Confused grief over Great Barrier Reef Graham Lloyd Environment Editor THE AUSTRALIAN JUNE 21, 2014 THE clear waters and colourful corals of the Great Barrier Reef have always been a marketers’ dream. Until now, the reef’s image has been used as an irresistible lure to underpin a multi-billion-dollar tourism industry. For a new generation of digital campaigners the reef is made for Facebook. Impossibly big and incredibly photogenic, what’s not to like? But rather than the celebration of nature it once was, the reef has somehow become a living canvas through which to exploit deeply held existential fears about the fragile future of the world. It is a global asset that thanks to an unrelenting social media campaign by environment groups led by the World Wildlife Fund has been swamped by a growing sense of crisis. At the extreme, the reef has become a proxy for climate change and a pawn in a well funded campaign to shut down Australia’s fossil fuel exports. Many people who have no idea that the reef covers an area larger than Britain, The Netherlands and Switzerland combined have been convinced it has been wrecked beyond repair due to dredging and industrial development. Final confirmation of the power of the Great Barrier Reef brand and the challenge it faces came from A-list Hollywood celebrity Leonardo Di Caprio. Standing next to US Secretary of State John Kerry, Di Caprio said; “Since my very first dive in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia 20 years ago to the dive I got to do in the very same location just two years ago, I’ve witnessed environmental devastation firsthand. “What once had looked like an endless underwater utopia is now riddled with bleached coral reefs and massive dead zones.” The damage observed by Di Caprio was most likely the result of heavy storms that long-term monitoring shows is responsible for 48 per cent of coral loss since 1985. A further 42 per cent of loss is due to crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks and 10 per cent due to bleaching from ocean warming. Those charged with protecting the reef argue its sheer size makes it a resilient beast that has been able to weather the destructive power of tropical tempests for far longer than humans have been around to interfere. And research continues to throw up surprising and unexpected results. A new paper published this week in Nature Communications said analysis of fossilised corals suggested the Great Barrier Reef was more resilient to past climate change than previously thought. Researchers cautioned, however, that temperature changes expected as a result of modern climate change will occur much more rapidly, and could kill off the reef. And it is impossible to avoid the findings of a government funded scorecard that the health of the inshore reef right along the Queensland coastline was “poor’’. This is why the World Heritage Committee decided this week to keep a threat to list the Great Barrier Reef as being “in danger” hanging over the heads of the Australian and Queensland governments for another year. The decision maintains the diplomatic pressure the federal and state governments complete a strategic plan for long term management of the reef and onshore development. In truth, the battle over the Great Barrier Reef is political as much as it is environmental. Australia sent a large and high powered delegation to the Doha gathering, which included Australia’s ambassador to France, department heads from Canberra, the chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority Russell Reichelt and Queensland environment minister, Andrew Powell. The delegation exerted maximum pressure on World Heritage Committee members to depart from the recommended text to remove criticism of the governments’ actions. Australia particularly wanted criticism of the timing of the hand over of environmental decision making powers from the commonwealth to Queensland — legislation for which passed through the lower house of federal parliament this week — watered down or deleted. But the intense lobbying did not succeed. A member of the Portuguese delegation to the World Heritage Committee, Jose Filipe Mendes Moraes Cabral, was critical of the lobbying attempts by Australia. “The major cause for the reef degradation is not only a consequence of extreme weather conditions and climate change as Australian government documents seem to imply, but also due to human causes and interference,” he said. The official World Heritage text kept alive the threat to consider putting put the GBR on the World Heritage “in danger” list next year. Of greater concern to the Australian government was the inclusion in the formal statement that federal environmental powers over the World Heritage asset were being handed over to the state government too soon. The World Heritage Committee also expressed “concern and regret” over the government’s decision to allow the dumping of 3 million cubic metres of dredge spoil in reef waters at Abbot Point, despite the Australian government’s attempts to have those words removed. The Queensland Resource Council had argued it was “simply unfortunate” that advisers to the World Heritage Committee had “overlooked or misunderstood that their requested comprehensive assessments of dredging options have already been done and have established that there will not be an impact on the reef’s Outstanding Universal Values.’’ The World Heritage Committee did not agree. However, World Heritage Centre Director Kishore Rao said UNESCO “was confident the overall direction towards next year’s decision (on an in-danger listing) is a positive one”. This was enough for Australia to claim confirmation from the World Heritage Committee it was doing the right thing. Queensland Environment Minister Powell said the decision “gives Queensland a big tick and ... the work we are doing a big tick”. “Our strong plan to protect the Great Barrier Reef is already producing positive results, creating a brighter future that Queenslanders and tourists from around the world can enjoy,” he said. “This decision is also a win for logic and science rather than rhetoric and scaremongering,” Mr Powell said. However, Rick Leck, who attended the Doha meeting for WWF, said many committee members had been appalled by what Australia had been doing. “It was seen as a complete politicisation of the process,’’ he said. “If the committee had accepted Australia’s changes it could have really damaged the credibility of the committee and I think some members realised that.” “If what had come out of this meeting was seen to be an endorsement by the World Heritage Committee that dumping in a world heritage area was OK practice with inadequate offsets it could have caused the committee damage long term. It has global implications because what happens on the reef will set a precedent for what happens elsewhere .’’ This may well be true, but for many people WWF accusing anyone of politicising the World Heritage Committee process is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. When it comes to reef politics there are two extremes at work. Well funded by public donations and wealthy benefactors large sections of the environment movement consider reef health the ideal proxy through which to wage all-out war on Australia’s fossil fuel exports. Burning coal causes climate change, which threatens the reef’s long- term future they argue. For hardliners it is an existential struggle between the reef on one side and the coal industry on the other. The divide was clear in the reception to the joint federal-state report card on the state of the reef which showed a big reduction in the amount of onshore run-off into the reef waters. But environment groups said any gains would be swamped by the impact of planned dredging for port expansions. World Heritage Committee says it will consider the Australian government’s strategic plan for future management of the reef due early next year before making a decision on whether or not to place the reef on the “in danger” list. But whatever it says it is unlikely to persuade the hard core environmental groups who believe coal and coral do not mix. The Great Barrier Reef is not only a rich source of tourist dollars but increasingly a pawn in a campaign to shut down Australia’s fossil fuel exports.
Posted on: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 23:08:12 +0000
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