Update - Jabiluka latest

29 June 1999

Message from FoE Sydney, re Jabiluka and the World Heritage Committee extraordinary meeting which has been called to discuss whether to place Australia's World Heritage Kakadu National Park on the list of 'World Heritage In Danger'. The meeting will be held at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on July 12th.

Anyone concerned with Indigenous Peoples Rights, uranium mining, or the preservation of World Heritage,

The World Heritage Committee is meeting to discuss whether to place Australia's World Heritage Kakadu National Park on the list of 'World Heritage In Danger' at an extraordinary meeting called for that purpose at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on July 12th.

The meeting of the Committee will be preceded by a meeting of the World Heritage Bureau on July 5-10.

People will be leaving for the meeting around July 3, a week from now.

Governments are making decisions as of now/yesterday, as to the stand they will take on listing Kakadu as 'In Danger'. *This means that the time to write to them is now.*

If you haven't yet written to your government (Minister for environment and foreign minister), please do so now.

The advisory bodies to UNESCO, IUCN and ICOMOS and ICCROM, have twice strongly reccommended that Kakadu be listed as 'In danger'.

34 congresspeople led by Cynthia Kinney, wrote to Clinton yesterday, asking the administration to list Kakadu as 'in Danger'.

The Australian Government is undertaking a massive diplomatic effort, backed with the full might of our departments of Foreign Affairs and Environment, to PREVENT an 'in danger' listing. It is portraying the rather conservative official advisory bodies to UNESCO as 'green extremists'.

If Kakadu is NOT listed as 'in Danger' it may be the first time that the World Heritage Committee has disregarded the strong and repeated advice of its advisory bodies.

Failure to list Kakadu as 'in Danger' will lead to a perception, which the Australian government will certainly promote to the fullest extent, that mining in World Heritage National Parks (and who knows what other inapproprate developments) is compatible with a World Heritage listing.

It will also show that a sufficiently well-funded and aggressive lobby campaign can subvert the intent of the World heritage Convention and the advice of the official advisory bodies.

Please,

Time is growing short. Governments are making decisions how they will vote and lobby right now.

Write to Your environment and/or foreign ministers or Ambassador Koichiro Matsuura (Chairperson of the World Heritage Committee) *IMMEDIATELY*, asking them to formally instruct your countrys delegation to the UNESCO WHC to not only vote for an 'in Danger' listing on July 12th, but to actively lobby for and promote such as listing at the preceding World Heritage Bureau meeting of 5-10July.

Ambassador Koichiro Matsuura's fax number is +33-1-42-27-50-81, +33-1-45-68-5570

John Hallam,
Friends of the Earth Sydney, Australia.

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