BBC News 29 May 15;
The Great Barrier Reef should not go on a World Heritage danger list, according to a United Nations draft report.
However, it says Australia must carry out commitments to protect the reef, including restoring water quality and restricting new port developments.
The final decision on its status will be made at the World Heritage Committee meeting in Germany next month.
Conservationists have warned that the outlook for the reef is "poor".
A report published in 2014 concluded that the condition "is expected to further deteriorate in the future". Climate change, extreme weather, and pollution from industry were listed a key concerns.
However, in 2015 Australia submitted a plan to the UN heritage body, Unesco, outlining how it would address these threats.
This included a proposed objective of reducing pollution by 80% before 2025, as well as reversing a decision to allow dredged material to be dumped near the reef.
Precious place
The Unesco draft report says that Australia must implement this 35-year action plan, and Unesco will continue to check on its progress.
The matter - along with the future of other World Heritage sites - will be debated at a Unesco meeting taking place in Bonn from 28 June to 8 July.
GBR
* The Great Barrier Reef includes 3,000 coral reefs and 600 islands
* It is the world's largest marine park, covering 348,000 sq km
* It contains 400 types of coral, 1,500 species of fish and 4,000 kinds of mollusc
* It receives about two million tourists each year.
* The region contributes A$6bn ($4.6bn; £3bn) a year to the Australian economy
The Great Barrier Reef was given World Heritage status in 1981.
It is a vast collection of thousands of smaller coral reefs spans, stretching from the northern tip of Queensland to the state's southern city of Bundaberg.
The UN says this is the "most biodiverse" of its World Heritage sites, and that is of "enormous scientific and intrinsic importance".
Setting targets
Greenpeace issued a statement saying the draft report was "not a reprieve - it is a big, red flag from Unesco". The group's reef campaigner Shani Tager highlighted the fact that the Australian government had been asked to prepare a report within 18 months.
"Unesco now joins a long line of scientists, banks, organisations and individuals who are deeply worried about the reef's health," Ms Tager said.
Prof Callum Roberts, a marine conservation biologist at the University of York in the UK, said he thought Unesco had made the right decision, based on "major progress" that has recently been made in the Australian authorities' approach to the reef.
But he noted that the announcement was more of a postponement than a final judgement.
"They're setting targets and they're obviously going to watch this very closely," Prof Roberts told BBC News.
"I think Unesco is right to put on hold its decision, in view of this long-term sustainability plan. But it's also very right to set some target dates for Australia to produce evidence that it's actually sticking to the plan - that it's investing enough money to make that plan happen."
Prof Roberts also pointed to efforts by the Queensland state government.
"The situation a couple of years ago was that the Queensland government was fast-tracking major industrial developments along the Great Barrier Reef coast - particularly a number of very large port developments which would service coal exports.
"That has all been scaled back significantly. [The government] has also responded to the major impact of nutrient runoff from agricultural lands.
"The outlook for the reef is a lot better today than it was two years ago."
Should the Great Barrier Reef be listed as 'in danger' by Unesco?
The draft decision against listing the natural wonder as ‘in danger’ is good news for Australia but is it the best outcome for the reef’s conservation?
Karl Mathiesen and James Parsons The Guardian 29 May 15;
The draft decision not to place the Great Barrier Reef on Unesco’s ‘in danger’ list is a coup for Australia.
The government has lobbied intensely to avoid the ignominy of a ‘world heritage in danger’ listing that would undermine tourism at a site that attracts two million visitors each year. Having its ability to protect the natural wonder questioned by the UN would have been a further stain on the environmental credibility of a country now viewed in some quarters as a global vandal.
It is likely that Unesco’s world heritage committee will adopt the draft – submitted by Unesco adviser, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) – when it meets in Bonn in June. The reprieve for Australia comes with strict conditions about the implementation of measures to protect the reef system.
But experts have told the Guardian that even though the reef was not officially listed as in danger the threat to its survival remains severe and the measures Unesco required of Australia would be inadequate to save it.
In recent years the Unesco committee has notified Australia of its alarm at the continuing impacts on the reef of climate change, water pollution, dredging for port facilities (including the massive expansion at Abbot Point coal port) and fishing. In response to their concerns the Australian government submitted its Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan (LTSP) in March.
On Friday the IUCN issued a cautious approval of the plan, noting its “effective implementation ... supported by clear oversight and accountability, research, monitoring and adequate and sustained financing, is essential to respond to the current and potential threats to the property”.
The plan rules out the dumping of dredging spoil – which will be dragged from the seabed to create channels for coal transport ships – within the reef’s marine park.
