Australia would have UNESCO world heritage listing for ancient WA rock site if emissions of nitrous oxide and sulfur oxide from local industry – including from Woodside’s gas processing facility – were “fully addressed”.
Australia to lobby Unesco over barring of ancient rock site from world heritage list due to Woodside emissions
Site is home to more than a million petroglyphs, some almost 50,000 years old, but reports say it has been damaged by the Karratha gas plant
Graham Readfearn Tue 3 Jun 2025 in The Guardian
The Albanese government will launch a lobbying campaign in a bid to reverse a Unesco recommendation that an ancient rock art site in Western Australia can’t go on the world heritage list until damaging industrial emissions linked to a controversial Woodside gas development are stopped.
How Labor’s North West Shelf approval further endangers Murujuga’s 50,000-year-old rock art
Government officials were aiming to meet Unesco next week after its advisers said the nomination of the Murujuga Cultural Landscape in north-west WA – home to more than a million petroglyphs, some almost 50,000 years old – should be referred back to Australia until nearby “degrading acidic emissions” were halted.
The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) advised Unesco the main requirements for world heritage nomination had been met, but pollution from nearby industry “makes the integrity and the authenticity of key attributes of the nominated property highly vulnerable”.
The main source of emissions, the ICOMOS report said, was Woodside’s Karratha gas plant, which last week was conditionally awarded a 40-year extension by the environment minister, Murray Watt, to operate until 2070.
The Unesco recommendation is due to go before the 21-country world heritage committee at its next meeting on 6 July in Paris.
A government spokesperson told the Guardian it was now “actively engaged in the process” and would make “strong representations at every opportunity” to have Murujuga listed as a world heritage site at the Paris meeting.
Sources told the Guardian that Australian government department officials were also aiming to meet Unesco officials over the nomination during next week’s UN oceans conference in Nice.
Last week, Watt said he was disappointed Unesco had been influenced by “factual inaccuracies” but did not provide further detail on what those inaccuracies were.
Most of the pieces of rock art were created by hitting the rocks with harder rocks to remove a top layer, revealing lighter colours beneath – a technique known as pecking.
Scientists expressed concern that emissions of nitrous oxide and sulphur oxide were working to slowly dissolve the top layers of the petroglyph rocks.
A summary of a state government-commissioned monitoring report on the state of pollution and the petroglyphs, released last month, claimed observed damage to some of the rocks was likely related to a power plant that ran in the 1970s and 1980s.
But leading rock art expert Prof Benjamin Smith of the University of Western Australia said the body of the 800-page report was clear that current industrial emissions were also damaging the petroglyphs.
He said: “If [the federal government] is trying to say the damage was done in the 70s and 80s, then they’re on a hiding to nothing.
“I don’t think emissions are damaging the rock art, I know they are.”
He said the official monitoring report showed current emissions at the site were likely between four and five times higher than during the 1970s and 80s.
Smith said: “The 800-page report makes it clear they are being damaged in the areas closest to industry. If [Australia] tries to blame that power plant in the 1970s, then the implication is that that emissions are damaging it five times more now.”
The ABC has reported a scientist leading the monitoring report has privately complained the report was altered to remove a line on a graph that would have shown “five of the monitoring sites were experiencing pollutant levels above the interim guideline”.
The ICOMOS evaluation report said it had received information from a “third party”, drawing its attention to the extension of Woodside’s Karratha gas plant to 2070.
That information, the Guardian can reveal, was a detailed letter from the Australian Conservation Foundation, which pointed to several studies raising concerns about emissions and the rock art.
The Guardian has revealed the Australian government has previously carried out a long and sustained lobbying campaign to keep the Great Barrier Reef off the world heritage list of sites in danger.
Gavan Macfadzean, climate and energy program manager at ACF, said he expected the Australian government would now be lobbying Unesco and the world heritage committee up to the meeting.
“Our role is to make sure that when sites are nominated [for world heritage status], we’re reassured that the values for which it’s being evaluated are protected,” he said.
“We support the listing, but we have to make sure that it’s not a greenwashing exercise. We want to see the nomination happen in a way that protects the values.
