DailyExpertNews
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The Great Barrier Reef should be added to the list of World Heritage sites “at risk,” a team of scientists concluded after a mission to the world’s largest coral reef system.
In a new UN-backed report released Monday, the scientists said the reef faces major threats from the climate crisis and action must be taken “with the utmost urgency” to save it.
“The mission team concludes that the property faces major threats that could have detrimental effects on its inherent features, and therefore meets the criteria for inclusion on the World Heritage in Danger list,” the report said.
The 10-day monitoring mission by UNESCO scientists in March came months after the World Heritage Committee made an initial recommendation to list Australia’s Great Barrier Reef as “at risk” due to the mounting impacts of human-induced climate change.
At the time, the agency called for Australia to “manage urgently” the mounting threats of the climate crisis, but was immediately opposed by the Australian government under former Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
The long-awaited final mission report lists key steps the scientists believe need to be taken urgently, though the report itself was released after a six-month delay. Originally scheduled for publication in May ahead of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in Russia, the report was delayed due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
The recommendations include reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reassessing proposed projects and credit arrangements, and scaling up financial resources to ultimately protect the reefs.
Australian Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek argued at a press conference on Tuesday that the UNESCO report unfairly puts the spotlight on the Great Barrier Reef.
“Yes, climate change is a risk to ecosystems like the Great Barrier Reef, but that means it’s a risk to every reef worldwide,” Plibersek said. “There’s no need to single out the Great Barrier Reef in this way.”
Spanning nearly 133,000 square miles and home to more than 1,500 species of fish and more than 400 species of hard corals, the Great Barrier Reef is an extremely critical marine ecosystem on Earth.
It also contributes $4.8 billion annually to the Australian economy and supports 64,000 jobs in tourism, fishing and research, according to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.
But as the planet continues to warm, due to the growing amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the reef’s long-term survival has been called into question. Ocean warming and acidification due to the climate crisis have led to widespread coral bleaching. Last year, scientists found that the global size of living coral has declined by half since 1950 due to climate change, overfishing and pollution.
The outlook is equally bleak, with scientists predicting that about 70% to 90% of all living coral around the world will disappear in the next 20 years. The Great Barrier Reef, in particular, has experienced many devastating mass bleaching events since 2015, caused by extremely warm ocean temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.
During UNESCO’s monitoring missions, reef managers found that the Great Barrier Reef is undergoing massive bleaching for the sixth time due to heat stress caused by climate change. Aerial surveys of about 750 reefs show widespread bleaching across the reef, with the most severe bleaching observed in northern and central areas.
Bleaching happens when stressed coral is deprived of its food source. Under deteriorating conditions, the corals can starve and die, turning white as the carbonate skeleton is exposed.
“Even the most robust corals take nearly a decade to recover,” Jodie Rummer, an associate professor of marine biology at James Cook University in Townsville, previously told DailyExpertNews. “So we are really losing that recovery period. We get back-to-back bleaching events, back-to-back heat waves. And the corals just aren’t adapting to these new conditions.”
Weeks before the mission, global scientists from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released an alarming report that concluded that with every extreme warming, the planet’s vital ecosystems, such as the Great Barrier Reef, are being pushed closer to tipping points beyond which irreversible changes can take place.
As mission researchers assessed the dire condition of one of the world’s seven natural wonders, they witnessed how the climate crisis has dramatically altered the coral reef system.
Following the release of the report, Professor Lesley Hughes of the Climate Council said limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius along with “deep and rapid emissions reductions this decade” are necessary to give the reef “a chance to to fight”.”
A decision on whether to officially designate the reef as “endangered” will be made by the World Heritage Committee next year, once UNESCO has compiled a more thorough report of responses from the Australian federal and state governments.
