Social housing can certainly have heritage significance. Over more than 100 years, it has been shaped by contemporary architectural and political ideas, sometimes in an exemplary way.
Literary and artistic engagements have helped to shape the region into the iconic landscape it is today.
Dozens of reefs around the world have bleached in the past three years, of which the Great Barrier Reef was merely the most high-profile.
AAP Image/WWF AUSTRALIA, BIOPIXEL
Amid fears for the world’s coral reefs, the UN World Heritage Committee has issued its most wide-ranging statement so far on protecting heritage sites from climate. But the problem doesn’t end there.
The Great Barrier Reef is reeling under a combination of bleaching, over-fishing and land clearing.
AP Image/Bette Willis
The Great Barrier Reef has avoided being listed as “in danger” by UNESCO. But celebrating this is dangerously short-sighted.
Australia’s Purnululu National Park is a World Heritage wilderness, but many other pristine places lack similar protection.
AAP Image/Tourism Australia
Wilderness areas are vitally important, yet are largely overlooked by the United Nations’ list of natural World Heritage. This week’s meeting in Poland is a chance to redress that balance.
The Wollangambe River’s canyons are loved by adventurers.
Ben Green
The environmental regulator has stepped in to stop water pollution from an underground coal mine damaging a World Heritage River. Can the mine deliver improvements and will the river recover?
The piles of rock where Murujuga’s rock art is found, in close proximity to industry.
Jo MacDonald
Murujuga, or the Burrup Peninsula, is home to over a million rock artworks. But as concern grows about the impact of industrial pollution on the art, the WA government continues to play down the area’s heritage value.
In the 1840s, the eel traps of Budj Bim were described as the work of ‘civilized men’. But it took another 135 years for more appreciative European eyes to examine the complexity of western Victoria’s Aboriginal fishery.
The Simien mountains in Ethiopia are one of the world’s most threatened natural heritage sites.
Simien mountains image from www.shutterstock.com
The ailing health of the Great Barrier Reef may be attracting more tourists, at least in the short term, with a survey showing many visitors were motivated to see it while they still have the chance.
Visits to Belize’s reefs have been climbing, despite them being listed as World Heritage in Danger since 2009.
Elizabeth Albert/Wikimedia Commons
Australia’s government has lobbied hard to avoid the Great Barrier Reef being described internationally as being in danger. But that publicity wouldn’t necessarily hit tourism that hard anyway.
Perception is everything when it comes to Great Barrier Reef tourism.
Reef image from www.shutterstock.com
All mention of Australia has been removed from an international report on climate change on the grounds that it would damage tourism. Here’s the evidence.
The Wet Tropics is Australia’s second-biggest earner of nature tourism dollars.
wettropics/gov.au
Bushfires are threatening Tasmania’s World Heritage area and ancient plants, warning us of a possible future under climate change.
Entrance to the gate of Nimrod, destroyed by the IS group and digitally reconstructed as part of Project Mosul.
Model by ruimx from photos at projectmosul.org
Researchers are making 3D scans, architectural plans and detailed photographic records of cultural heritage sites around the world, knowing they could be destroyed at any time.
Senior Lecturer in Architectural HIstory and Theory, UNSW & Honorary Research Fellow, Australian Centre for Architectural History, Urban and Cultural Heritage (ACAHUCH), UNSW Sydney