Australia’s environment minister has contested UNESCO labelling the Great Barrier Reef as an “endangered” World Heritage site.
On Monday the UN’s culture agency released a report claiming that the Australian coral reef was in serious danger from the supposed effects of climate change, and that only “ambitious, rapid and sustained” action would prevent an ecological disaster.
However, Australia’s Labour Party Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek hit out at this assessment.
“We’ll very clearly make the point to UNESCO that there is no need to single the Great Barrier Reef out in this way,” she said.
“The reason that UNESCO in the past has singled out a place as at risk is because they wanted to see greater government investment or greater government action and, since the change of government, both of those things have happened.”
By this Plibersek referred to the recent changeover of Australia’s previous government party, who were voted out in May and replaced with Labour.
“If the Great Barrier Reef is in danger, then every coral reef in the world is in danger,” she said.
“If this World Heritage site is in danger, then most World Heritage sites around the world are in danger from climate change.”
She also said that her government had committed a total of $1.2 billion Australian dollars (€779.3 million) to protecting the reef, and had reversed the last government’s plan to construct two dams in Queensland which some feared would have negatively impacted the quality of water.
Despite claims of environmentalists, in August of this year a survey found that most of the Great Barrier Reef has the highest amount of coral cover ever recorded since monitoring began 36 years ago.
Despite warnings from climate activists about the impending environmental destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, a new survey has found that the reef in fact has more coral than ever previously recorded in many areas.#gripthttps://t.co/7aNMfawVYN
— gript (@griptmedia) August 5, 2022
The survey, which was conducted by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), found that the northern and central areas of the reef – two thirds in total – have record amounts of coral never before seen after several years of bleaching.
The southern third of the reef appears to have lost some coral cover, going from 38% last year to 34% this year – a 4% decrease. However, AIMS attributes this primarily to a surge in crown-of-thorns starfish, which eat healthy coral – not climate change.