Overnight, the Australian and Queensland governments submitted their report to UNESCO on their progress to protect the Great Barrier Reef. The Australian Marine Conservation Society says governments must dramatically lift their climate targets to protect the Reef.
Last year the World Heritage advisory body UNESCO and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) made 22 recommendations to the Australian and Queensland governments to protect the Reef and avoid an ‘In Danger’ listing.
AMCS Great Barrier Reef Campaign Manager Dr Lissa Schindler said, ‘There has been good progress in protecting the Great Barrier Reef with the Queensland Government’s vastly improved emissions reduction target and the commercial fishing gillnet ban, but more action is needed.
‘The Queensland Government has done well addressing climate change with its improved renewable energy and greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, but the federal government needs to lift its game.’
Science clear
Dr Schindler says the Australian government must lift its greenhouse gas reduction targets in line with keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees C – a critical threshold for coral reefs. Australia’s current emissions reduction target of 43 per cent by 2030 is consistent with a 2 degree C warming pathway, which equates to the loss of 99 per cent of the world’s coral reefs.
‘Right now the states are leading the way on climate targets,’ she said. ‘If a state with a significant resource sector such as Queensland can set an emissions reduction target of 75 per cent by 2035, then the Australian government can and must go higher.
‘If Australia is serious about fulfilling its commitment to UNESCO to set more ambitious emission reduction targets in alignment with efforts to limit global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C, then we would expect at least a 90 per cemt emissions reduction target by 2035.
‘The Queensland and Australian governments must take that same bold approach to addressing water quality,’ said Dr Schindler. ‘There continues to be alarming amounts of broadscale tree clearing in Reef catchments, including along watercourses, where vegetation plays a critical role in trapping sediment that would otherwise flow into the Reef.’
Protecting an international marvel
‘The governments must protect and restore wetlands, which provide nursery habitat for a lot of the marine life in Reef waters and also trap nitrogen run-off, which has been linked to crown of thorn seastar outbreaks,’ said Dr Schindler.
‘Tree clearing has a double-whammy effect on climate change, the biggest threat to our Reef, adding to carbon pollution when trees are burned or left to rot, and removing trees that could suck carbon out of the atmosphere.
‘The Reef is an internationally renowned natural marvel that supports a $6 billion tourism industry and 64,000 jobs. We need to do everything we can to protect it.’
This report can’t be right.
I mean we have here in the very fine pages of The Echo, our esteemed marine biologists, the Barrow, the Greggy, the Christian, telling us that our GBR has never been in better shape.
We even saw that spectacle on TV in 2016, of One Pauline doing a 10 minute snorkel on our GBR and declaring that there isn’t any coral bleaching.
Yep, our GBR is in tip top order, no need to anything to keep it that way.
We are repeating the talking points of the Australian Institute of Marine Science. They are the ones that monitor the reef. It just proves that it doesn’t matter what happens, you stick with your narrative (religious beliefs). How’s that El Niño drought Summer going? ‘Just weather’ no doubt, just like the records snow falls all over the Northern Hemisphere during the hottest ‘just on your records’ year.
Christrian, science is a bridge too far for you, again.
El Nino ( and La Nina ) is a climate driver that influences weather, it doesn’t guarantee your ‘drought Summer’.
Get yourself onto the BoM website http://www.bom.gov.au and do a bit of reading, learning yourself up about climate drivers.
As for your Northern Hemisphere snow falls, this was addressed in a previous Echo topic but there again science a bridge too far for you, you couldn’t be bothered reading the DW report /scientific explanation that was supplied to you. Instead you come back, here, retreading your science denying nonsense.
I was too busy reading the studies about your 2022 flood being caused by the Tonga volcano, confirming the hypothesis I posited on these pages at the time. Yet you still claim that as a ‘climate event’. Do windmills stop volcanoes erupting? Or are the cow farts just too powerful?
Well, I have in general given up trying to make people understand that the Reef is NOT Great, …it is very near death.
However, in view of the enormity of Australia’s continued efforts to eradicate life on this Planet, for their forty pieces of silver, the extinction of the Reef is really the least of the catastrophic horrors we will face in the very near future.
Cheers, G”)
Joachim says there are coral reefs in Antarctica, so that should keep the tree rats alive, or whatever the claim of the day is. Actually, Besides tourist dollars, exactly what do we even need a reef for again? Not allowed to fish there, so…
Perhaps with incessant deluges of rain the entire island continent will become a thriving bommie. Snorkle up, deniers!
