When Tumu te Heuheu became Chair of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, he was the first New Zealander to hold the prestigious year-long tenure.

Tumu’s influence in World Heritage work meant recognising the contribution the Māori world view can make to the global community, highlighting what the world community has to offer in return and encouraging Māori to play a greater role within it.

Another key influence is having the value of intangible heritage recognised as equally important as to tangible heritage.

In 1993 he led the successful bid for Tongariro National Park to be recognised in the World Heritage List. It is now one of just a handful of sites in the world that has a dual World Heritage listing. Thus, the physical, volcanic features of Tongariro are recognised, but so too are the cultural and spiritual features - those features which are such an integral part of every member of Tūwharetoa.

Tumu’s chairing of the 31st Session of the World Heritage Committee in Christchurch in July capped a long period of influence at the global level and the impact of his work leading up to the Session continues to reverberate.

He played a key role in ensuring that United Nations communities no longer overlooked the outstanding value of the Pacific and its cultures through the Pacific 2009 Action Plan, which was developed at Tongariro in 2004 and progressed at the Pacific Island World Heritage Workshop in February this year.

In July, an appeal was launched to establish a Pacific fund that would advance the implementation of the World Heritage Convention in the Pacific.

While promoting the South Pacific he did not forget any of the other nations or their unique heritage issues. During a key planning meeting in Paris over the course of eight days he held 17 meetings with ministers from countries all over the world.

This included a series of meetings backward and forward between the Arab delegates and the Israeli delegates over a heritage site in Jerusalem, the end result being some constructive kōrero on the issue.