The importance of assessing management effectiveness is well recognised for protected areas, but less so for other types of heritage (Leverington et al. 2010). Evaluating the outcomes for heritage requires informed evaluation of the way in which current pressures and emerging risks to heritage values are being reduced, and how the resilience of heritage is being improved to retain values.
A nationwide lack of monitoring and evaluation programs makes these assessments challenging and highly reliant on individual examples, anecdotal evidence and phenomenological data (see Box HER41). The judgements presented in this section are based on opinions expressed during workshops with peak expert, government and stakeholder groups (as outlined in Introduction) and the National Heritage place monitoring survey (WHAM 2017).
The Australian Heritage Strategy supports regular, long-term monitoring, evaluation and reporting of World Heritage and National Heritage value conditions (Australian Government 2015a).