10.07.08 John Macadam / Earthwords, geologist & writer
Geoparks
10.07.08
'Geopark' is usually understood to be an area designated for its geological and/or geomorphological (i.e. landscape) interest.
There are many 'geoparks' in the world! Some countries - e.g. Germany and the People's Republic of China - have set-up 'geoparks' using national, or provincial, mechanisms. Since 2000 there has been a Europe-wide designation - 'European Geopark', and since February 2004 a worldwide designation of UNESCO Geopark or 'World Geopark' or 'Global Geopark'. The latter came out of a proposal (from the UNESCO Division of Earth Sciences) and areas designated rank alongside the Biosphere Reserves of UNESCO's Man & Biosphere (MAB) programme i.e. there's a Global Network of National Geoparks and a World Network of Biosphere Reserves. UNESCO has seen European Geoparks as the model for the worldwide designation: in April 2001 UNESCO signed a memorandum of agreement with the originators of the European Geopark designation. A member of UNESCO's staff sits on the vetting panel for applications for European Geopark status, and has a veto. Geopark designation is seen as a tool for highlighting an area's geological heritage for use in sustainable development. Of course areas with geological heritage of global significance can be candidates for World Heritage Site status (as natural sites), so long as they meet the other criteria for that designation. As seen by UNESCO, geopark status is for areas with geological heritage of regional significance .... but several organisations are calling their patch of ground a 'geopark' when it is hard to see that the area so 'designated' has even a regional geological significance.
When the 'World Geopark' label was set up in July 2004 the 17 European Geoparks were joined by 8 of China's national geoparks as World Geoparks, and by October 2005 there were 33 World Geoparks listed, and by end-Junel 2008 57 Global Geoparks (informally the terms UNESCO Geopark, World Geopark and Global Geopark are used interchangeably) from 18 different countries.
The First International Geopark Conference took place in June 2004 in Beijing (where the Global Geopark network has an office provided by the People's Republic of China) with over 300 people from 40 countries attending. More information is on the UNESCO Global Geoparks Network website. The conference was followed by 4 post-conference field trips (many geologists I spoke to had a problem in choosing just one of the four!).
The Second Global Geopark Conference (or World Geopark Conference) was held in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in September 2006 with 320 participants from 40 countries and 6 continents.
The Third Global Geopark Conference was held in Osnabrück (Osnabrueck), Germany - in the Terra-Vita Geopark - in June 2008, with around 500 participants from 60 countries.
The
Fourth Global Geopark Conference will
be held in Langkawi Geopark (Malaysia) in 2010.
By the end of June 2008 there were 57 Global Geoparks in 18 countries (Kanawinka
Geopark in Australia is the latest).
A website for the whole of the
European Geopark network is available, and includes the
criteria for European Geopark status. The website is designed as a portal for
individual geoparks' websites. By May 2008 there were 32 European Geoparks
(some had not been revalidated):
China had 21 World Geoparks. There's brief information in English on each. Some of the links below are only in Chinese:
Outside Europe and China there are now 4 geoparks:
where the 4th Global Geopark Conference will be
held in 2010.
Increasingly tourism operators are marketing geoparks on their websites, in addition to the geopark's own site. A good example of the latter is the site for the Stone Forest near Shilin in the state of Yunnan, south-west China. This is available in several languages and even goes into details of the languages the tour guides speak (the excellent Ma Rong, who showed me round in 2004, speaks Mandarin and - excellent - English, as well as her own Sani language, of course. She had bought her own digital English-Mandarin translator, and had been taught a good deal of geology by Yunnan University in Kumming. Impressive!). On 27 June 2007 the Shilin Karst, along with the Libo Karst and the Wulong Karst, were inscribed on the World Heritage List as the South China Karst.
In the near future there are likely to be many more applications for Global Geopark status from all over the world, judging by the presentations at the Belfast conference. For example Gondwanaland Geopark in Namibia, M'goun Geopark in Morocco, Magma Geopark in Norway and Avouca Geopark in Portugal. There's also talk of applications from Japan, Mexico, Chile, Iceland, Kenya, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Switzerland, Anglesey (Ynys Mon Geopark) in Wales (UK) ... Various countries have a longstanding network of national geoparks (e.g. Germany and China) and more are setting these up (e.g. Japan and Australia).
