On November 29, Australia’s minister for the environment and water, Tanya Plibersek, spoke out against the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) recent recommendation to put the Great Barrier Reef on a list of endangered World Heritage sites.
Citing recent commitments made by the Australian government to combat climate change, she claimed that the cultural agency’s complaints were unwarranted and out of date.
“If the Great Barrier Reef is in danger, then every coral reef in the world is in danger,” Plibersek said. “If this World Heritage site is in danger, then most World Heritage sites around the world are in danger from climate change.”
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef in the world, spanning nearly 1,800 miles. It supports a critical marine ecosystem since it is home to over 400 different kinds of coral, more than 1,500 species of tropical fish, over 200 types of birds, and roughly 20 types of reptiles, such as sea turtles.
In May of this year, scientists from the Australian government reported observing the bleaching of more than 90% of the Great Barrier Reef coral. This is the fourth mass bleaching event — a phenomenon indicating stress — in seven years, but the first to occur with cooler Pacific Ocean temperatures caused by La Niña.
UNESCO and the International Union for Conservation of Nature undertook a 10-day mission to assess the state of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in late March of this year.
UNESCO is a Paris-based cultural agency of the UN that endeavors to identify, protect, and preserve cultural and natural heritage around the world. There are 128 endangered entries out of 1,154 on its list of World Heritage sites.
In the report outlining their findings, UNESCO claims that the reef — one of Australia’s most valuable tourist assets — is in danger.
According to the UNESCO report, “The mission team concludes that the property is faced with major threats that could have deleterious effects on its inherent characteristics, and therefore meets the criteria for inscription on the list of World Heritage in danger.”
According to Plibersek, the report is unfair since it reflected the previous government, not the current one. She said, “The reason that UNESCO in the past has singled out a place as at risk is because they wanted to see greater government investment or greater government action and, since the change of government, both of those things have happened,”
Two months after the UNESCO mission, Australia’s center-left Labor Party government replaced the conservative government that had been in office for nine years. The new government has since passed various measures to tackle climate change, including a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43% below what they were in 2005 by 2030.
By comparison, the previous government only promised to cut the deficit by 26-28% by the decade’s end, according to Fox News.
Nonetheless, some Australian officials and scientists believe that the new government could do more to fight climate change. For instance, Jodie Rummer, a marine biologist at James Cook University in Townville, supported the Greens party’s call to cut emissions by 75%.
“We are taking action, but that action needs to be much more rapid and much more urgent,” Rummer said.
Before UNESCO makes an official proposal to the World Heritage Committee regarding the Great Barrier Reef’s endangered listing, it will consider feedback from both federal and state officials in Australia.
In July of last year, the lobbying effort of the previous Australian government successfully garnered enough support from other countries to stop UNESCO from changing the status of the reef from “vulnerable” to “in danger” because of damage caused by climate change.
A lobbying effort has indeed been launched by the new government to oppose UNESCO’s report. In a joint statement from November 29, Plibersek and Senator Nita Green said that they understood that “people who live and work on the Reef might find the report alarming,” but that the government had “stepped up to the plate.”