He said emissions of nitrous oxide and sulfur oxide from local industry – including from Woodside’s gas processing facility – needed to be “fully addressed”.
In a statement, the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation (MAC), which has worked with government to nominate the site, said it was “deeply disappointed” by the ICOMOS recommendation.
The chair of MAC, Peter Hicks, said the ICOMOS report had made clear the site should be on the world heritage list.
He said: “The evaluation report provides the pathway to finalising world heritage listing and while the referral adds another small step to our journey, it is a positive outcome and not a rejection.
“While we are disappointed, we are determined to finish our journey and see the Murujuga Cultural Landscape included on the world heritage list as soon as possible.”
A spokesperson for Woodside said the final decision on the nomination would rest with the world heritage committee.
They said: “Woodside will continue to support the leadership of traditional custodians, including the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation (MAC), which holds cultural authority, and work with the commonwealth and state governments as they prepare their responses to the [ICOMOS] recommendation.”
The statement said the findings of the monitoring report “show that emissions are below risk thresholds, and the data does not support the theory that acid rain damages the petroglyphs.”
They said: “Woodside has taken proactive steps over many years – including emissions reductions, data sharing and ongoing support for [the monitoring report] – to ensure we manage our impacts responsibly.
“We believe the world heritage nomination should proceed on the strength of the evidence and stand as proof that cultural heritage and industry can responsibly coexist when collaboration, transparency, and rigorous scientific monitoring are in place.”
Scientist expresses concern WA government department interfered with rock art report linked to North West Shelf approval process
- By Rhiannon Shine
- 7.30 report and ABC news
- Topic: Energy Policy
Wed 28 May
A leading scientist has expressed “grave concern” about “unacceptable interference” in a major study of the impacts of industrial emissions on ancient Aboriginal rock carvings in a complaint obtained by the ABC.
On Friday, the West Australian government released the long-awaited results from its ongoing Rock Art Monitoring Program, which is studying petroglyphs on the Burrup Peninsula, or Murujuga, near Karratha in WA’s north.
The five-year study is trying to determine whether industrial pollution has degraded Indigenous rock carvings thought to be 40,000 years old.
The $27 million rock art monitoring project is being led by the WA government in collaboration with the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, using experts from Curtin University.
The latest results have been considered by federal Environment Minister Murray Watt, as part of his soon-to-be-released ruling on whether to approve a 45-year licence extension of Woodside’s North West Shelf LNG facilities on the Burrup Peninsula.
The 800-page second-year monitoring report was completed last year but was not made public until Friday afternoon, alongside a summary document that highlighted some key findings.
In an email obtained by the ABC, the report’s chief statistician, Emeritus Professor Adrian Baddeley, wrote to staff from WA’s Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER) on Tuesday afternoon to outline his concerns about the way one of the graphs in the scientific paper had been handled.
The goal of the five-year study is to establish acceptable and unacceptable emissions standards to help protect the rock art, so the WA government can set air quality monitoring standards to regulate industry.
Professor Baddeley, one of the report’s lead authors, is a member of the Australian Academy of Science, which represents the nation’s most distinguished scientists.
His complaint email focused specifically on a graph that he claimed DWER had asked to be altered for its summary report, against his wishes.
The graph in question included benchmarks for acceptable levels of pollution, with two lower guideline levels serving as “early warning” indicators, and a higher standard level that is the “threshold at which there is a risk of unacceptable change in rock art condition”.
In his complaint letter, Professor Baddeley said the graph prepared by Curtin University scientists had included two early warning indicator lines, but one of them — a green line, which presented a lower threshold — had been deleted from the summary document.
“In early April, in preparation for these publications, DWER requested that Curtin provide a version of the figure with the green dashed line removed,” Professor Baddeley wrote in his email.
“I formally declined this request as chief statistician, with reasons given, in a message relayed to DWER by the statistical team.
“It appears that, sometime after this correspondence, in my absence, Curtin staff were prevailed upon to delete the green line, in direct contravention of my decision.
“In my opinion, this constitutes unacceptable interference in the scientific integrity of the project.”
‘Verging on misleading’
In his email, Professor Baddeley said the summary document had incorrectly stated that: “The research indicates that the current levels of the pollutants of most concern for the rock art are lower than the interim guideline levels”.
