The environment minister, Murray Watt, hosted more than a dozen ambassadors from countries on the world heritage committee on Monday as he ramped up lobbying efforts to get the Murujuga rock art complex inscribed on the world heritage list.
Unesco advisers recommended in May that the nomination be blocked and referred back to Australia until nearby “degrading acidic emissions”, including those from a Woodside gas plant, were stopped.
But the government has said that recommendation was based on “factual inaccuracies” and says a major monitoring project shows current emissions at the Western Australian site are not eroding the rock art.
The Murujuga landscape contains more than a million pieces of rock art, some almost 50,000 years old.
The 21-country committee meets in Paris this week and is expected to make a decision on the nomination late Friday or Saturday, Australian time.
The Australian government has been lobbying Unesco and committee member countries to ask them to ignore the recommendation from Unesco advisers the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS).
Watt, who was due to fly to Paris on Tuesday night to join delegates from the WA government and the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation (MAC), told the Guardian he had hosted ambassadors from about 15 committee member countries at an afternoon reception in Canberra.
Watt said the government aims to convince at least one member country to move an amendment during the meeting that would see the site given world heritage status.
“We’re not at a point where people are giving us firm commitments, but we are encouraged by the reception we have received and by what’s been said to me and our ambassadors,” he said.
ICOMOS said in a report evaluating the nomination that while the site clearly met the criteria for world heritage status, the government needed to “ensure the total removal of degrading acidic emissions, currently impacting upon the petroglyphs” and prevent further industrial development. Until then, the nomination should be referred back to Australia.
The case to list the site rests heavily on a WA government report on the results of two years of monitoring air quality and the condition of the rock art at the site by a team of about 50 scientists.
“That report is the most comprehensive conducted for this landscape,” Watt said. “It is clear in saying industry can coexist with the rock art, without damaging it, and the air quality is cleaner than capital cities.
“The crux of our argument is that the world heritage committee should base its decision on the scientific evidence that is available. That’s the evidence that should be used to determine the listing.”
Some scientists have contested the way the data from the Murujuga Rock Art Monitoring Project (MRAMP) was presented, suggesting it showed there was ongoing damage to the rock art from current emissions.
Conservationists have also pointed to Watt’s provisional approval of an extension to 2070 of Woodside’s North West Shelf project that would see the gas plant at Karatha, near the site, continue operation.
Watt said his department was still negotiating with the company around the proposed conditions that relate to emissions from the gas plant.
Prof Ben Mullins, of Curtin University and the lead scientist at MRAMP, is in Paris with the WA government delegation.
He told the Guardian: “We released a large and very dense report. We got the feeling, based on what [ICOMOS] put in its report, that they had not had time to properly digest it.”
The monitoring report did find damage to some rocks, but Mullins said this was most likely down to emissions from a long-closed power plant in the area.
He said: “We found there’s no acid rain observed in the last couple of years. To the levels of statistical confidence, we are very confident that it is unlikely there’s any ongoing impact, but we still have two more years of science to do.
“Part of the reason we’re here is to clarify our findings and refute any other, more erroneous misinformation that’s out there.”
A delegation from Save Our Songlines, a group opposed to the industrialisation of the Murujuga area and to the Woodside plant, is also in Paris asking the committee to provisionally approve the nomination, subject to the conditions requested by ICOMOS.
Raelene Cooper, a Mardathoonera woman from the group and a Murujuga traditional custodian, said the government was going to “extraordinary lengths” to push the committee to “ditch the recommendation by expert body ICOMOS”.
“[The government] are now trying to have their cake and eat it by pretending that industry and Murujuga’s world heritage can coexist – Unesco have said very clearly it can’t, so now the government is pulling out all the stops to fix the vote rather than fixing the problem.
“I’m looking forward to seeing Murray Watt for the first time when he flies in later this week.”
The WA Greens MP Sophie McNeill said there was “no doubt” Murujuga deserved a World Heritage listing, but said the state Labor government lobbying in Paris was “trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the international community” without taking the steps needed to protect it. “Instead, the WA Labor government chose Woodside and their profits,” she said
The countries that form the committee are Argentina, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, India, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Qatar, South Korea, Rwanda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Turkey, Ukraine Vietnam and Zambia.