But Dr Nick Graham, a reef expert at James Cook University, said there was evidence that dredging alone would damage the reef by stirring up sediment which would settle widely on the reef, causing disease. As the impacts of the planned expansion of the Abbot Point coal port begin to manifest on the coral, he said Unesco may again consider listing the reef as in danger.
“Dredging at that sort of scale is not compatible with a healthy reef and it’s not just the dredging, it’s the increased numbers of ships that are going to be moving through the Great Barrier Reef as a result,” Graham said.
The primary long-term threat to the Great Barrier Reef, and coral reefs worldwide, is climate change. A major coral bleaching event, associated with increased ocean temperatures, has been underway since the middle of last year and is predicted to continue into next year. In the face of these existential threats to the ecosystem, it is essential that Australia does everything it can to reduce local pressures, including sediment from dredging, said Graham.
Mark Eakin, coordinator of the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) Coral Reef Watch programme, said conservation measures in the Australian plan were a step forward. But any plan that enshrined and expedited the extraction and burning of coal would only fuel the greatest threat to the reef.
“The Abbot Point expansion with a major increase in coal exports is antithetical to the need to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere,” he said.
Hundreds of miles inland from where the reef fringes the Queensland coastline, 27bn tonnes of coal lies beneath the ground in the Galilee Basin. Australia’s right-wing government has pushed hard to open the region up to vast new mines. The expansion of Abbot Point to become the world’s biggest coal port is a key part of leveraging the mineral wealth and revitalising Australia’s flagging mining boom.
“I think that the pressure that the original proposal to list it at risk has brought on the Australian government has resulted in some very important changes. The one thing that’s unfortunate that it hasn’t done is to influence their current major push to extract and export as much coal as possible,” said Eakin.
Despite the shortcomings of the plan, campaigners and experts expressed relief that the Unesco committee had not formally listed the site as ‘in danger’. Graham said he didn’t think such a move would have helped the conservation of the reef. Campaigners were similarly cautious about calling for a listing.
“We never called for an ‘in danger’ listing as we want it protected and if it had been on the danger list it might have led to complacency,” said Felicity Wishart, reef campaign director for the Australian Marine Conservation Society.
WWF-Australia chief executive Dermot O’Gorman said: “Unesco has made the right decision. The future world heritage status of the reef should rightly be determined based on the actual condition of its precious corals and marine life – as assessed by scientists.”
Greenpeace campaigner Shani Tager said, however, that the organisation had hoped the reef would be listed as in danger because it would send an even stronger message to the government.
Experts and campaigners agreed that the key detail of the Unesco draft decision was the acknowledgement of serious ongoing decline to the reef system and the strict continued monitoring demanded by the committee.
Tager said: “I think we’re seeing that Unesco is very concerned about the future of the reef. The Long Term Sustainability Plan is not enough as we don’t think you can have a safe expansion of coal ports in particular. Unesco has recognised the difficulties of the reef and the continued monitoring of it is good news.”
Threats to the reef
Pollution
Run-off from agricultural fertilisers and manure have raised nutrient levels in the southern two-thirds of the marine park to dangerous concentrations that disrupt the ecosystem’s ability to take up nutrients. The Australian government’s plan aims for an 80% reduction in run-off pollution by 2025. Experts have said the lag between improved practices and environmental benefits is likely to mean that the nutrient cycle will continue to be affected for some decades.
Climate Change
Warming driven by greenhouse gas emissions is heating up the seas around Australia. 15 of the 20 warmest years on record have been recorded in the past 20 years. In the summer of 2012/13 the hottest sea surface temperatures for the Australian region were recorded. By 2100, average sea temperatures off north-eastern Australia could be 2.5% warmer than at present. Corals subjected to sharp increases in temperature are at risk of bleaching and death.
Coal and shipping
The reef’s region is already highly industrialised. Between 2011 and 2013 ports within or adjacent to the region accounted for 76% of the total through output for all Queensland ports – most of this traffic was related to the coal industry. High concentrations of coal dust have been detected in the park.
Between 2001 and 2013, 28m cubic metres of dredge material were dumped in the Great Barrier Reef world heritage site. The expansion of the Abbot Point port will require large-scale dredging that will now be dumped onshore.
Fishing
Fishing has been well controlled by the Park Authority, with an outstanding 30% of the site protected by a no-take zone. However the IUCN noted continuing concern over some residual impacts. These include the accidental capture through entanglement of turtles, dolphins and dugongs in commercial fishing nets.