I thought we were in the climate disaster drought El Niño?
Crisis in climate prognostication? Your psychics on the blink? Goat entrails gone off?
If driving my Porsche around will turn the dry continent wet, why would you try to stop me?
Nonsense contradicts its self.
Clearly your ‘thinking’ is wrong, again.
Joachy, guru of everything green and knower of all, check out Jennifer Marohasy’s website, she and other people from the Cook university actually get in the water and look at the reef, your UNESCO buddies do a fly over from a few thousand feet and do an assessment, nothing can be accurately determined from an unprofessional farce such as theirs. You read all of their propaganda and believe it, you have been brainwashed and hoodwinked my non friend, get over it, try reading between the lines you may learn something useful. These socialist pieces of crap have an agenda, it all emanates from the IPCC, WEF, UN….
Greggy that’s an outright lie! Your IPA pinup guru Dr Marohasy is just a paid fossil fuel mouthpiece. She’s never worked for Cook University & knows nothing about coral, nor climate. FYI she is just another blogger with a PhD…. science qualifications in Botany & Entomology specialising in weed biocontrol, admirable yes, but the closest she ever been to becoming a once-was Great Barrier Reef expert was working for the Queensland Canegrowers Assoc, where she discovered the value in knowing who will pay the most for her opinions… since then the IPA & fossil fools have paid all her bills so she shamelessly promotes their talking points.
She did ONCE manage to get an article published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal (note: “peer”, not “pier” ROFLMFAO), but when reviewed by all other scientists & experts in that field, it was described as “junk science”. No-one has been able to build on this single piece she has published, nor have ever reached the same conclusions. You really do have no idea of how science works, nor it’s credibility.
UNESCO might do flyovers, especially since its the easy & obvious way to spot coral bleaching & see the discoloured water from soil erosion, but it’s far from the only thing they do. They collate all the research & attract all the best scientists. Point me to an example of their science being discredited. Maybe some UNESCO scientists have even heard of your genius Marohasy, & so enjoyed a good chuckle reading her nonsense & rolled their eyes … Do you even realise that our once-was Great Barrier Reef is a UNESCO World-Heritage Site?
I guess we now add UNESCO & IPCC & WEF & the Reef to your list of academics & Greta & children & intelligent, empathetic progressive politics as all the things you disdain that are likely to cause apoplexy. Careful with those cornflakes Greggy, it’s difficult being the only expert x
Dear Greg,
A few facts you obviously you don’t know:
Australia is a member of the UN.
Australian scientists are members of UNESCO.
Local Australian scientists do the the majority of reef monitoring and reporting to UNESCO.
UNESCO isn’t a bunch of bored scientists sitting around waiting to troll and educate climate laggards and those who refuse to accept or act on science otherwise they would have tracked you down years ago.
So foreign agents beholden to a foreign power that has interests that conflict with ours, that have gained controlling interest in large tracks of our country through the activities of said agents.
Your hyperboles & conspiracies are getting even more far-fetched. “Foreign powers”? As you well know the UN is basically powerless. We are signatories to sensible international agreements aimed at protecting places & ecosystems of value, protecting human rights, child rights etc.
“Interests that conflict with ours”? It’s hardly in our interests, nor the planets, to destroy the ‘once-was’ Great Barrier Reef is it? How has the UN gained any controlling interest in any “large tracts of our country”? That’s just nuts.
I was just restating what Ms Clark said, but since you are here…
When areas are registered with these international organisations, can the government just change its mind and flatten the place? If so, what is the point of registering these places?
N. See, nice try. You make me laugh, maybe you should join Mandy and do a woke standup together, what a hoot that would be. Strange how everyone that has proven the lefty’s wrong on many fronts happen to be in your opinion unworthy, well N.See (Ansy), Dr Marohasy does the hard yards, she actually examines regularly the reef and would have an enormously greater idea of what is going on there than some lefty overseas charlatan’s trying to prove Australia is not capable of looking after the reef. You think you are superior, as long as you think that knock yourself out, many will disagree. Have a happy day xx..
If Marohasy has done the hard hards, where’s the evidence? why has she published next to nothing?
FYI these overseas overseas scientists can & DO read & talk to their respected colleagues who really DO the hard yards, they all publish regularly to present their research, & which withstands scrutiny. And unbelievely, they’ve ALL heard of this new thing called telephone & this other new thing called email.
You’re right, she hasn’t.
But it’s not overseas researchers, they are Australians.