World heritage at Chief Roi Mata's Domain : the global-local nexus of community heritage conservation and tourism development in Vanuatu

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the entwined processes of globalisation and localisation as they occur within two Indigenous landowning communities in the southwest Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, Mangaliliu and Lelepa island (known collectively as 'Lelema'). The Lelema community own and manage Vanuatu's first World Heritage site, Chief Roi Mata's Domain (CRMD), which was inscribed in July 2008 as a continuing cultural landscape. Alongside multiple other forces, means and agents, and in the face of intensifying global-local pressures, Lelema villagers are trying to mobilise the World Heritage listing of CRMD to both increase economic development opportunities (primarily through tourism) and augment locally congruent heritage conservation measures. The primary aim of this thesis is to critically examine the Lelema experience at this intersection of development and conservation, and in so doing, suggest appropriate ways forward for World Heritage at CRMD.

Date of Award	2013
Original language	English