Appendix 4 Integrity test — Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area

Integrity of the Great Barrier Reef is a measure of the wholeness and intactness of the property’s natural heritage value. It is one of the five components of the Region’s natural heritage value graded in Chapter 4. This test is broad and cuts across all world heritage criteria and natural heritage attributes of the Reef. 

The four world heritage natural criteria are about condition and trend of elements or components that make up a criterion (Chapters 2 and 3). The integrity test differs from these four components because it involves the interaction with people, including management for protection and domestic policies. The integrity test criteria are informed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).1065 An overall integrity grade is included in Section 4.6.1.

Table 11.2
Integrity test for the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area
A table that shows the results for the integrity test for the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area
  • 1065. Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage 2023, Operational guidelines for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention, WHC 23/01, United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation.
  • 2170. Turner, R.A., Forster, J., Fitzsimmons, C. and Mahon, R. 2022, Expanding narratives of governance constraints to improve coral reef conservation, Conservation biology: the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology 36(5): e13933.