Paris: Despite warnings, Australia’s efforts to save the Great Barrier Reef are still failing to protect the world’s largest coral reef system from pollution and climate change, experts said on Monday.
Australia had taken unprecedented steps to protect the Great Barrier Reef, which has been designated a World Heritage Site by the United Nations, but more was needed to avoid the site being declared “in danger” by UN agency UNESCO One that compiles and manages. List of heritage sites.
Such designation gives notice to a government that a site may be completely removed from the World Heritage List, a very rare occurrence.
Despite “unparalleled science and management efforts” by Australia in recent years, the Great Barrier Reef is “significantly affected by climate change factors,” Hans Thulstrup, representative of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and UNESCO, said in a report based on On a mission to the reef.
“The resilience of assets to recover from the effects of climate change has been substantially compromised,” he said.
Carter and Thulstrup recommended that the rock should be added to the “World Heritage in Danger” list.
In January the Australian government announced a one-billion-dollar package to protect the reef, seven years after its “Reef 2050” plan, a response to an already downgraded UN threat.
The Climate Council pressure group said this latest package of funding was like putting a “Band-Aid on a broken leg”.
Monday’s report echoed that assessment, saying the reef’s ability to recover from the effects of climate change was “largely compromised.”
In particular, Australian strategies “lacked clear climate change targets”, while some measures were not fully implemented, particularly in relation to “water quality and fisheries activities”.
Australia reported in May that 91 percent of the reef’s coral had been damaged by bleaching after a prolonged heat wave, a process that increases the mortality rate of affected corals.
After intense lobbying, Australia narrowly avoided placing the reef on UNESCO’s “at risk” list in the summer of 2021.
The then government of Conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison was voted out this year in favor of a centre-left government under Anthony Albanese that promised green policies.
A UNESCO spokesman told AFP that “a constructive dialogue is underway with the current government.”
A source close to the matter described Monday’s report as “a roadmap presented to the Australian government, which should explain what it intends to do with it and present results.”
The source said: “The path to saving the Great Barrier Reef is narrow, but it exists. Strong and swift action can deliver results.”