An increasing amount is appearing in the English-language press about geoparks (or geo-parks, geo parks or GeoParks). There's an article written about the Petrified Forest in Down to Earth of November 2001. An abstract was published in Geoscience in South West England, Volume 10 Part 2, in 2001. I gave a paper - Potential European Geoparks, and the present state of Geotourism, Geoconservation, and Geo-education in Cornwall, south-west Britain - at the first European Geoparks conference in Molinos Spain, in October 2000. I gave a second paper - Nothing new under the sun! - two hundred years of geotourism in Cornwall - at the second conference which was held under the auspices of UNESCO on Lesvos in October 2001. My 2000 paper was published in the conference report (in 2003), which can be ordered from the Petrified Forest website. The third conference was in Austria in October 2002, the fourth in Crete in October, 2003 (at which several of us - from Cornwall County Council, Cornwall Wildlife Trust and Camborne School of Mines - gave a poster presentation about developments in Cornwall in the last 3 years): the proceedings of this 2003 conference were published in 2006.
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Cornwall as a Geopark?
At a meeting at County Hall, Truro on December 7, 2000 of the then Chief Executive of Cornwall County Council Peter Davies, Deputy Chief Executive David Pattison, Leader of the Council Pippa Englefield and Executive Member for the Environment Bert Biscoe, with John Macadam, it was agreed that the latter would develop an application dossier for Cornwall to join the European Geoparks Network. Then an external problem developed and the work was put on hold.
In May 2001 the In Pursuit of Excellence – Cornwall (IPE) partnership published Pathways for the Future – Tourism, Leisure and the Environment. The document was supported by the public and private sectors (including Cornwall County Council, Isles of Scilly Council, District Councils, South West Tourism, South West of England Development Agency, and the European Regional Development Fund). Recommendation 26 is "Support the proposal for the designation of Cornwall as a European Geopark".
Reference: IPE – Cornwall, 2001. Pathways for the Future – Tourism, Leisure and the Environment. IPE in association with Hawkins Publishing, Probus, Cornwall.
In July 2006 UNESCO inscribed the 'Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape' as a World Heritage Site. It's sometimes called just 'Cornish Mining', but it consists of 10 sites in Cornwall and West Devon, and the designation is as a cultural site, not as a natural site, so this would in no way conflict with a Geopark status. The Austrians expect to have a similar situation with their existing Hallstadt-Dachstein (or Hallstatt-Dachstein) World Heritage site (also a cultural site) which is likely to be enclosed in a future European Geopark (the Salzkammergut) (yet to be proposed). The specific point of potential conflict between designations was discussed with Wolfgang Eder, then Head of UNESCO Division of Earth Sciences, at the 1st European Geoparks meeting, in Molinos, Spain, in October, 2000.
The time since December 2000 has been spent promoting and discussing the Geopark concept in various forums (*see below) in Cornwall. And there has also been a staffing problem in Cornwall County Council which is the 'competent authority' (under the published criteria for European Geoparks) which has now been resolved.
It seems likely that Cornwall County Council will review a geopark application now that the World Heritage Site proposal has been successful. Another option being discussed is to request UNESCO to extend the cultural world heritage site to include natural (i.e. geological) sites. There is work going on to identify geological sites in and close to the world heritage site; of course many have been identified long ago and have appropriate conservation designations (e.g. SSSI - Site of Special Scientific Interest, GCR- Geological Conservation Review site, and CGS - County Geological Site).
*Forums in which geopark status for Cornwall has been discussed (this list is not complete):
Cornwall AONB Partnership
Cornwall World Heritage Site Bid Partnership
Cornwall Wildlife Trust
Cornwall RIGS Group
Royal Geological Society of Cornwall
Camborne School of Mines, University of Exeter
Cornwall Derelict Land Advisory Panel
Cornish Eisteddfod
Open University Geological Society (SW Branch)
Ussher Society (Geologists & Geomorphologists in the SW)
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