The Pacific atoll-island cultural landscape of Tuvalu

Description

Nanumea                    5°40’30”S   176°06’56”E

Nuitao                         6°06’34”S   177°20’03”E

Nanumanga                6°17’11”S   176°18’55”E

Nui                              7°14’44”S   177°08’45”E 

Vaitupu                       7°29’21”S   178°40’47”E

Nukafetau                   8°01’36”S   178°18’50”E

Funafuti                      8°31’28”S   179°11’40”E

Nukulaelae                 9°22’12”S   179°48’31”E

Niulakita                      10°47’24”S 179°28’16”E

The Pacific atoll-island cultural landscape of Tuvalu comprises a series of component parts on Tuvalu’s isolated volcanic archipelago of six atolls and three reef islands located midway between Australia and Hawaii. These low-lying islands are relatively isolated from one another, scattered across a 650-km arc in an exclusive oceanic sovereign economic zone of around 900,000 km² of the central western Pacific Ocean. No territory is higher than 6 m above sea level.

Atolls, mostly concentrated in the tropical Pacific, are commonly ring-shaped and broken into a string of small, low-lying islets that partially, or wholly, encircle a central lagoon. These formed on, and are spaced around, an irregularly shaped barrier reef that follows the rim of a submerged former volcano. Distinct geological and geomorphological origins and processes define atolls, and their limited natural land resources. Atoll-building processes continue in a dynamic that is increasingly influenced by rising sea levels associated with climate change. Three of the ‘outer islands’ of Tuvalu are former atolls in which typical atoll lagoons have been naturally infilled through accretion, leaving landlocked lakes and swamps. These are now classed as reef islands.  

Pacific tangible heritage is best understood through cultural traditions - political, social, and economic. Such traditions include land use practices and, especially in the case of atolls, sea use. The continuing cultural tradition of Tuvalu possesses familiar Pacific atoll-island traits, which differ substantially from higher fertile Pacific islands, but is further defined by specificities that are perhaps more enduring than in any other low-lying Pacific nation. While somewhat representative of the wider cultural development of the Pacific, these continue to survive due to environmental and geopolitical circumstances. Seemingly natural land, lagoon, and sea are intensively patterned social landscapes created by distinctive local communities.

Atoll land is strictly finite. The total land area of Tuvalu is only around 26 km². Land typically comprises narrow ribbon-like strips of coral rock and coral sand, vegetated to varying degrees. Atoll communities have long lived congregated in single villages, rather than being sparsely scattered. The typical Tuvaluan village layout is characteristically centred on, and dominated by, the Protestant Church and meeting hall, with attendant open plaza or playing field, pastor’s house, and school. These most prominent buildings are the tangible manifestation of the social, political, and religious, institutions that are shared and integrated across eight individual inhabited islands in the group. Each are environmentally and culturally distinctive, with home-island identities, yet have shared and well-defined political and religious leadership, administration, and legal ordinances firmly based to fit local custom.

The village ‘areas’ in each island, although realigned a century ago with straighter roads and raised houses in rows as opposed to clusters, is commonly the traditional core inhabited from precontact times and always the focal point of community life. Family sleeping houses and smaller buildings used for workplaces or informal socialising, cookhouses as the heart of family activity, and other buildings, reveal influences from precontact, early Christian, colonial era, and recent times. Materials have commonly evolved, with metal roofs replacing thatch and masonry, and cement replacing local timber, but so too have aspects of structural design and, for example, adaptations and infrastructure for rainwater collection. Patches of land, unsuitable for living or cultivation, often serve as cemeteries, while spiritual places and sacred sites include ancestral ‘canoe landing places’, battle sites, and natural features with symbolic value or mythological association. Isolated islets have commonly served as a refuge on some islands, in precontact times during local wars for example, of relocation during American military occupation in World War II, or separately in times of drought and threatened resources.  Certain islets, and their surrounding sandflats, seagrass, and coral reefs, which teem with seabirds, turtles, and their eggs, are also subject to cyclical restrictions and prohibitions, part of longstanding traditional environmental management and ecosystem conservation practices.    

