June 22, 2021- 4:55 p.m.
Climate change has wreaked enough havoc on Australia’s famed Great Barrier Reef that the United Nations plans to classify it as “in danger” at a meeting next month — a designation that the country’s government outright rejected on Tuesday.
“There is no possible doubt” that the site faces “ascertained danger,” the U.N. World Heritage Committee said in a draft report. It recommends adding the network of colorful coral reefs to the 53 sites on the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger when the World Heritage Committee convenes in China in July.
Australia objected both on grounds that the reef is not in as bad a shape as the committee seems to think, and on the fact that it was given no advance warning of the impending designation. Environment Minister Sussan Ley said officials from the city of Canberra were “stunned” by the move and that they’d been blindsided by UNESCO, which had previously assured the government it would not declare the reef endangered.
“This decision was flawed. Clearly there were politics behind it,” Ley told reporters, according to the Associated Press. “Clearly those politics have subverted a proper process and for the World Heritage Committee to not even foreshadow this listing is, I think, appalling.”
This aerial photos shows the Great Barrier Reef in Australia on Dec. 2, 2017. Australia said Tuesday, June 22, it will fight a recommendation for the Great Barrier Reef to be listed as in danger of losing its World Heritage values due to climate change, while environmentalists have applauded the U.N. World Heritage Committee’s proposal.
Among the reasons for not wanting the reef ecosystem to be declared “in danger” are the potential damage to tourism, and to the government’s reputation, especially in light of the fact that Australia has invested $3 billion in reef protection, CNN said.
The Great Barrier Reef, first put on the World Heritage list in 1981, comprises 2,500 reefs covering 134,000 square miles.
The report cites unusually warm ocean temperatures in 2016, 2017 and 2020 that further bleached the coral. And environmental advocacy groups welcomed the findings.
It would be the first time a site of any kind were to be marked as “in danger” primarily because of climate change as well, environmental consultant Imogen Zethoven of the Australian Marine Conservation Society told AP.
“It would be a very significant step for the World Heritage Committee to make this decision and one that we really hope that it does make because it will open up a lot of potential change,” Zethoven told AP.
Declaring the reef system endangered would put UNESCO in a monitoring role to implement “corrective measures” to reduce the emissions that the world body said are harming the reef and its marine life.
It could also cause the site to lose its UNESCO World Heritage Site status, which could hit tourism, and thus Australia’s economy, CBS News noted.
Australia “on its own cannot address the threats of climate change,” the report said.
“The Great Barrier Reef is the best managed reef in the world, and this draft recommendation has been made without examining the Reef first hand, and without the latest information,” Ley said in a statement. “If it is being proposed on the basis of the very real threat of global climate change, then there are any number of international World Heritage Sites that should be subject to the same process.
“I agree that global climate change is the single biggest threat to the world’s reefs but it is wrong, in our view, to single out the best managed reef in the world for an ‘in danger’ listing,” she added.
