Marine experts are warning that Australia needs to do more to protect one of its greatest natural treasures after the United Nations recommended the Great Barrier Reef not be placed on a list of world heritage sites "in danger." The world's largest coral system is facing a range of threats, including climate change, pollution and overfishing.
United Nations scientific advisors said that Australia has taken positive steps to protect the Great Barrier Reef since a U.N. monitoring mission visited Queensland in March 2022. It won't — for now — be listed as a World Heritage site "in danger."
But at its meeting in Paris on Monday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Committee stressed the reef remains under "serious threat." It wants Australia to report on progress to enhance the reef's long-term resilience by February 1 next year.
Australia's government said the U.N. report is confirmation it is acting on climate change and "working hard to protect the reef."
The reef spans 2,300 kilometers down Australia's northeastern coast and covers an area about the size of Japan.
Experts fear that the arrival of an El Nino weather pattern, a naturally occurring climate phenomenon that often brings warmer conditions, will make the oceans even hotter.
Coral responds to excessive heat by expelling the symbiotic algae that give them their brilliant colors and most of their energy. It is a damaging process called bleaching, which has occurred several times on the Great Barrier Reef since 2016.
Associate Professor Bill Leggat, a coral biologist from the University of Newcastle in New South Wales state, tells VOA that another bleaching event off north-eastern Australia is predicted.
"We are already seeing a marine heatwave on the Great Barrier Reef where temperatures are above what we normally expect to see," said Leggat. "So, certainly the vast majority of predictions are saying we are going to have another mass bleaching event next year, early next year. The reefs in Florida in the U.S. are already undergoing bleaching. Ocean temperatures around the world are well above what we have seen in historical records that we have."
Australia said it is spending millions of dollars to improve water quality on the Great Barrier Reef, which has been damaged from pesticides and fertilizers running off from farms, as well as industrialization, overfishing, and the coral-eating crown of thorns starfish. Officials in Canberra have said more ambitious targets to cut Australia's emissions have also been set.
Leggat said even more must be done to protect one of Australia's greatest natural treasures.
"The Great Barrier Reef is one of the most well-managed reefs in the world but it is being threatened," said Leggat. "They are really the canary in the coal mine in terms of all ecosystems around the world, coral reefs. They are sensitive to climate change and we see the impacts on them first. If we want to have the reef there for our children and grandchildren, we really need to act immediately."
UNESCO can list a World Heritage site as being in danger "to encourage corrective action." Dozens of sites have been included on the danger list in the past, including the Everglades National Park in the United States in 2010, the ancient city of Damascus, Syria, in 2013, and, most recently, the historic center of Odesa in Ukraine this year.
Australia's Great Barrier Reef was included on the U.N.'s World Heritage List in 1981.
