Mambo Wetlands Reserve
Marcelo Chaplin
A successful protest meeting was held today at the Mambo wetlands site at 11 am to discuss the lodging of a DA for the site by the new owner. Speakers included, the PS Mayor Ryan Palmer, Councillors John Nell, Jaimie Abbott, Giacomo Arnott, representatives of the PS Koala Protection group, Ecconetwork and our own Nigel Waters. The meeting was chaired by Kathy Brown and about 300 enthusiastic people turned out in the middle of a Grand final long weekend. The sausage sizzle and the coffee van did a roaring trade and the hat was passed around raising nearly $1,400.00 for the campaign ahead.
We received A passionate email today HERE from a resident of Foreshore Drive that he has given permission to use, to assist in our submissions objecting to the sale of the 6 hectares of land in the wetlands currently owned by the Education Dept. who, it seems, have instructions from Mr Baird to sell off all surplus land.
The land for sale includes seven lots, with six of the lots between 657m and 680m in size and one lot being 5.6ha in size (182 Port Stephens Drive). The sites are all zoned E2- Environmental Conservation and are currently heavily vegetated. Port Stephens Council owns the sites to the east and west of 182 Port Stephens Drive (see diagram below). The minimum lot size for subdivision of these lots is 40ha, with all of the lots being under this requirement.
Council has not received any planning proposal to rezone the land or has had any meetings regarding the future development of these sites. The site is noted by the Office of Environmental Heritage as having high environmental value.
TRRA contacted Walter Lamond, Chair of the 355B Landcare Group that has been caring for the site on behalf of the local residents for the last 20 years and he indicated that although they were aware of who owned the land, they had no indication that the department had now designated the land as surplus to requirements and that it was to be sold off in an online auction on 9 June 2016. He also indicated that an application
The Mambo Wetlands Community Group has set up a Facebook Page and have arranged for NBN3 TV to cover a meeting they are having on Saturday 14 May 2016 at 10:00 am at the site and have asked concerned people and local Community Groups to show support.
Below is the link to Facebook for the community forum to save mambo wetlands. This will be held on Thursday 26 May at horizons golf club. 5:45pm for 6pm start.
Any troubl verity the link to the lease go to mambo wetlands community Facebook page for more information
World Heritage Site statistics, published and non-published documents/literature, site maps, site registers, consultancy reports and archival materials were used to assess whether existing as well as potential natural and cultural site values were considered for the contemporary management of the Okavango Delta site in a way that leads to a sustainable conservation approach. The composition of the research-practice team as suggested by the HPL methodology constituted a ready-made diverse team of academics, policy makers and community members that could apply its diverse expertise to fully assess whether all values necessary for a sustainable conservation approach are accounted for.
Using expertise of trans-disciplinary team populated during the HPL, the authors found that cultural values of the OD-WHS are not highlighted in the OUVs dossier but are significantly expressed on site by locals, leading to potential conflicts of conservation. The research alerts conservationists to embrace an approach that includes all values on the site in order move towards sustainable conservation.
More research that require funding is needed to cover a wider area of the site, as well as enable work in adjoining countries to compare experiences per country - The Okavango waterbody starts in Angola and go through Namibia, and finally to Botswana.
Conservation indicators of African nature world heritage sites constitute of, and border on, diverse stakeholders. An all-encompassing approach such as the Heritage Place Lab (HPL) methodology approach always needs to be factored in.
The adopted approach to values assessment has somehow not conformed to the OUVs emphasis or other dichotomies of the World Heritage criteria but instead assessed on-the-ground management practice against key sustainable conservation indicators. Using the ICCROM HPL trans-disciplinary research-practice team approach, the focus was on a holistic values assessment of the site. The authors found that cultural values are currently under recognised, under-acknowledged and less expressed; creating potential conflicts that may hinder achievement of sustainable conservation and management of the site towards 2030 SDG agenda.