Although Tuvalu has a tropical rainforest climate, and high rainfall, freshwater is scarce. Precarious land conditions only allow an inherently marginal human habitat. Tuvalu is not large enough, or environmentally suitable, for plantation economies common in higher and fertile volcanic islands across the Pacific. Limited horticulture is influenced by a homogeneous nutrient-poor coral rock and sandy substrate with negligible soil, combined with scarce groundwater that is severely affected by periodic drought, saltwater intrusion and salty overspray and inundation, again increasingly associated with climate change. Garden horticulture is characterised by staple atoll foods that comprise fruits, vegetables, root crops, and tree crops, especially the ubiquitous cultivated coconut, and yam, breadfruit, banana, swamp taro, pandanus, papaya, and mango. These are cultivated in variable plots for household production or in community patches and communal plantations. Traditional land tenure and land practices are distinctive: taro pits, for example, are large, and deep, enough to access groundwater, and are fertilised for long-term use over generations. Pigs and poultry have long been traditionally kept in small household gardens, or sometimes communal pens. Once the preserve of special occasions these are now more widely consumed.   

Sea use, formerly essential for the survival of atoll communities, remains vital to subsistence, particularly in the outer islands and, overall, to a distinctive cultural tradition with central sharing-based communitarian values. Sustainable marine harvests from expansive areas of calm lagoons, connecting passages between lagoon and ocean, kilometres of reef flats, and the communally owned open ocean, have supported small human populations for centuries and played a key role in the cultural development of the Pacific region. The fishing economy remains largely the domain of young men who fish in the evenings from hand-carved hardwood canoes or, increasingly, modern craft with outboard motors. Such craft in the atoll-islands comprise different designs for different waters and are beached on shaded and sheltered lagoon shores above the high-water mark or in rudimentary harbours and landing places. Techniques for fishing, and equipment used, varies from island to island where environmental and cultural specificities differ - traditional throw-nets for mullet in lagoon shallows and reef flats, mother-of-pearl shell lures for tuna in the open ocean, nets for flying fish, and even nooses for shark and marlin. The islands provided natural materials for all such traditional equipment.     

While Tuvaluan society is not timelessly traditional, there are differences between each atoll-island where communities demonstrate different degrees of self-reliance. Environmental attributes vary, and each island community has its own traditions, with social, economic, political, religious, and cultural differences, including ancestry and dialect. However, while home-island loyalties are evident, there are common shared attributes that identify with wider cohesive cultural traditions and cultural heritage that is emblematic of other Pacific atoll-island cultures.

Component parts on the following islands are included:

Nanumea

This northernmost remote atoll has a double lagoon connected by a central boat passage. A boat passage blasted through the fringing reef dates to World War II and the American military. The population of around 500 live mostly in Nanumea village which is situated in a narrow strip along the western edge of the southern lagoon. It is centred on the church (1930s, subsequently extended multiple times), meeting hall, and plaza. The ‘Big Well’ provided fresh water during droughts. Century-old household breadfruit trees accompany households and are harvested using long poles. The cemetery is located 0.5 km southeast of the church. On the opposite side of the southern lagoon is an airstrip constructed by the American military during World War II. Lakena islet, 2.3 km-long, at the northernmost end of the atoll, has a small freshwater lake used for bathing and washing. This is a former refuge islet used in times of drought, and where the island population was relocated when the US military constructed the airfield. Starchy taro roots, and Pulaka or ‘atoll taro’, are grown here in taro pits dug deep enough to reach the water table and composted for generations. The pits were concentrated here so that the main island remained mosquito free. Bananas and edible fibrous pandanus thrive, and mangroves are also grown.

Niutao

Now classified as a reef island, this former atoll has a landlocked lagoon and remnant fragmented lagoons filled in by accretion and now resembling swamp surrounded by forest. There are separate traditional bathing lagoons for men and women. The main village of Kulia is situated in the WSW and is centred on the church (1919), meeting hall (reconstructed 1959), and plaza. Three wells access freshwater lenses above saltwater, others having been destroyed by the sea. The island has a population of around 580. A gravel road encircles the island, with the cemetery located in the south. Pulaka is grown in taro pits, while breadfruit, coconut and pandanus is also cultivated. A fringing reef surrounds the whole island.

