What We Do >> Research Programs >> Sustainable Development

The Sustainable Development Program

Urban, Industrial & Rural Sustainability

This research area focuses on the ‘edge relationships’ between the World Heritage Area and the urban, rural and industrial interface. Research will include exploring more sustainable alternatives for economic production and development around the edges of the GBMWHA, which are more compatible with World Heritage values, and focusing on better integration between ‘on-park’ and ‘off-park’ management. Projects will seek approaches that resolve conflicting perspectives and meet the common interest, and opportunities for complementary activities that maximize the benefit to landholders on the edge while enhancing the extension of buffer areas around the GBMWHA.

Integrated Catchment Management

This research area addresses issues associated with governance, policy and decision-making relating to ecosystem services and catchment function. The research will seek pragmatic outcomes by developing, applying and testing investment and conceptual frameworks that enable improvements to planning, policy and decision making at all levels. A catchment-based approach will be taken wherever relevant within program activities.

Consequently, water will provide a prominent focus as a prime linkage within and between natural and constructed environments. Other natural resources including soil and vegetation will appropriately emerge in the program as issues arise relating to the need to better pursue sustainability and to address the broad relationships between the World Heritage Area and the development interface.

Visitor Management

This research area addresses balance needed between the demands of visitation to protected areas and regional development, with the needs of conservation and protection of the natural and cultural heritage of such places.

Issues to be addressed include:

• Impact management: prioritising visitor-related threats to the reserve system; measuring effective resource management and allocation; determining sustainable use of protected areas.
• Evaluation of visitor experiences.
• Environmental education and interpretation effectiveness.
• Triple bottom line assessment of permits/licensing/accreditation for commercial tourism businesses both on and off park to achieve sustainable use.
• Determining economic and non-economic values of protected areas such as the GBMWHA: developing a reliable methodology to assess the range of values and perceptions of local community and visitors. Understanding the role of the World Heritage brand in shaping these perceptions.
• The history of the conservation movement in the Blue Mountains and the effect on attitudes to park use and park management. Compare to the development of a conservation constituency in the UK and USA. Examine how the different approaches, ideologies and political processes affect conservation outcomes.