to the high level of global scrutiny that World Heritage Sites receive, compared to other protected area designations. The Convention requires states to report regularly on each site’s State of Conservation. Each site is reviewed every six years as part of the monitoring regime. If a site faces a serious threat a quicker reactive monitoring visit and report can occur.
Other benefits of World Heritage Site designation can include increased tourism, funding, public attention, and jobs for the local community.
Tatshenshini-Alsek World Heritage Site (Photo: Doug Knuth).
Consequences for Not Protecting Listed Sites
The World Heritage Committee maintains a List of World Heritage Sites in Danger. If a site lands on that List, the home country will work with the Committee to define a Desired State of Conservation and develop corrective measures. Stripping a site of its designation and place on the World Heritage List is the ultimate sanction. This has only occurred twice since 1972. A state would be warned before that drastic step is taken.
Currently, one of Canada’s most iconic sites, Wood Buffalo National Park, is under threat according to the Mikisew Cree First Nation who petitioned UNESCO to add it to the Sites in Danger list. A UNESCO Committee will investigate the impact of developments and future projects such as the controversial Site C dam that can affect the amount and flow of water into the Park. UNESCO has requested that Canada not make any decision related to development projects that would be difficult to reverse before this site visit.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, likely the world’s best known marine World Heritage Site, illustrates the positive impact of the global spotlight. The Reef is increasingly at risk from numerous industrial activities. Coral bleaching is the latest in a string of worrying symptoms. From 2011-14 the World Heritage Committee warned Australia three times that the site could be added the Danger List because of the Reef’s deteriorating conditions. More than half of the 41 metrics that formed the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of the Great Barrier Reef had worsened since it was designated in 1981, according to the government’s own Strategic Assessment.[1] The Fight for the Reef campaign galvanized people all over the world to speak up, and the global attention helped secure a ban on most dumping of dredge spoil within the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. In July 2015 the World Heritage Committee decided not to list the site but asked the government to submit a progress report, and continues to monitor closely.
Marine World Heritage Sites – The Next Frontier
Less than 5% of World Heritage Sites have been listed particularly for their outstanding marine values. These marine Sites are mostly located in tropical ecosystems, rather than temperate and polar ecosystems like we have in Canada.
A recent guide from IUCN aims to increase the number of marine sites by providing guidance on how to apply the four criteria on natural OUV in the marine context.
The maps in this guide show the gaps in protection of Canada’s marine world heritage. The Northwest Pacific has only one marine site: Kluane / Wrangell-St.Elias / Glacier Bay / Tatshenshini-Alsek. Gros Morne in Newfoundland and Labrador is a natural World Heritage site that includes a marine component. Gwaii Haanas on the Tentative List is one marine site that could be designated.
Quadra Island Ancient Clam Garden (Photo: Amy Groesbeck).
BC’s Deep Blue Legacy – Possible New Nominations for World Heritage Designation?
Imagine listing new sites in BC:
- Coast Salish intricate clam gardens in the Gulf Islands, surely an example of OUV criteria (iii): “to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared”
- Canada’s oldest continually occupied village sites dating as far back as 11,000 years on the Central Coast, coupled with towering kelp forests where sea otters, urchins, and other creatures form an intricate food web
- The feeding grounds and nurseries for rebounding populations of some of the largest and most emblematic whales on earth: the fin, humpback, and resident, transient and offshore orcas being documented by researchers at the remote Cetacealab station on Gil Island
- Robson Bight Ecological Reserve where killer whales come to rub their cares away on the underwater beaches
- The glass sponge reefs once thought to be extinct, now found in an area almost 1000 km wide off our coast
- The biologically rich-beyond-belief Fraser Estuary – home to up to 5 million migratory birds, one of the world’s great salmon runs, feeding grounds for the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales and endangered Fraser White Sturgeon
What’s your pick for a marine area of Outstanding Universal Value? Let us know and think about getting involved in Parks Canada’s nomination process.
By Linda Nowlan, Staff Counsel
[1] Day, Jon. "The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park: the grandfather of modern MPAs." Big, Bold and Blue: Lessons from Australia's Marine Protected Areas(2016): 65 at 90.