Historic Environment

Australia ICOMOS is the peak cultural heritage conservation body in Australia. It is a branch of the United Nations-sponsored International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), a non-government professional organization promoting expertise in the conservation of cultural heritage. Its secretariat is based at the Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific at Deakin University.

Australia ICOMOS was formed in 1976 and is one of over 100 current ICOMOS national committees. ICOMOS was formed in 1965 to advise UNESCO in the assessment of sites proposed for the World Heritage List. Membership of Australia ICOMOS comprises over 650 members, managed by an Executive Committee of 15 people who are elected from the membership. Several Australia ICOMOS members are also represented on various ICOMOS International Scientific Committees, and expert committees and boards in Australia. It plays an important role in co-ordinating advocacy activities to raise the profile of Australia's cultural heritage.

The first meeting which led to the formation of Australia ICOMOS was in Melbourne on 20 October 1976, and the first ICOMOS conference was in Beechworth in 1978, where they devised a committee to work up a local version of the Venice Charter. The actual ICOMOS meeting where the committee's draft was provisionally endorsed was in the town of Burra in 1979. Australia ICOMOS played the pivotal role in developing and Burra Charter, regarded as the best-practice standard for cultural heritage management in Australia, which has influenced subsequent heritage legislation and conservation guidelines and practices in Australia.

Australia ICOMOS has also been responsible for producing the Australia State of the Environment Report (SoE), to advise the Minister for Environment on ...the current condition of the Australian environment, the pressures on it and the drivers of those pressures.