Aligning heritage and environmental practice

Abstract

A major part of Australian and Aotearoa-New Zealand identity is made up of our spirit and ingenuity, our heritage places, and our unique living landscapes. Heritage is a legacy from our past, a living, integral part of life today, and the stories and places we pass on to future generations. Both countries’ environments are cultural landscapes, shaped and imbued with meaning over exceptionally long periods by our First Nations peoples, whose cultures and identities in turn reflect their belonging to and co-existence with landscapes. Thus, a special issue on strengthening relationships between heritage and environment is timely. This special issue on the role of heritage in environmental management was suggested and guest-edited by members of the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand’s Heritage Special Interest Section (Heritage SIS). The Heritage SIS was established following endorsement from the EIANZ Board on the 2nd of November 2016. Its purpose is to develop and promote knowledge about heritage as an essential element of environmental practice, and to advance the professional standing and recognition of heritage practitioners through the EIANZ Certified Environmental Practitioner Scheme. The Heritage SIS provides heritage professionals with a means to engage with the Institute, and for the Institute to have a way of embracing and interacting with heritage professionals who often work in very closely aligned roles, businesses or institutions, and sometimes the same locations. Environmental professionals are often required to work outside their comfort zones and engage heritage professionals to perform certain tasks. The SIS thus provides an opportunity to present heritage practitioners and their work to the EIANZ members who might benefit from more detailed understanding about heritage and how its practitioners operate across multiple disciplines and jurisdictions. Meanwhile for heritage practitioners, the SIS offers an excellent way to network and embed themselves into a cognate professional body. As an extension of this alliance, through the work of the SIS and EIANZ Specialist Environmental Advisory Committees there is now a Certified Environmental Practitioner specialisation for heritage practitioners. This provides an opportunity for professionals to gain certification, which carries status within the institute membership, as well as increasing awareness and credibility with government and employers. This special issue of the journal supports the aims of exposingmore of the EIANZmembership to heritage matters, and raising the profile of heritage management more generally within the environmental management profession. It reflects particularly on what heritage is, the multiple uses for heritage, whether policy and practice in Australia and New Zealand is protecting heritage effectively, and how effective policy for intangible heritage and heritage landscapes could look. It also offers case studies of successful collaborative projects where heritage has been integrated with other environmental practice, and considers strengthening Aboriginal participation and collaboration in commercial archaeology. This year’s cover photo, by Dan Hutton, celebrates the interactions of heritage and environment. The image shows Paterson’s curse (Echium plantagineum) highlighting heritage Aboriginal mound sites of the Barapa Barapa people at Pollack lagoon, New South Wales. These mound sites result from repeated annual residence in the same place for thousands of years.