Rt Hon Helen Clark
Prime Minister

Address at
Opening Of World Heritage Committee Meeting

at

Christchurch Town Hall,
CHRISTCHURCH

3.15 pm
Saturday 23 June 2007

It is a great honour for New Zealand to host this 31st session of the World Heritage Committee and have delegates from so many countries visit our shores.

The world’s natural, cultural and historic heritage is very important to us.

New Zealand ratified the World Heritage Convention in 1984. We strongly support it as a mechanism to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of the world’s most outstanding cultural and natural heritage sites.

I believe that New Zealanders have a deep association and appreciation of their natural and cultural heritage.

The landscape in which Maori and European New Zealanders live has been a significant influence on our history and culture, and continues to be a source of strength for us as a nation.

New Zealand was one of the last places in the world to be discovered by human beings, approximately 1000 years ago.
The discovery was part of the remarkable story of voyaging and exploration by Pacific peoples, truly one of the great epics of human history.

Our three existing World Heritage sites represent themes of cultural value, natural wonder, and isolation.

Tongariro National Park in the central North Island was inscribed as a natural site in 1990, and in 1993 inscribed for its associated cultural values too. For Maori, the volcanic peaks of Tongariro have deep cultural and spiritual importance, and it was for that reason that New Zealand strongly supported their designation as the first New Zealand cultural landscape on the World Heritage list.

Te Wāhipounamu – South West New Zealand World Heritage Area was inscribed in 1986, and extended in 1990. It includes some of New Zealand’s most iconic natural wonders, from the fiords in the south to the rainforest of Westland and to the Southern Alps.

New Zealand’s third site lies isolated in the Southern Ocean, halfway to Antarctica. The Sub-Antarctic Islands of New Zealand were inscribed as a natural site in 1998. These islands are home to an extraordinary wealth of biodiversity. They are a haven for seabirds and other wildlife, many of which are endangered species.

Our government has aspirations to extend New Zealand’s list of World Heritage sites. We are presenting a tentative list of eight new sites at this meeting.

Included in our list will be the Volcanic Cones upon which the Auckland metropolis is built, and where close to a third of New Zealand’s population lives - including me.

Another site on our tentative list will be the North-western corner of the South Island which contains a wide diversity of landforms, native species and much-loved landscapes.

The cultural sites on our tentative list include the highly significant early sites of contact between Maori and Pakeha at Kerikeri and Waitangi, and Napier’s art deco heritage precinct, built after the devastating earthquake of 1931 levelled the city. As a strong supporter of the World Heritage Convention, our government was therefore pleased to support a wider and more active role when New Zealand was elected to serve a four-year term on the World Heritage Committee in 2003.

That participation culminated in the election of Tumu Te Heuheu as Chair of this committee, and in our hosting of its 31st annual meeting here in Christchurch. In taking this role, New Zealand also undertook to represent the wider South Pacific community at the World Heritage Committee.

The South Pacific has a magnificent culture of voyaging and exploration, some truly inspiring historic and ancient sites, and places of unique and special natural heritage, but it has only one World Heritage Site.

I am very appreciative of the work Tumu has been doing with our South Pacific neighbours to help bring this heritage before the committee. I extend a special welcome to our Pacific delegates here today, and wish you well in your endeavours to bring a Pacific flavour to the World Heritage Committee’s work.

As well as being Prime Minister, I am also Minister of Culture and Heritage. I have a deep interest in the issue of intangible cultural heritage, which I know has been a cause spearheaded by the Director-General of UNESCO, Koichiro Matsuura.

UNESCO and the World Heritage Convention it administers have helped our world to appreciate and protect our shared natural and cultural heritage. You have an important job ahead of you over the next ten days to add further sites to the World Heritage list, to consider how to protect existing sites better, and to debate broader issues such as the impact of global warming on natural and cultural heritage.

I wish you well for your meeting here in Christchurch.
Thank you.

Ends

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