Pearls and Irritations

It feels like Groundhog day: Another coral bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef, another meeting of the World Heritage Committee to examine Australia’s progress to safeguard our World Heritage-listed icon.

UNESCO has urged Australia “to set more ambitious emission reduction targets consistent with limiting global temperature to 1.5°C”. It has expressed “high concern that rates of native vegetation clearing remain significant”. It has also called for an effort to “restore coastal wetland and riparian ecosystems … at the scale required to safeguard the property’s Outstanding Universal Value”.

As usual, there’s a flurry of media interest: will the World Heritage Committee place the Reef on the List of World Heritage in Danger when it meets in New Delhi in late July?

Despite the extreme underwater heatwave the world is currently experiencing, the Committee will not do that this year. Instead, the draft decision requests the Australian Government to report to UNESCO by 1 February next year on the impact of the 2023-24 bleaching event, and progress to protect the site. The Committee will then examine the report in July next year.

Australia’s management of the Reef has been under close scrutiny ever since 2011 when the World Heritage Committee first expressed extreme concern about the development of LNG processing plants and new or expanded coal ports along the Reef coastline.

However, despite the ongoing reporting requests and examinations, the government warmly welcomed the draft decision because it did not include any reference to an ‘in Danger” listing. In her media release, Environment Minister Plibersek said:

“Today’s draft decision is a huge win for Queensland, a huge win for the thousands of people who rely on the reef for work, and a huge win for all the plants and animals that call it home.”

On ABC Radio, the Minister also called the draft decision “a great relief”.

The two lobbying trips made to Paris this year – by Senator Nita Green, the government’s Great Barrier Reef envoy, and Mr Josh Thomas, CEO of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority – certainly helped to avoid any reference to an ‘in Danger’ listing. So too did the funds Australia provided to UNESCO to enable the development of a toolkit on climate action for World Heritage.

Of course, it is good that Australia is once again acting as a good global citizen, supporting this and other World Heritage initiatives. But it would be naïve to think that being good was the sole motivation for the trips and the funding.

Full disclosure: I also visited UNESCO, soon after the Australian Government’s second visit, with an independent scientist and a representative of an environmental NGO. The World Heritage system recognises – albeit imperfectly – the importance of civil society and mostly welcomes views expressed by NGOs, scientists and other experts.

It was clear to me that the message from our official representatives in Paris and at home was the same: firstly, the bleaching event is widespread but don’t call it severe; and secondly, the extent of coral mortality will not be known until August 2025. Conveniently, this is a month after next year’s World Heritage Committee meeting. It is therefore heartening that UNESCO has sought a report by 1 February instead.

In April this year, the Great Barrier Reef Management Authority released a Reef Snapshot during the peak of the bleaching event. The document refers to “severe” three times, but only in relation to flooding, tropical cyclones and outbreaks of Crown-of-Thorns Starfish.

Yet one third of coral reefs were exposed to heat levels commensurate with mortality. That’s 1,000 coral reefs out of the 3,000 that make up the Great Barrier Reef.

Why is the Albanese Government, like the Morrison Government before it, so determined to play down the event to avoid an ‘in Danger’ listing?

Firstly, the government believes it amounts to a black mark against its international environmental reputation. It is not alone in this: many other countries share this view about the Danger List.

Secondly, the government is concerned about the impact an ‘in Danger’ listing would have on regional communities – on jobs and tourism.

Thirdly, inscription of a World Heritage property on the ‘in Danger’ list is designed to incentivise governments to do more to protect a threatened site but, as revealed in Senate Estimates on 29 May, the government believes it has made all the commitments that it needs to make to satisfy UNESCO, and is implementing them. It sees no point in an ‘in Danger’ listing.

These views are highly contestable.

Firstly, the ‘in Danger’ List was not designed as a sanction. It was created to alert the international community to a site being threatened by serious and specific danger. It has tremendous symbolic value. It is meant to catalyse action to reduce or eliminate the threatening process.

Secondly, it is true that major players in the tourism industry are concerned about an ‘in Danger’ listing of the Reef, fearful that tourists will go elsewhere. Evidence from other sites does not support this view. The Reef tourism industry in Cairns has suffered in recent years, but that has been due to COVID. Shouldn’t the industry be more concerned about government support for new fossil fuel developments, which present an existential threat to the Reef?

Thirdly, the government is not doing all it needs to do to protect the future of the world’s biggest living organism. The most important action is to not approve any new fossil fuel developments.

Today, I read that 97% of corals have died on a reef at Lizard Island due to the 2023-24 bleaching event. Recently, I visited another part of the Marine Park and was thrilled to see an incredibly beautiful coral reef. Paradise is not lost; it just remains in fewer places. Its continued existence depends on our political leaders taking urgent climate and environmental action and civil society raising the alarm.

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