Nanumanga

Now classified as a reef island, this former atoll has a lagoon that has been infilled through accretion.  Only a 10-m wide boat channel cuts the fringing reef. The northerly segment of land now has a landlocked brackish lagoon (Vaiatoa – ‘lagoon of the triumphant warriors’) with small islands and a causeway linking Tonga and Matematefaga where most of the population of around 500 live. 20 hectares of mangroves are used for producing black dye, and for other products. The southerly lagoon (Ha’apai) is now a swamp. Much of the island is covered with inland forest of coconut, pandanus, and other trees. The main village, with two neighbourhoods of Tonga and Tokelau, is situated in the west, centred on the church, meeting hall, and open plaza, and house of the king. A former communal pig sty is in Tonga where there are also two Pulaka pits.

Nui

Nui has a large central lagoon with the largest strip of land in the south (Fenua Tapu). Originally settled as a refuge by Samoans, the island has a population of around 600 who mostly live in the largest village situated at the north-western end of the southern strip. It is centred on the island meeting hall, church and pastor’s house. There is a coral-burning lime kiln, while old wells provide freshwater which prompted the community to abandon their earlier settlements on Telikiai and Tokinivae islets in the north. There are Pulaka pits on Terikiai islet, and on Tokinivae where there is also an old cemetery and several wells. A string of now uninhabited islets follows the eastern rim and arcs around in the north. The fringing reef is commonly subject to heavy surf and there are no boat passages. Specially designed traditional canoes cross it by riding the surf.

Vaitupu

Vaitupu has the largest land area in Tuvalu and a population of over 1,000. The island has a large and almost landlocked saltwater lagoon in the south, surrounded by swamps, and mangroves. Asau and Tumaseu are neighbourhoods of the only village, situated between the southwestern shore of the lagoon and the ocean beach and boat harbour. The village grid is centred on the church (1909 structure intact, renovated 1960/2016), meeting hall, and former school site. Both neighbourhoods had communal pig pens. The island has many lenses of fresh groundwater, more than any of the other islands, and there are freshwater wells in the north of the island used especially during droughts. There is an old cemetery at Punatau. The long-established Motufoua Secondary School complex, established by the London Missionary Society in 1905, is situated at the southeast coast, connected by road to Vaitupu village.

Nukafetau

Aulotu and Maneapa villages are situated in the western corner on Savave, a very small triangular islet 0.8 km by 0.4 km. There is a church (1920) that succeeded a large chapel from the nineteenth century. Around the time of the missionaries, the community lived on Fale islet immediately to the southwest. There are a number of old wells. Apart from the eastern side, where there is a very narrow strip of forested land with a few narrow passages linking lagoon and ocean, most of the atoll has either ocean channels (in the west) or over-washed beaches (in the south and north). There are 33 islets, the largest of which, Motulalo in the south, has a former American wartime airfield with X-shaped runways. There are many relics from this period when Tuvalu hosted American military during the Pacific War.

Funafuti

Funafuti is the most populated of the small island nation, the entire Funafuti atoll being designated the capital of Tuvalu. Its land area of 279 hectares is, however, less than 1% of the total area of the atoll. Here, the largest lagoon in Tuvalu has an area of 275 km² and an average depth of 36 m. Seven main passages allow vessels into the lagoon. The largest of around thirty narrow islets is Fongafale, where the width of the narrow sweep of land is around 400 m at its greatest, and around 20 m at its narrowest. The port is located here, as is the government. In Fongafale there are four villages that are host to over around 60% of Tuvalu’s population of around12,000. Around 40 % of outer island populations live here. Darwin’s Drill site (1896/97/98), intended to test Darwin’s theory of coral atoll formation, is located on the island. Funafala, an islet in the south, served as a refuge for relocation of the island population during World War II and a small population still lives there (around 50 inhabitants). Other islets, such as Fualopa in the west (together with five neighbouring islets), are not only uninhabited but are prohibited from visitation as a marine conservation area.

