International Collaboration
GOR FuturesThe Great Ocean Road has many unique attributes but it also shares some features and challenges with other great ‘road’ destinations in other countries.
At the beginning of the GOR Futures project we reached out to two destinations that have many similarities with the GOR, in Ireland, the Netherlands and Denmark (building on a research network established for the EcoAcupuncture.com program). The Wild Atlantic Way in the republic of Ireland and the WaddenSea route from north of Amsterdam to Esbjerg in Denmark (East of Copenhagen) are seen as ideal for establishing on-going collaboration. These may even form the core of a larger International framework for inter-governmental cooperation on negotiating sustainable tourism for long linear destinations with significant environmental characteristics.
These initial sites are briefly described below.
During the first half of 2021, representatives of universities as well as local/provincial governments associated with those sites met on-line five times to explore the similarities and challenges of the sites and to consider areas and processes of collaboration.
In September of 2022 a meeting in the Netherlands explored the potential of such a collaboration, identifying a number of areas where there could be both government and university interest in knowledge development and sharing. We met in Leeuwarden, the capital of Friesland and also in a small town on the WaddenSea, Holwerd, which has gained international attention for a radical approach to sea-level protection at the same time as increasing its visitor economy. (The township – working with the national government – having raised 50M Euro towards the 90M Euro cost of its re-creation of an inland sea-front for the town; e.g. http://ypcc.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Holwerd-at-Sea-Coastal-design-from-an-differented-and-integrated-perspective.pdf.)
At that Leeuwarden meeting, a model for a process to commence an international, multi-site collaboration was agreed to. Agencies and universities for the three sites are commited to three international symposia over the coming years that will be hosted in rotation, beginning with the GOR. These symposia will have presentations of plans and projects and developments in knowledge, strategy and research, from each of the local destinations. The aim of the symposia is to identify and structure domains of collaboration, collaborative projects and future research.
As those plans evolve they will be updated here and in the Blog.
Wadden Sea
Although significantly disrupted by the pandemic, discussions have been continuing with the researchers and governments in the Netherlands and Denmark around possible cooperation on their work on the UNESCO World Heritage domain of the Wadden Sea. Conversations continue to explore possible international research projects that would link the GOR and the Waddenzee, involving the province of Friesland and its capital – Leeuwarden – and universities in Friesland, Groningen and Aalborg.
The Wadden Sea is the largest unbroken system of intertidal sand and mud flats in the world. The site covers the Dutch Wadden Sea Conservation Area, the German Wadden Sea National Parks of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, and most of the Danish Wadden Sea maritime conservation area. It is a large, temperate, relatively flat coastal wetland environment, protected from the North Sea by an almost contiguous string of elongated islands that support agriculture, villages and tourism. The southern-most of those islands, Texel, has a strong connection to Australia as so many of the famous Dutch ships that first explored the West Australian coast set sail from the Texel Waddenzee harbour.
The structure of the Waddenzee is formed by intricate interactions between physical and biological factors that have given rise to a multitude of transitional habitats with tidal channels, sandy shoals, sea-grass meadows, mussel beds, sandbars, mudflats, salt marshes, estuaries, beaches and dunes. The area is home to numerous plant and animal species, including marine mammals such as the harbour seal, grey seal and harbour porpoise. Wadden Sea is one of the last remaining large-scale, intertidal ecosystems where natural processes continue to function largely undisturbed.
A sustainable tourism strategy for the area was developed in 2014 (https://www.waddensea-worldheritage.org/resources/sustainable-tourism-wadden-sea-world-heritage-destination).
The area is subject to significant pressures that mirror those of the GOR, although they play out in different ways: Climate Change, principally sea level rise and ocean storms, is a significant threat (see: https://www.waddensea-worldheritage.org/news/expert-workshop-assesses-vulnerability-wadden-sea-world-heritage-climate-change), although a range of pressures has been the focus of policy thinking since the sustainable tourism strategy (see: https://www.walterwaddenmonitor.org/wp-content/uploads/Tourism-Development-in-the-Dutch-Wadden-Area-.pdf)
The low-lying area of the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen are protected from the sea by a dyke that provides and almost unbroken bicycle and walking track of more than 600Km, (https://www.holland.com/global/tourism/destinations/regions/dutch-coast/cycle-the-dutch-coastal-route-610-km.htm) with new bicycle routes being developed as part of a European project in 2021.
The Wild Atlantic Way, Ireland
Also disrupted by the pandemic, but planned for renewal late in 2021, are collaborations with the University of Limerick about the scenic road route along the west coast of the island of Ireland known as the wild Atlantic way.
