UNESCO had recommended listing the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger” in part to call out Australia’s inaction on climate change.
After intense lobbying by the Australian government, the World Heritage Committee today decided against listing the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) as “in danger,” as UNESCO had recommended in June.
“The science is clear” that the reef is in perilous condition, marine ecologist Terry Hughes of James Cook University, Townsville, tweeted in response, calling the committee decision “a travesty.”
UNESCO had recommended the GBR be listed as “in danger” not only because the reef was battered by major bleaching events in 2016, 2017, and 2020, but also because of Australia’s foot dragging in addressing climate change. But Sussan Ley, Australia’s environment minister, mounted a last-minute, global campaign to avert the move. In the run-up to the virtual meeting, officially held in Fuzhou, China, Ley contacted representatives of 18 of the 21 member countries of the World Heritage Committee either in person—by visiting Hungary, France, Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Oman, and the Maldives—or virtually.
The effort apparently paid off when the committee, with little deliberation, decided to give Australia until February 2022 to produce a progress report on the reef’s status. The committee will take up the issue again in 2023 at the earliest.
“Political lobbying doesn’t help the Reef,” ecologist Lesley Hughes of Macquarie University wrote in a post on the website of Australia’s Climate Council, a nongovernmental organization that provides independent advice on climate issues. “The science remains clear: climate change is accelerating and is the single, greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef.”
The GBR is the world’s most extensive coral reef ecosystem and was designated a World Heritage site in 1981 because of its “outstanding universal value.” UNESCO first recommended the reef be listed as “in danger” in 2015; lobbying by the Australian government blocked consideration of the recommendation by the World Heritage Committee that time. Subsequent bleaching events have damaged the reef even more. “The only way we can give the reef a chance to recover is to get our emissions down deeply and rapidly,” Will Steffen, a climate change scientist and emeritus professor at Australian National University, says in a video posted on the Climate Council’s Twitter feed.
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July 24, 2021 at 02:40AM
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Great Barrier Reef escapes 'in danger' listing after intense Australian lobby - Science Magazine
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