In international law, the 1971 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands aims to protect, preserve and promote wetlands across the world, and other conventions further support the protection of wetlands at an international level, including the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention. While wetlands are valued for their natural beauty and biophysical attributes, less effort has been placed on acknowledging, identifying, researching and documenting their cultural attributes. Indeed, the cultural values of wetlands are gradually gaining interest owing to the implementation of sustainable development goals that demand a more holistic approach to resource conservation. Within this context, this paper examines cultural heritage values in the Okavango Delta landscape by exploring how the existing heritage policies and heritage listing framework could begin to consider the diverse heritage values at this site.
In addition to its biophysical value, the Okavango Delta landscape supports diverse human cultural and recreational activities. The inland delta is also an important source of water for human livelihoods and wildlife. Notably, under the 2003 UNESCO Convention on Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, these values could be incorporated into the future management of the site. The site itself is managed under a combination of national and international legislation as well as other on-site approaches aimed at ensuring the day-to-day functions of the delta.
The source of the Okavango Delta waters can be traced to the highlands of Angola, through Namibia and into Botswana (Figure 1). Thus, the transboundary nature of the delta is reflected in its management and governance structures, such as the Permanent Okavango River Basin Water Commission Agreement - OKACOM ( ), which was established in 1994 between Angola, Botswana and Namibia and commits the member states to promote coordinated and environmentally sustainable regional water resources management within the Cubango-Okavango River Basin, which spans these three countries. At an international level, this agreement is underscored by the delta's Ramsar and Word Heritage Site status, emphasising the need for integrating the conservation and sustainable use of the wetland.
Criterion (ix) - The significant biophysical features of the site include, amongst others, geomorphic features such as islands, channels, river banks, flood plains, oxbow lakes and lagoons that sustain the interdependent geomorphological, hydrological and biological processes that give rise to various habitats including grasslands and woodlands.
Criterion (x) - The importance of the site is found in its large mammal population, a diverse variety of plant species, some threatened bird species, and rich natural habitats arising from permanent and seasonal rivers and lagoons, permanent swamps, seasonal and occasionally flooded grasslands, riparian forest and dry deciduous woodlands. Notably, the Okavango elephant population is much higher than in other areas in the region, often leading to human-wildlife conflict in association with arable farming.
The Okavango Delta World Heritage Site is situated on Tribal Land administered by a local body, Tawana Land Board (TLB), under the national 1968 Tribal Land Act (revised in 2018). This means that the land has communal origin and, in principle, management is undertaken in partnership with traditional authorities, with the traditional community allocation of land acknowledged and respected. This provides an opportunity for acknowledging and integrating traditional communal expressions of heritage in the on-going conservation and management of the World Heritage Site.
The Okavango Delta World Heritage Site nomination file identifies various factors affecting the property (Republic of Botswana, 2013) as well as how they have been previously addressed, either partially or fully. Most of the factors identified are threats and negative impacts on biophysical resources caused by humans. The research team built on the strength of its diversity (academics, community members and policy makers), which was required and encouraged by the HPL approach of building teams between policy makers and researcher, to add to the list of other management issues that require attention in order to ensure the sustainable management of the site. Building onto this expert diversity and approach, the research team identified a gap in in how humans are affected by the conservation and management strategies, which warrants further consideration. Indeed, the poor recognition of values related to human-nature interactions is related in part to the designation of the Okavango Delta on the basis of natural criteria only (pointing to a narrow expert base), whereas the delta's biophysical, human and socio-economic features provide the potential to nurture the diverse human cultural identities of the people that live within the site. For example, Barnard et al. (1992) indicated that the northern boundary of the site is occupied by Khoe-speaking traditional hunter-gatherers, and this area is an ancient site of human occupation with several centuries of contact between hunter-gatherer-fishing San aboriginal peoples and later inward-migrating agro-pastoral-fishing Bantu-speaking peoples from the North. Approaches that seek to safeguard intangible cultural heritage through the World Heritage management system and the approaches and methods established for the 2003 UNESCO Convention, should help enhance the recognition of diverse values to achieve a more holistic and sustainable management and conservation. Key management challenges are briefly discussed below.Poaching
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