Nukulaelae

Fangaua village is located on a small arc-shaped islet in the northwest of the atoll, 1.5 km by 0.2 km at its widest, between the large lagoon and barrier reef shallows. The church and meeting hall, and the core of the village, are in the north, while further houses are scattered the length of the land arc. Formerly, islanders lived mostly on Motutala islet in the north. On the long and thin islet of Niuoka in the east are the stones of worship and a large stone ‘house of the gods’.

Niulakita

This reef island, a former atoll infilled by accretion with small, landlocked, lakes and swamps, was uninhabited in pre-contact times. After the colonial administration bought the island from the US in 1944, Vaitupian and Niutao islanders settled on Niulakita. Niulakita (Teava) village is situated in the southwest, centred on the church, and a double row of houses. The island population is around 30.

Justification de la Valeur Universelle Exceptionnelle

The Pacific atoll-island cultural landscape of Tuvalu is located in the central western Pacific, midway between Australia and Hawaii. The serial cultural landscape comprises sites, landscapes, and seascapes across remote Tuvalu - one of the world’s few true atoll-island nations. Atolls, mostly concentrated in the tropical Pacific, have been important sites throughout history. They have supported small human populations for centuries and played a key role in the cultural development of the Pacific region.

Tuvalu comprises six atolls and three reef islands, each relatively isolated from one another: Nanumea, Niutao, Nanumaga, Nui, Vaitupu, Nukufetau, Funafuti, Nukulaelae, and Niulakita. Component parts represent natural features of land and sea together with landscapes and sites that illustrate Tuvaluan cultural traditions across all islands.

Atolls exhibit a string of small, low-lying islets that have formed on the fringing barrier reef around the rim of a now submerged former volcano. Distinctive ring-shaped rims partially, or wholly, encircle a central lagoon. Distinct geological and geomorphological origins and processes define them, and their limited natural resources.

The atolls of Tuvalu commonly comprise a series of ribbon-like, variably sized islets, with channels that connect the comparatively shallow lagoon with the deep open ocean. Atolls are extremely limited in land area and are among the most low-lying islands, anywhere. With elevations typically less than 5 m they are the most vulnerable to sea-level rise related to global climate change - perceived as the single greatest environmental threat to the livelihood and wellbeing of populations in the Pacific. Tuvalu’s sea-level rise in the past forty years is twice the global average.

Atolls, made from coral not soil, are often described as marginal environments for human habitation. They are exposed to similar environmental conditions which make self-sufficiency difficult. Populations, nonetheless, demonstrate sustainable land- and sea-uses shaped by natural conditions and specific historical-cultural backgrounds. They illustrate traditional Pacific atoll-island culture, a harmonious interaction between people and nature that is firmly place-specific and, in the case of Tuvalu, living and enduring.

Communities across the islands have always been limited by overall resources to sustain living, something the stratified clan-based socio-political governance has long understood. Residents practice subsistence cultivation within a well-developed framework of traditional land tenure, together with sustainable subsistence fishing using traditional equipment, which varies from island to island. Soil is almost non-existent as it is composed entirely of coral sand with a light layer of humus. Erosion from wind, waves, and flooding, is a constant threat. Fresh groundwater occurs in limited thin freshwater lenses on shallow coral limestone bedrock that is drawn from wells or accessed by crops in traditional garden pits. Water rights are inherent in land tenure in Tuvalu, while rainwater is harvested from roof catchments and stored in cisterns to increase household supply. Freshwater supply on atolls places them among the most critically threatened in the world, vulnerable to natural processes such as ocean spray, over-wash flooding of island margins, seawater intrusion, and human activities such as contamination.

While the poor soil does not support a wide variety of vegetation, staple foods comprise fruits, vegetables, root crops, and tree crops such as coconut, yam, breadfruit, banana, swamp taro, pandanus, papaya, and mango. These are cultivated in variable plots for household production or in community patches and communal plantations. Pigs and poultry are also traditionally kept in small household gardens or communal pens. Abundant sources of seafood and reef fish in the lagoons, reef flats, and open ocean provide protein, while each plant also has its traditional uses for vibrant handicrafts, dyes, and medicine. Mangroves, for example, are grown along the lagoonal fringes for use in black dye and traditional fishing gear.

