Bob Carr appeals to UNESCO over Warragamba Dam

Bob Carr, a former NSW premier and Australian foreign minister, has appealed to UNESCO to send a team to survey the threats to the World Heritage status of the Blue Mountains, giving it the same urgency as a review now under way for the Great Barrier Reef.

In a letter to Mechtild Rössler, director of the World Heritage Centre, Mr Carr said a draft decision due by the end of July on the Blue Mountains did not take into account the damage from the huge 2019-20 bushfires nor the threat posed by the Berejiklian government’s plan to raise the Warragamba Dam wall by 14 metres.

Bob Carr, whose state Labor government blocked bigger dams in the Blue Mountains, has appealed to the World Heritage committee.Credit:Brook Mitchell

“It is deeply disturbing to me that the environmental protections established by my government for the Blue Mountains have been undermined in recent years, particularly through the proposed raising of the Warragamba Dam wall,” Mr Carr wrote.

“The draft decision proposed by the World Heritage Secretariat does not recognise the urgency of threats facing the property and concerns are held about its technical validity in consequence.”

At the least, Mr Carr suggests, UNESCO should request a monitoring mission be sent to examine the impacts of bushfires on the Greater Blue Mountains, and consider the additional damage raising the dam wall would have on some 6000 hectares that would face at least temporary inundation during floods.

“They should just come and take a look,” Mr Carr, who was premier of NSW when the Greater Blue Mountains were inscribed as a World Heritage area in 2000, told the Herald. “Through the tyranny of small decisions, we can go on obliterating ancient Australia and this is what this [dam wall] project represents.”

Mr Carr’s intervention comes as the World Heritage committee prepares to decide as soon as this week whether to declare the Great Barrier Reef “in danger”.

Bob Carr, then premier of NSW, hiking in the Kowmung with wilderness campaigner Milo Dunphy in 1995.Credit:Andrew Meares

United Nations diplomats last month recommended such a move, including a demand Australia accelerate its efforts to take climate action. UNESCO, though, did not go as far in relation to the Blue Mountains issue; however, it did ask the state government to provide the environment impact statement (EIS) of the dam plan for its review before making a final decision to proceed.

“UNESCO will be provided with the same Environmental Impact Statement that we provide to the NSW public,” the Minister for Western Sydney, Stuart Ayres, said last month.

“Protecting communities and reducing flood risk downstream is our priority,” he said. “That will have an impact behind the wall and the EIS is an open and transparent way of assessing these impacts against the flood mitigation benefits.”

Cate Faehrmann, the Greens environment spokeswoman, said the NSW Coalition had “taken an axe to many hard-won environmental protections” since coming to power a decade ago.

“It’s therefore heartening to see Bob Carr taking them on at the international level against this attack on this precious World Heritage Area,” Ms Faehrmann said.

“The science states unequivocally that the raising of the dam wall will have a devastating impact on the conservation and cultural values of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, particularly after the bushfires.”

Harry Burkitt, general manager at the Colong Foundation for Wilderness, said there had been no attempt by the NSW government to rigorously assess the environmental and cultural impacts of flooding, with the impacts likely made worse after the state’s worst-ever bushfires.

“Alarm bells should be ringing at UNESCO given the outright belligerence of Minister Stuart Ayres towards protecting World Heritage values,” Mr Burkitt said. “A UNESCO monitoring mission is more than warranted when the NSW government has a stated disinterest in adhering to our World Heritage commitments.”

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Peter Hannam writes on environment issues for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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