World Heritage

What makes the concept of World Heritage exceptional is its universal application. World Heritage sites belong to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are located.

The World Heritage List is based on cultural and/or natural criteria that are considered both outstanding and universal. The cultural criteria are included to show that Man and Nature are intimately connected.

Cultural Heritage includes monuments (eg. architectural works, sculpture and painting, inscriptions, cave dwellings), groups of buildings and sites which are of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological points of view.

Natural Heritage includes natural features, geological and physiographical formations and natural sites of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science, conservation or natural beauty.

At present there are 690 properties on the World Heritage List; 529 cultural, 138 natural and 23 mixed in 122 countries.

The prestige that comes from having sites inscribed on the World Heritage List often serves as a catalyst to raising awareness for heritage preservation on the part of governments and citizens alike. Heightened awareness, in turn, leads to greater consideration and a general rise in the level of protection and conservation afforded to heritage properties.

Australia has 14 such World Heritage Sites. Below is the list with the year in which the area was entered.

1981 Great Barrier Reef
1981 Kakadu National Park
1981 Willandra Lakes Region
1982 Tasmanian Wilderness
1982 Lord Howe Island Group
1987 Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park
1987 Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves (Australia)
1988 Wet Tropics of Queensland
1991 Shark Bay, Western Australia
1992 Fraser Island
1994 Australian Fossil Mammal Sites (Riversleigh/Naracoorte)
1997 Heard and McDonald Islands
1997 Macquarie Island
2000 Greater Blue Mountains Area.

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