Pacific tangible heritage is best understood through cultural traditions including land- and sea-use. In Tuvalu, one of the least visited nations in the world, such traditions are living and persist for the people’s own values, beliefs, and identity.     

Criterion (iii): The Pacific atoll-island cultural landscape of Tuvalu is a continuing landscape which bears exceptional testimony to an autonomous and distinctive, longstanding, and enduring way of atoll-island life. The cultural landscape exhibits a layering of tangible attributes with intangible cultural associations.

Tuvalu comprises nine distinctive atoll-island communities. Each share a common cultural orientation but also reveal distinct differences in local cultural tradition. Overall, these illustrate typical traits of the Pacific atoll-dweller, but also reflect a specific yet changing environment and a comparatively isolated historical and cultural development.

Cultural traditions are reflected in tangible attributes such as distinctive ribbon-like landscapes and islets and their inseparable connection with the lagoon- and seascapes of Tuvalu, each reflecting traditional systems of land and lagoonal tenure, together with communally owned reef flats and open ocean. These reflect deep connections among people, culture, knowledge, and the natural environment These are woven together by the rich historical traditions and genealogical relationships between Pacific Islands where seas and oceans, traversed by traditional passages that linked island communities, may be considered as associative seascapes. Interventions of colonialism and the global conflict of World War II each add their own tangible, and intangible, layer.

Pacific atoll-island populations have long lived congregated together on limited land spaces. Populations on the socially and politically integrated atolls of Tuvalu cluster in one, or on the larger atolls, several, villages centred on the meeting hall, church, and open plaza. While these settlements were reorganised and restructured early in the colonial period around 1900, introducing straight roads and rows of houses to replace smaller household clusters, the areas of the villages have generally always been the constant, and traditional, focal point of community life. The designs and functional layouts of houses and gardens, of communal, religious, and ceremonial places, continue to reflect traditional cultural relationships and practices. Traditional building materials have been substantially superceded on the main island, and increasingly to the outer islands, especially following cyclone damage in recent decades, yet traditional materials are still extensively used.

Oral tradition is important in Tuvalu and is sustained through intergenerational transfer and more recent research and archival projects. Oral tradition remains an authoritative source in islanders’ sense of place. Spiritually valued natural features and cultural places predate the arrival of Christian missionaries, a characteristic associated with many Pacific islands. Missionaries had a profound effect on Pacific Island cultures which in many areas rapidly embraced Christianity. In Tuvalu, the gradual introduction of Christianity predated the colonial flag of Britain by a generation, much of the teaching conducted by Samoan pastors and Tuvaluan islanders themselves.  Chapels, churches, cemeteries, pastors’ houses, and schools associated with the pioneering London Missionary Society (LMS) were established from the 1860s. Such prominent interventions forever changed the cultural landscape of Polynesia and remain held in special regard by Tuvaluans. The LMS Christianised the islands and became remarkably emplaced in Tuvaluan governance which persists even today in living cultural tradition, the pastor and Islands’ chief contributing to ultimate decision-making in the Falekaupule or traditional island meeting hall. Traditional systems and institutions of authority continued alongside colonial governance, effectively from 1892 to 1975, and remain in force today; traditional chieftainship having been reintroduced and strengthened after independence.

Criterion (v): The Pacific atoll-island cultural landscape of Tuvalu is an outstanding example of remote and traditional atoll-island subsistence land-use and sea-use which illustrates sustainable interaction with scarce resources that are vulnerable under the impact of irreversible environmental and anthropogenic challenges.

In Tuvalu, as in most of the Pacific, islanders retain a strong traditional social, economic, and cultural association with the land, lagoon, and ocean. A high percentage of land continues to be held in traditional ownership, and no land may be sold to foreigners. Indigenous land tenure systems were maintained through colonial times and may be linked to landscape features of protected anchorages, roads and trackways, villages, sheltered residential plots with gardens, wells, and burial places.  These optimise resource use, and hence survival.

