Save the Okefenokee Swamp and Southeastern Georgia benefits

When there’s a debate about saving an environmental treasure, it’s typically set up as a dichotomy. We can either save the environment, or we can protect local jobs. If the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge receives a UNESCO World Heritage Site protection status, it will very likely do both.

The mean household income of a rural UNESCO World Heritage Site is $17,393 more on average than for the average for Georgia Counties of Clinch, Charlton and Ware and Florida’s Baker County. The total retail sales per capita is 42% higher for a WHS than around the Okefenokee area. The poverty rate is over 35% higher around the Okefenokee area than around other World Heritage Sites in the non-urban USA locations. Tourism visits in U.S. UNESCO sites are also higher than comparable parks in America without the World Heritage Site designation. And WHS counties in the United States economically outperform other counties (on all three of those measures) from the state, even in the same general area of the state, which don’t have a WHS.

Earlier this year, I looked at how counties change when their park gets a World Heritage Site designation. Looking over time against comparable counties in the region, those places with a WHS gain more household income, and have less poverty than those without a WHS. That’s what my graduate student researcher Nicole Morales discovered when she looked at cases beyond the U.S., when by-and-large, a park or monument gets the protection of a World Heritage Site. It’s even called “the UNESCO effect,” for the growth in tourism and economic development when a place gets protection with a WHS designation.

I did see a lot of bipartisanship in the U.S. Congress, and the Georgia General Assembly, for protecting the Okefenokee. I couldn’t see why anyone would oppose protecting the swamp by adding it to the WHS list, given how much the economically struggling area could use some help. I got my answer when directed to some claims that China and the United Nations are going take over our country that way.

So my students and I did a little more digging. We found that in the average nonurban UNESCO World Heritage Site in America, those counties cast an average of 56.47% of their vote for the Republican Party, similar to the 56.73% GOP vote in comparable counties in the state which don’t have a WHS. Once again, shadowy news sites on the web turn out to be a poor source for facts.

Last year, my students and I traveled to St. Simon’s Island to present our research on the Okefenokee. We got to tour the park, and come within a few feet of Obadiah, one of their largest gators (something I am sure my political science researchers weren’t considering when making their choice of majors). We also got to drive through the area, and see that the surrounding region could use some economic development.

The folks there Clinch, Ware, Charlton counties and over the border in Baker county, have shown remarkable restraint in not strip-mining the park for temporary gain. We owe the people of Southeast Georgia something for their patience, and the tourism boost and economic growth from a UNESCO World Heritage Site is the least we can do to say thank you for preserving one of the most special examples of God’s wonders in the world.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College.