UNESCO Declines to Add Australia's Kakadu Park to Endangered List;
Decision Essentially Gives Go Ahead for Uranium Mine
7/13/99
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: UNESCO Declines to Add Australia's Kakadu Park to
Endangered List; Decision Essentially Gives Go Ahead for
Uranium Mine
Source: Reuters Limited
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: July 13, 1999
PARIS - The United Nations Scientific and Cultural Agency UNESCO
decided yesterday not to include Australia's Kakadu national park on
its endangered list, opening the way for a uranium mine to begin
operating there.
UNESCO's World Heritage Committee took the decision under heavy
lobbying pressure from the Australian government and expressed regret
that Energy Resources of Australia Ltd. had not voluntarily suspended
the mine construction at Jabiluka.
"The Committee decided not to inscribe the site, which has been on
the World Heritage List since 1982, on the List of World Heritage in
Danger," UNESCO said.
"Speakers at the Committee meeting stressed the complexity of the
problem which concerns scientific, cultural and legal issues,
including the relations between people and nature," it said.
Experts had argued for a listing, citing environmental threats to the
park in northern Australia, but the committee said the issue was
complex and needed further study.
In a statement summing up its decision, UNESCO asked the Australian
government to submit a progress report by April 15, 2000 on three
areas: the cultural mapping of the Jabiluka mine and its management
plan with the co-operation of local Aborigines and other
stakeholders; the implementation of a social benefit package for the
Aboriginal communities of Kakadu; and details of the output and scale
of parallel activities at the Ranger and Jabiluka uranium mines.
Environmentalists were scathing about the decision. "This is a
disaster for Kakadu," Alec Marr of the World Wildnerness Society in
Australia told journalists at the meeting.
"The Committee decided not to inscribe the site, which has been on
the World Heritage List since 1982, on the List of World Heritage in
Danger," UNESCO said.
"Speakers at the Committee meeting stressed the complexity of the
problem which concerns scientific, cultural and legal issues,
including the relations between people and nature," it said.
Experts had argued for a listing, citing environmental threats to the
park in northern Australia, but the committee said the issue was
complex and needed further study.
In a statement summing up its decision, UNESCO asked the Australian
government to submit a progress report by April 15, 2000 on three
areas: the cultural mapping of the Jabiluka mine and its management
plan with the co-operation of local Aborigines and other
stakeholders; the implementation of a social benefit package for the
Aboriginal communities of Kakadu; and details of the output and scale
of parallel activities at the Ranger and Jabiluka uranium mines.
Environmentalists were scathing about the decision. "This is a
disaster for Kakadu," Alec Marr of the World Wildnerness Society in
Australia told journalists at the meeting.