Iconic plant staples such as coconut, swamp taro, breadfruit banana, yam, and casava, were all introduced by early Pacific migrations that pre-date European contact. The pig and chicken followed. Dictated by marginal soil fertility and limited lenses of fresh groundwater, these created so-called ‘transported landscapes’ of subsistence gardening and plantation systems ranging from distinctive taro pits to coconut plantations where the fruit provides the most common food and drink staple, for both human and pig, while even the leaves are woven into baskets or used as thatch and the trunks slabbed for timber. Each plant, and planting regime, was adapted to island specificities encountered, creating traditional knowledge of best practice in horticulture and arboriculture which persists today. In addition to agricultural practices, fishing and shell fishing practices were also transferred to sustainably exploit the richest resources of atolls, those that were formerly critical in sustaining any habitation. Knowledge systems and associations became culturally embedded and have clear expressions in the lagoon- and seascape.   

Tangible evidence highlights historical sustainable practices that continue, from horticultural subsistence gardening systems ubiquitously expressed in the landscape, to longstanding traditional environmental management and ecosystem conservation practices that continue. The latter includes delineated and enforceable control, prohibition or restriction, of important traditional communal pantry areas of islets and their surrounding sandflats, seagrass, and ocean-facing coral reefs which teem with seabirds, turtles, and their eggs. Harvesting continues only when resources are fully replenished, except in times of food shortages. Such seemingly natural seascapes remain intensively patterned by culture. Overall, the landscapes and seascapes of Tuvalu are ‘social landscapes’ created by local communities.

Tuvalu is, by some future projections, threatened to become physically unable to support human population due to shoreline erosion and inundation caused by the global climate crisis of warming oceans and rising sea-levels. However, nature and its shoreline accretion dynamics which may throw up a rampart of coral rock overnight, together with the islanders themselves, have a long history of adapting to and mitigating its effects. Creative, and sustainable, adaptive initiatives will be critical for the ongoing resilience of Tuvalu and its special atoll-island culture. 

Déclarations d’authenticité et/ou d’intégrité

Authenticity

Authenticity of The Pacific atoll-island cultural landscape of Tuvalu is based on the natural features of atoll islands and the anthropogenic and architectural evidence of the functions and life of the cultural landscape from the mid-nineteenth century until the present day. Land use and sea use, traditions and techniques, location and setting, and various forms of intangible heritage, including spirit and feeling, remain vivid in communities maintaining tradition and cultural continuity. Information sources are credible and truthful and include substantial primary documentary material in the London Missionary Society Archives, Colonial Administrative Records, and on Tuvalu itself, together with more recent research material and publications (cultural, and scientific/natural), and extensive oral history contributions from all island communities. Combined, the available information sources allow the nature, specificities, history, meaning and values of the cultural heritage to be known and understood. The cultural heritage of Tuvalu is judged primarily within the cultural context to which it belongs, namely the geographical region of Oceania and its Pacific island heritage, and more specifically Polynesia and its atoll-islands.   

Integrity

All heritage elements, landscapes, and seascapes necessary to satisfy the integrity of The Pacific atoll-island cultural landscape of Tuvalu, and to therefore be able to express its proposed Outstanding Universal Value, are adequately present in component parts selected from the nine principal islands which comprise the archipelago. Together, the nominated property is of an adequate size to ensure the complete representation of features, attributes, elements, relationships, dynamic functions, and processes which convey the property’s significance and illustrate its cultural landscape dimension. Component parts represent living cultural continuity and none suffers from the adverse effects of development or neglect. The physical fabric of the property and its significant features are in good condition although rising sea level associated with climate change presents a known threat.     

Comparaison avec d’autres biens similaires

The framework for comparative analysis of Pacific atoll-island cultural landscapes limits the geo-cultural region to Oceania; however, properties on the World Heritage List and Tentative Lists were still reviewed with reference to atolls. The relevant chronology for The Pacific atoll-island cultural landscape of Tuvalu is focussed on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and continuing.