“If the green-aqua dashed line were reinstated, it would show that five of the monitoring sites were experiencing pollutant levels above the interim guideline, and again these are the five sites closest to industry,” he wrote.
“Accordingly, the quoted statement is factually incorrect and misrepresents the scientific findings.”
On Tuesday afternoon, WA Greens MLC Jess Beckerling used Question Time in parliament to ask the WA government to explain the discrepancy between the two graphs.
“Who made the decision to remove the [green] line from the […] summary document,” Ms Beckerling asked.
Environment Minister Matthew Swinbourn responded by saying the research summary document was drafted by DWER with input from Curtin University and Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation.
“The graph in the summary document was simplified to focus on the interim guideline Environmental Quality Criteria (EQC) that was recommended by Curtin in its Interim EQC Report,” he said.
One of the report’s key findings was that the upper layer of the most common rock in the area had elevated porosity — or degradation — in samples taken from areas closer to Dampier, which has been home to industrial operations since the 1960s.
The paper stated that it appeared that historic emissions from the former Dampier Power Station, which retired in the 1980s, were likely to be the major contributor to elevated porosity.
Speaking to 7.30 on the condition of anonymity, a senior scientist involved in the ongoing monitoring program said that there was disappointment among the research team about how the report’s findings had been spun.
“It’s annoying that there are a lot of euphemisms being rolled out to kind of relativise or minimise the conclusions,” they said.
“I find it verging on the misleading.”
Scientist rubbishes WA premier’s comments
On Monday, WA Premier Roger Cook said the second year Rock Art Monitoring Report should provide the community with confidence that current industrial processes on the Burrup have “not had an impact in relation to the rock art”.
“What it did point to was some industrial processing, I think it was a power generator that was placed there in the 1970s, which may have had an impact in relation to the porosity of some of the rock arts,” Mr Cook said.
“But it’s very pleasing that no ongoing impact as a result of that industrial activity.”
The scientist said they were “dismayed” at the WA premier’s comments.
“I completely disagreed with every sentence,” they said.
“The claim that we established that no further damage is occurring to the rocks is simply false.”
On Monday, 7.30 wrote an email to Curtin University’s Professor Ben Mullins, the program research lead, asking him to clarify if the premier’s comments stating that the report had found “no ongoing impact as a result of industrial activity” were accurate.
He did not respond in time for this story’s publication.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Mr Cook doubled down on his previous remarks.
“The science has said that modern industrial developments do not have a long-term impact in terms of the quality of the rock art,” he said.
The scientist who spoke on condition of anonymity said the report’s most important findings were that rocks closest to industry had elevated porosity.
rocks closest to industry had elevated porosity
“That’s not a demonstration that pollution is observed to be harming rocks in the field but we cannot find any other explanation,” they said.
They said some of the scientists were “pretty upset” that the message coming from the government was “almost the opposite of that”.
“We’re talking about what is probably the cumulative effect of decades of pollution,” they said.
“There is this, terminological or verbal gymnastics about whether it all happened in the past and is no longer happening.
“It may not be happening at the same rate. The general amount of pollution could now be less than it was, and the rate of degradation could be lower.
“But there’s no reason to conclude that it has stopped.”
Gagged by contracts
They said the scientists were not allowed to speak to media as a condition of their contracts but told 7.30 they felt compelled to speak out.
“We have instincts about academic freedom, about the need to protect the truth,” they said.
“If you’re a scientist, you make a lifelong commitment to the truth, to finding the truth [and] respecting the truth.
“The fact that we’re effectively, by being silenced, lying, is excruciating.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Mr Swinbourn told parliament the Rock Art Monitoring Program was “the most comprehensive and robust scientific study of its kind in the world”.
“The monitoring program has not observed damage to rock art,” Mr Swinbourn said.
“However, higher levels of porosity — which are microscopic gaps in the rock surface — have been observed in granophyre rocks near Dampier.
“Increased porosity would make the rock art more prone to change over time.
“The report finds this is likely due to emissions in the 1970s and 80s, which were two to three times higher than today.
“Further work will be undertaken to investigate this finding.”