Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Papahānaumokuākea (originally Northwestern) Hawaiian Islands Marine National
Monument (USA) is even larger, with an area of some 362,000 km
2
, more than the
total area of all current U.S. national parkland (e.g. Eilperin
2006
). In the Orkney
Islands of Scotland, the largest land owner today is the Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds.
Perhaps the most prestigious list of all is UNESCO's list of World Heritage
Sites. Some national parks (like Dominica's Morne Trois Pitons) get inscribed onto
this list in due course. Inscription on this high-status list identifies a locale as hav-
ing cultural and/or natural features that are recognized as deservedly common heri-
tage of humankind and therefore meriting being preserved for all, beyond the actual
political borders where they may happen to be situated. Islands, singly or in groups,
are the only places in the world that can find themselves
totally ensconced
as World
Heritage Sites. Thus, at the latest round of additions to the list, announced on 7 July
2008, there were sites
in
Mauritius,
in
New Caledonia,
in
Vanuatu and
in
Cuba
announced; but the whole island of Surtsey (Iceland) and the whole Socotra archi-
pelago (Yemen) were also included. (They thus join such wholly endorsed islands
as the Aeolian Islands, Aldabra, Baja de California Islands, Fraser Island,
Galápagos, Gorée, Henderson, Isla de Cocos, Lord Howe, Mozambique Island,
New Zealand Sub-Antarctic Islands, Rapa Nui/Easter Island, Robben Island, Saint-
Louis, St Kilda, and Venice.) Some of these islands, especially those listed for their
natural features, are totally depopulated (as is Surtsey); some are accessible to sci-
entists (Macquarie Island, Australia); others to tourists but only after obtaining
special permission (Aldabra atoll, Seychelles); some even inaccessible, in name as
much as in deed: Gough and Inaccessible Islands (United Kingdom) were inscribed
to the list in 1995.
The second route to ecological development is via
non-democratic control and
non-pluralist governance
. (The designation of land or sea as parks, reserves or
world heritage sites is in itself a form of wresting such spaces from the non-reg-
ulatory and
laissez faire
tendencies of democracy). The 'political geography' of
cold water islands might partly explain why there are typically less pressures to
expand tourism on these locations. Extreme island regions of larger states tend to
lie on the political periphery, especially when they have small populations: un/
under-represented in the corridors of power; largely forgotten by centralized
policy makers suffering from 'the urban bias'; dismissed as insignificant backwa-
ters other than, perhaps, in strategic (military and resource) terms (Butler
1993
;
Wilkinson
1994
). A weak local political influence and a lackadaisical interest
from the centre do, in turn, suggest that local elites assume significant politico-
economic power. These elites also tend to be narrower, less fragmented and more
concentrated in island jurisdictions with small populations (e.g. Buker
2005
; May
and Tupouniua
1980
; Richards
1982
). Moreover, in non-sovereign island territo-
ries, the concentration of local politico-economic power is more likely to rest in
the hands of a small identifiable group: a religious congregation (Solovetsky), a
team of scientists (Macquarie); an indigenously controlled corporation (Baffin;
Nunivak); an arms-length enterprise trust (Chatham); or a municipality (Luleå)
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