World Heritage List

There are atoll islands included as part of properties inscribed on the World Heritage List, including Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System (Belize, three atolls, criteria vii, ix, x) in the Caribbean, Aldabra Atoll (Seychelles, criteria vii, ix, x) in the Indian Ocean, while in the Pacific region Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park (Philippines, two atolls North and South, criteria vii, ix, x), Henderson Island (UK, a raised coral atoll, criteria vii, x), Lagoons of New Caledonia: Reef Diversity and Associated Ecosystems, (France, vii, ix, x), and Phoenix Islands Protected Area (Republic of Kiribati, including eight atolls and coral islands, criteria vii and ix). However, these are listed in the natural category and are isolated and, importantly, almost all uninhabited. Papahānaumokuākea (USA, criteria iii, vi, viii, ix, x), in the north-central Pacific Ocean, includes atolls associated with cultural criteria (Hawaiian living traditions), even though the focus is in the natural category. Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site (Marshall Islands, iv, vi) is inscribed for a very specific cultural ensemble and association.

No properties on the World Heritage List are closely comparable.   

Tentative Lists

There are atoll islands included as part of properties inscribed on State Party Tentative Lists. These include Derawan Islands (Indonesia, criterion x), and Mili Atoll Nature Conservancy and Nadrikdrik (Marshall Islands, natural) that are strictly in the natural category. Some properties, however, include cultural criteria. Milne Bay Seascape (Papua New Guinea, criteria iii, v, vii, viii, ix, x), associated with largely uninhabited low-lying coral atolls and islands, is focussed on natural features but its cultural criteria references shipwrecks and lighthouses. Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument (USA, includes three atolls, criteria vii, viii, x) is focused on natural features but states that it may include cultural criteria in a future nomination. Northern Marshall Islands Atolls (Marshall Islands, Mixed) contains seven largely uninhabited low atolls and one low coral island, noting that these were used as important pantry areas for nearby populated atolls due to the presence of birds and/or turtles, and their eggs – a similarity to the culture-nature attribute of land use and sea use in Tuvalu.

Only one property on State Party Tentative Lists is partly comparable - Northern Marshall Islands Atolls, around 1,400 km NNW of Tuvalu.

Not on either list

Inhabited atolls of The Republic of Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands, are perhaps the most closely comparable properties and are being studied in greater detail.

Conclusion

Regarding the potential for a place on the World Heritage List for The Pacific atoll-island cultural landscape of Tuvalu, reference was made to gaps on the World Heritage List. Cultural development of the Pacific region, which covers one third of the earth’s surface, continues to be one of the most underrepresented themes of Outstanding Universal Value. Sea-use is also highly underrepresented, and even agricultural landscapes relating to staple crops have few inscriptions. The sustainable harvest of ubiquitous lagoons, sand flats and reefs, and the unique geological, topographical, and hydrological characteristics of limited atoll land that create such a distinctive horticulture, arboriculture, and traditional land tenure and land-use practices, represent an important typology for the Pacific region. The cultural heritage of low-lying atolls, an important category, differs substantially from higher Pacific volcanic and even raised coral/limestone islands.

The size of nations, and their atolls, their degree of isolation, and the size and character of populations, present stark differences. Tuvalu is the world’s fourth smallest nation and the second-least populous country in the world, although population density is high due to scarcity of habitable land. The tiny population of around 12,000, with island communities whose life still rests on a firm traditional base, is distinctive, and 97% ethnically Tuvaluan.

Major differences between The Pacific atoll-island cultural landscape of Tuvalu and other Pacific atoll-islands include the persistence of a Tuvaluan cultural autonomy that exhibits a firm kinship and descent-based society with a traditional system of chiefly-based governance, one dominant religion, and whose egalitarian social institutions with sharing-based economic traditions, land use and sea use, were only partially disrupted by colonial experience and World War II. Moreover, this has substantially survived Westernisation, especially in the outer islands, although pressure continues to increase in this respect. Such traditions are continuing, and persist for the people’s own values, beliefs, and identity. For Tuvalu, in a comparative context, they are culturally emblematic, outstandingly enduring, and exceptional.